The Grocery Store Chronicles: Introduction

I'm a bit of an aberration, I suppose, in that I am a married, heterosexual male who enjoys grocery shopping -- or, who at least does not despise it as much as most men nowadays seem to.

I started grocery shopping when I was a carefree bachelor buying cheap canned meats and snack foods in college. I kept it up during my single days as a member of the workforce, then after I married I continued grocery shopping because, well, my wife wasn't all that thrilled with the task, and I seemed not to mind it. So, as a gift to her, I offered to roam the aisles each week.

One reason I don't usually mind grocery shopping is that I like to cook, and I enjoy trying new recipes (even if they are simply new "recipes" that have to be heated up or mixed up from a can or box). I spend at least a part of each grocery trip browsing the shelves to see what new, ingenious items have been introduced. You can get burned out on a dish pretty quickly, so it pays to find new things that seem promising to the palate.

Of course, now that the huge superstores I buy food in also sell things like books and DVDs, I spend some of my time in the store browsing among the new titles.

In my more than 25 years as a grocery shopper I have learned a lot about the practice, and about the different types of people -- customers and employees -- that can be found in the modern supermarket. In the next few days I plan to present a series of posts relating some of my hard-fought grocery wisdom. I hope you enjoy them.