Supermarket voyeurism

You can tell a lot by looking at a person's grocery cart contents. You can also be very wrong in what you can tell by looking at a person's grocery cart contents.


The other day I noticed an older gentleman pacing in the meat department. He was carrying a shopping basket, not driving a cart, and it had just a few single-serve items in it. Lives alone, I speculated. 


Sometime later this same gentleman came up to me and said grumpily, "Where do they hide that tofu stuff? I've looked everywhere."


I did not know where the tofu stuff was kept and could not even hazard a guess, although I did make a show of looking up and down the meat department, as if the tofu might helpfully stand up and say, "Over here!"


I admitted to the man that I could not help him. "My wife sent me on a fool's errand," he muttered.


So much for living alone. Feeling chastised for my wrong conclusion, I refused to speculate on whether the man had a cell phone with which to call his wife for clarification on the tofu issue.


But my small forays into supermarket voyeurism are nothing compared to a certain author whose book I have been reading lately. The author teaches cooking classes and has published a cookbook. At the beginning of the book she admits to engaging in covert observation of fellow shoppers at her grocery store. One day she spots a woman whose cart is filled with boxes and cans, but nothing that is actual food. Curious, she follows the woman around the store, trying to be discreet ("I think by the time we reached the meat department she was on to me," she says).


When the woman happens to remark to the author how expensive the chicken breasts are, the author helpfully points out that whole chickens are on sale for $.99 a pound. 


The woman snorts. "I wouldn't know what to do with the other parts of a chicken," she says. "Or how to cut it up."


Here the author reaches a decision point. Will she, who cherishes the ideal of good, healthy, home-cooked food, let this poor woman continue in her ignorance, and perpetuate that ignorance among her family? Nay, she must rescue her!


In short order, she has arranged for the butcher to show the woman how to cut up the whole chicken, tells her how much cheaper this is than buying the chicken in various pieces, and -- most importantly -- convinces the woman that she is not a crazy person. "Here, look, the store is selling my cookbook." She grabs one from the display and points to her name on the cover. "This is me." She produces her driver's license to verify this claim. 


Gradually the woman is convinced that the author is not a crazy person, and allows herself to be taken back through the store while the author replaces all those boxes and cans with real food -- food that she can turn into nourishing meals using the author's cookbook. Lest the woman think she is merely trying to push her cookbook on unsuspecting store customers, the author buys it for her. "I just want to help you," she says.


This is the beginning of the author's discovery that she has a talent for making strangers nervous in the grocery store. Just kidding! Her talent, of course, is helping transform non-cooks into accomplished, confident cooks, so that THEY can go to their local store and start making strangers nervous.


The fate of that woman is unknown at this point in the book. Once home, did she start to apply her newfound culinary knowledge, or did she promptly throw the cookbook away and let all that precious but alien food die a slow death in the refrigerator?


I am sure that someone as knowledgeable as this author could find something wrong with nearly everyone's grocery cart contents. Particularly me. "What is this?" she might say while holding up a box of graham crackers taken from my cart. She would no doubt be horrified that I often use cooked chicken strips that come in a box. 


But there are advantages to being her. She would probably know where to find the tofu stuff.