Thursday, March 26, 2009

What story does your grocery cart tell?

I went grocery shopping last night after visiting Baby Nephew. As I loaded my items onto the checkout aisle's conveyor belt, it occurred to me that some conclusions the cashier was coming to about my life wouldn't necessarily align with reality and others were more closely aligned than normal. Let me explain.

Here's what I bought:
1 package of English muffins
1 box each of beef and chicken style frozen vegetarian taquitos
1 box of frozen vegetarian mini-tacos
2 cartons of soy milk
1 bottle of Mrs. Butterworth Lite
4 Prana bars (mmm...Prana bars)
2 boxes of Kashi granola bars (on sale!)
5 cans of vegetable broth (on sale!)
4 plums
1 package of fake turkey deli meat
2 boxes of frozen pierogies
1/2 dozen organic, cage free eggs
1 container of hummus

If I was the cashier, I'd peg that grocery cart owner as single vegetarian. That list definitely doesn't match with my preconceived notions of what a married woman's grocery list would look like, vegetarian or not. The fact of the matter is that while I'm happily married, my husband doesn't care one bit about food and I get home late at night so we eat a lot of ready-made meals (like frozen taquitos) or easy to make things like pasta. I'm definitely not your "typical" domestic wife (if such a person exists).

Interestingly, I'm usually coming to the cashier with a different misconception. I'm a vegetarian but my husband isn't and sometimes my cart looks like that of a meat eater. It all depends on what we're out of.


I'm sure my grocery store receipts aren't exactly riveting reading, but I did find it to be an interesting observation and it got me wondering what kinds of stories other people's grocery carts tell about them. Care to share?

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