Food Shopping #1

We're going to be on Catalina Island for 6 weeks. This means that we have to feed the people in my research group for that long. This time out, our group has elected to eat dinners at the cafeteria at the marine lab, which means that we are shopping for 10-16 people for breakfast, lunch, and snacks. I sent out an email to everyone a week and a half ago and asked them to comment and add to the grocery list I had generated. Surprisingly, very few people had additional requests.

Eric and I went to Target, Ace Hardware, Best Buy, Costco, and Walmart (in that order). We got a lot of food. I'm not kidding.

The corn chips alone are enough to supply an army of researchers with salty snacks for at least a week. This photo shows our cart about a third of the way through our Costco excursion. I think it really encapsulates the entire Costco experience, including the harsh lighting, pallets of goods stacked to the ceiling, mysteriously glossy floors, and the glazed look of the shopper 4 hours into a trip. 

It takes a really long time to grind 9 pounds of coffee. 

We saw a lot of stuff. Some of it we chose not to purchase for the trip to Catalina.

Shopping is overwhelming for me sometimes. I think it has to do with the sheer variety of objects that are ultimately disposable, and the amount of money one could spend on all that nonsense. I used to go to the cereal aisle in the grocery store and just stand and soak in all of the bright, cheery colors and designs on the boxes. Then I would do that thing that my eye doctor tells me not to do, where I blur and fuzz my vision and see nothing but color and vague shapes. It's like looking at a Jackson Pollock painting. Every single box in the cereal aisle contains the same basic stuff: Wheat. Corn. Sugar. We are caught up in a big mill that takes basic foodstuffs, ingredients, and presents them in a convenient, jaunty package at huge markup. The thing that I struggle with the most is that it is considered a mark of success, of financial freedom and comfort, to be able to buy canisters of pre-made salads and boxes of frozen quick-foods at Costco and store them in your spacious suburban home. You can't buy flour or sugar at Costco; ingredients are so proletariat. Somehow I feel bad for living in a 600-square-foot apartment, where buying toilet paper in a cube of 64 rolls is just not practical. Maybe I could get creative and turn that cube of toilet paper into a functional piece of furniture, like a coffee table, by adding a sturdy, flat top and an attractive tablecloth.