How to go grocery shopping on Kwaj

Here's a little slice of life for anyone who ever wondered what's different about life on Kwaj.  Below is a step-by-step process of grocery shopping here.  Enjoy!

1) Decide which day you want to go grocery shopping:
-Tuesday: There are fresh veggies and fruit right of the plane but the store will be crowded and inevitably the credit card machine will be down
-Wednesday: Less busy but the best fresh produce will have been bought yesterday and the credit card machine is probably still down
-Thursday: Not an option, the store is closed
-Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Monday: Good days for picking up things that you forgot on your big shopping day but by now most of the good fruits and veggies have been picked over. 
2) Make a grocery list, also known as a wish list and don't get your hopes up-  it's better to be surprised than disappointed!

3) Decide if Sky is coming with or not
-if she is, make her cry by making her a cup of snacks that you don't give to her right away. Save it until you get to the store, otherwise she will reach for (and eat) everything in the cart.
-if she's not, perform step four and leave the house before she notices you leaving and starts crying because she's going through that clingy phase right now
4) Grab the cloth grocery bags because you have way too many paper bags stuffed next to the fridge
5) Attach (fight with) the trailer
6) Ride your bike to the store and park, making sure not to park in the way of the bike racks- if you do, you'll get a "Thumbs Down" in the Hourglass (weekly paper) for annoying people and slowing them down by a few seconds because they have to wheel their bikes around you
7) Grab a cart and start shopping
-Meat section: not bad but not a lot of variety, most of it's frozen and you can count on finding most of the things you want as long as it's ground beef or turkey tail but not stew beef (don't ask me, I don't do the ordering)
-Dairy section: also pretty good. The cheese selection changes every week but don't buy more than you think your family can eat because it molds pretty quickly.  If they have the flavor of creamer you want, get several now because it'll be a few weeks before they have it again.  Oooh, look, tofu, better grab that too!
-Produce section: Hurray for the Tuesday plane!  Now you may want to buy everything you see there that looks yummy but you've got to think about it first- what will you actually use this week?  Because you can't count on any of it lasting longer than that.  Sure, some of the hardy stuff will but the things you really want, asparagus, tomatoes, grapes and beans have all been on several planes and through several warehouses before they were put out on that shelf.  Buy just enough to get you through the week.  If you had asparagus last week, get the eggplant this week.  Check out the lettuce before you buy it- if it's already getting soft, you'd better plan on eating some quick salads because it might not last much longer.
-Now cruise through the rest of the store, keeping an eye for anything new, unusual or on sale.  Sometimes there's chorizo hidden at the end of this aisle or the last box of granola bars is hidden behind some cereal over there- grab it!
8) The rest of the shop is pretty normal through the check out.  Be prepared to be ignored by the checkout ladies (while narcisstically assuming that they're making fun of your shirt or the candy bars you picked up because they're speaking Marshallese really fast and you have no idea what they're saying anyway) and for the credit card to take ages to go through (if it's working). 
9) Wheel your groceries outside and load them in your trailer
10) Attempt to back trailer up, fail, fail again, get frustrated at all of Kwaj, including those people lucky enough to only be buying one bag of groceries so they don't need this stupid trailer, manage to get your bike and trailer turned around and ride home.
11)  Make a frozen pizza for dinner because you're tired of everything involving food right now and don't want to think about it at all
12) Repeat next week.



Comments

  1. Eeeek! This sounds like a lot of planning and organization on your part... yet even with planning and organization, grocery plans can be derailed. This would stress me out LOL.

    Thanks for sharing and linking up to the #SHINEbloghop.

    Wishing you a lovely week.
    xoxo

    ReplyDelete

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