Adventures in Grocery Shopping

Did you know that Pringles come in seaweed flavor? I didn’t either, but they’re bright green with a tomatoish aftershock. My husband likes them, in fact two days ago he intentionally bought tomato flavored off-brand Pringles, offering them around as we all took a single nibble and handed them back in silent agreement that some things are just fundamentally wrong. He gleefully devoured the whole can, equating them to the goat milk shampoo he bought on his mission in Brazil because it was the only one so cheap that none of his companions would steal it.

Dumplings are better than Pringles, but you have to pop them whole in your mouth and let the juice burn your tongue while you try to chew what feels like an entire apple in a single chomp. We tried a more genteel approach at first, delicately holding the benign-looking balls between our chopsticks and taking a normal bite, never dreaming that the juice is held against its will and capable of Olympic take-off. At dinner Chase looked at Abby totally seriously, “If you’re going to eat that, could you please aim it at Porter.”

We took Porter, our nine-year-old, to the grocery store today. He had his picture taken twice, once when a teenage girl asked him to pose with her, and another time by the guy at the meat counter who sneaked a shot. Meats is an enormous section of a Chinese grocery store and comes in live, fresh kills and dried. Porter ran to see the live crabs, fish, frogs, eels and a number of other slimy aquatic unidentifiables, and spent the rest of the trip begging for a pet. I was interested in the dried jellyfish, but most entranced by the great pile of ducks, plucked, slit and looking at you. I’m such a good mother that last time I pulled my ten-year-old, Chase, over to examine the dissected duck spread out on top of the heap. “Poor duck. That’s sick, mom.” Years of therapy right there, but he’ll be an adult by then and have to pay for it himself.