Many guys may not say this, or be willing to admit it freely, but I love grocery shopping. The vibrant primary colors of the bell peppers, strawberries, carrots and bananas and the longing desire of the loose sweet sausage to be transformed into a stunning risotto – it is nearly enough to bring a tear of joy to my eye. The grocery store represents a world ripe with possibilities. We can be gluttons and stock up on ice cream and cookies or we can be healthy and fill our cart with rice cakes, granola and all-natural juices and jams. My family, like most I assume, aims for a shopping trip that produces an agreeable balance of fun, frugal and fit. Sometimes we have a list and other times we wing it, but we always try to enjoy the experience, especially when our little girl is riding in the cart. She adores food shopping. The reasons are probably not hard to imagine. She loves to help pick out her fruit for the week, taking pleasure in the fact that we include her in the decision making process: kiwi or strawberries, grapes or bananas? She requests that after I pick the best items I can find, I hand the food to her for placement in the cart behind her. Sometimes, when it comes to the fuzzy peaches or the prickly pineapples, she will plead to cradle the produce and we, of course, oblige. After all, far be it from me to stand between my child and her love of fruit.
The bountiful fruit and produce section of our local Whole Foods certainly is a great time, but the thing my little lady loves most about grocery shopping are the FREE SAMPLES! She cranes her neck around corners and is on perpetual lookout for the clear plastic domes that house samples of designer cheeses (this week featured a cheese described as “sharp, sweet and nutty” – three words I would use to describe my daughter…so we all just had to try some!), chips and salsa, cinnamon raisin bread and crackers with artichoke spread. To her, it rarely matters what the free sample is, just that she can reach in with a toothpick and try some is enough to install a smile.
The folks at Whole Foods are awesome and are so friendly to kids (you could say the same about Trader Joe’s – another great grocery store). This week, an employee handed my girl a sheet of scratch & sniff food stickers. There was cinnamon oatmeal, a plate of cookies, a gingerbread man and an orange. It was the first time I had seen smelly stickers since I was a kid, and the first time my girl had ever been prompted to scratch and sniff anything – she was hysterical! (By the way, how do they get a smell on to a sticker? Ever think about how amazing some of those trivial little things are?)
Even though it was barely 11am, we bought a fresh baked chocolate chip cookie and a small container of milk to share together when our shopping was complete.
A perfect Saturday morning spent together, doing something that sometimes may seem like a chore, but never really has to be!
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