Saturday Rituals

Edward Weston, Pepper, 1930

Last night I dreamed that I was grocery shopping at "my" Fiesta on Alabama and Dunlavy in the Montrose area of Houston, Texas. I was showing all of my female friends about how awesome Fiesta is for prices. I remember picking up a tin of cocoa powder (of course it had to have something to do with chocolate) and saying, "40 cents. Can't beat that."

Before I moved to Kelowna, I had certain rituals that I did every Saturday. Saturdays were my favorite days because, well, I worked Monday through Friday nine to six every day, and Josh didn't have Saturdays off. Saturday was mine. Saturdays belonged to me and I loved them.

So I would wake up around nine or ten in the morning, head straight to the coffee brewer, where I would make 6 cups of coffee all for myself. Of course, they've always called me the coffee snob, so this coffee was something dark-deep-heavenly like Sumatra (from Starbucks) or Rowanda (from Taft Street Coffee). On a side note I love Indonesian and African coffees... I'm not a fan of South American or Central American coffees. So I would brew my coffee, choose my mug of choice for the day (my love of mugs will be for another blog, another day), pour a little bit of skim milk in the mug and pour my big cup of coffee, and head to the couch where I would watch America's Test Kitchen on PBS, look through my Real Simple Magazine, and go through my cookbooks.

While sitting on that couch, drinking said wonderful coffee, reading tips about how to get an oil stain out of a shirt, I would also compile the menu for the week before me. It would look something like this:

Saturday (today): Indian Tomato Soup and Homemade Biscuits
Sunday: Rosemary Roast Chicken with herbed mashed potatoes and asparagus
Monday: Lunch: Indian Tomato Soup
Dinner: Chicken Spaghetti (made with yesterdays left over chicken)
Tuesday: Lunch: Chicken Sandwich
Dinner: Perogies and Keilbasa
Wednesday: Lunch: Indian Tomato Soup
Dinner: Pretzel Crusted Chicken with Spinach and Goat Cheese Risotto
Thursday: Lunch: Left-over Risotto
Dinner: Chicken Fried Rice
Friday: Lunch: Indian Tomato Soup
Dinner: Homemade Pizza

Then, I would go to my kitchen pantry and fridge and find out what ingredients I had for said weeks sustenance and write my grocery list.

Once Josh got home from work (as we share a car), I would head for the grocery store.

Fiesta had really good quality, cheap produce and other groceries. The produce was not like the produce you'd find at Kroger, or somewhere more posh. You know how when you are shopping for bell peppers at a regular grocery store, all of the bell peppers are basically the same shape and size? Bell peppers don't naturally grow that uniform and pretty. Bell peppers generally are twisty and all different shapes and sizes like Edward Weston's Bell Pepper*. The major grocery chains only buy the pretty uniform peppers, so your idea of what a bell pepper looks like could be perhaps tainted a bit. Also--that is how the major grocery stores can raise the price of the bell pepper. Instead of being what Fiesta would charge (60 cents a piece) for red bell peppers, they can charge you 3.50 because they are only giving you what they consider to be the perfect epitome of the bell pepper.

I must tell you that I love grocery shopping. I love to look at the pretty produce and I love to pick out the exact artichoke that I want, I love to see the people picking out their various groceries and wonder what kind of cooks they are, and I love to wander around and look at the packaging and find the cheapest-best items that I need. Its a bit of a haven for me. Fiesta was a bit dingy as far as its ambiance goes: it was older, a bit darker than you would want a grocery store to be, the floors were markedly old and stained from years of dirt being mashed into the floor by the wheels of the rickety grocery carts, and the fish section of the market smelled, well, like a combination of fish and bleach.... making me never buy fish there.

I realize that the picture I just painted of my favorite place to grocery shop is not what most people would appreciate, but it had marked charm, a strength of character in my eyes. It was part of the highlight of my Saturday ritual. A part of my version of super-womaninity.

*Edward Weston's Bell Pepper