Picking up groceries...

I just picked up my groceries for the week....

The contents of a hamper of food for a single person.
These are my groceries for the week.

I don't usually get all my groceries at once.  Living in a small town, I usually walk to the grocery store each day to pick up what it is that I need to make supper.  I have always enjoyed going to the grocery store.  It's a place of possibility for me.  As I browser the produce and meat sections I wonder, how will the flavours compliment each other.  What flavour combinations could I create.

Cooking is one practice that I am probably going to miss this week.  I love to cook.  I love the creativity that it requires.  I love how I can take raw ingredients, and transform them into something that has an impact on the senses, taste, smell, texture, sound (sometimes), sight.  Cooking is one way that I wind down after a particularly hectic day.

This week, being on a strict diet, I don't expect I will be doing a lot of exotic cooking.  I suspect, that my cooking will move to the realm of trying to imagine how best I can make use of what I have.  What flavour combinations can I use?  How can I blend things together for a tasty meal.

I notice that I have a lot of grains, rice, beans, lentils, bread, crackers, pasta, and oats.  There aren't a lot of vegetables, I have a couple onions, a tomato, two carrots and a can of peas and carrots.  My fruit is limited to two apples and two oranges.  My meat is two cans, a can of tuna and a can of ham.  That's it.  I will have to imagine how to make $5 stretch for the week to supplement what I don't have.

My immediate feels are ones of fear and uncertainty.  I look at these groceries as a puzzle, one that I need to 'solve' to make it through the week.  While there may be many solutions, I have to figure out the one what works best.  One that doesn't leave me short, one that is sufficient, and I'm afraid that there might not be enough.  Already I was joking and bargaining with others of what can be traded to make my hamper 'better.'  We all got the same hamper, so there wasn't much trading.  But I am afraid of what this week might be like.  At this point, I can only imagine and anticipate whether I will be hungry or content.  I already anticipate that I will have to adjust my eating habits, for obvious reasons, there is no snacking this week.

So I enter into this experiment with a little bit of fear and trembling.  I've got my groceries for the week, now all I have to do is make them last.

-C