two pounds of cheddar
It's grocery shopping that makes me miss Oregon a little.
I wandered through the Met - which is more like an overgrown mini-mart than a real grocery store, no matter how you slice it - with no goal other than getting something to snack on and remembering to buy tissues so I'll stop tormenting my nose with scratchy toilet paper. I bought the things I always buy when I have no imagination and no real plan for any of it in the immediate future: peanut butter, hot sauce, rice, beans, bread, pickles, mustard.
Cheese.
Now I remember why, when I lived on St. Mark's and barely cooked, I always just made rice and beans, no cheese (lots of hot sauce, maybe some sour cream). Cheese doesn't work the same way. There is no two-pound block of Tillamook just waiting for me in the cheese case. Maybe Bandon if Tillamook isn't on sale that week. There isn't a single kind of medium cheddar in the entire store - though using the word "entire" makes it sound spacious and like there might be more than one place to look, like in the Safeway in Oregon, with its ordinary-cheese and semi-fancy-cheese sections. There is some Swiss, some provolone, some things I've never seen amid the pepper jack and colby in Oregon. But it is all small and strange and for a second I think, Wait, I'm on the East Coast; the cheddar I buy should be white. But I can't find that either.
I can get the right kind of farmer cheese to make pierogies if I want. (Though my kitchen lacks flat surfaces. You need flat surfaces for pierogi-making.) This is new. But I'll come home with an eight-ounce block of too-bright "sharp" cheddar that's really nothing of the sort but will do in a pinch when all I want is to melt it onto whole wheat bread (weirdly lightweight whole wheat, like it's just pretending) over a layer of mustard and pickles.
You can count on mustard and pickles. And strawberry preserves in a little jar that will later serve as a wine tumbler, because I am not too grown-up to like the way those look when you wash them out and keep them.
Probably I can solve this problem, such as it is, at Whole Foods ("Whole Paycheck," I hear my dad saying in my head). I can buy all the things I took for granted: fancy cheese, fresh baguettes, bulk spices. (I hope they have bulk spices. I really like bulk spices.) I can search out other grocery stores. Things will be different when I have a job, a routine. But standing in front of the cheese section in a tiny, dingy store, I wished for Tillamook. Just for a minute.
I wandered through the Met - which is more like an overgrown mini-mart than a real grocery store, no matter how you slice it - with no goal other than getting something to snack on and remembering to buy tissues so I'll stop tormenting my nose with scratchy toilet paper. I bought the things I always buy when I have no imagination and no real plan for any of it in the immediate future: peanut butter, hot sauce, rice, beans, bread, pickles, mustard.
Cheese.
Now I remember why, when I lived on St. Mark's and barely cooked, I always just made rice and beans, no cheese (lots of hot sauce, maybe some sour cream). Cheese doesn't work the same way. There is no two-pound block of Tillamook just waiting for me in the cheese case. Maybe Bandon if Tillamook isn't on sale that week. There isn't a single kind of medium cheddar in the entire store - though using the word "entire" makes it sound spacious and like there might be more than one place to look, like in the Safeway in Oregon, with its ordinary-cheese and semi-fancy-cheese sections. There is some Swiss, some provolone, some things I've never seen amid the pepper jack and colby in Oregon. But it is all small and strange and for a second I think, Wait, I'm on the East Coast; the cheddar I buy should be white. But I can't find that either.
I can get the right kind of farmer cheese to make pierogies if I want. (Though my kitchen lacks flat surfaces. You need flat surfaces for pierogi-making.) This is new. But I'll come home with an eight-ounce block of too-bright "sharp" cheddar that's really nothing of the sort but will do in a pinch when all I want is to melt it onto whole wheat bread (weirdly lightweight whole wheat, like it's just pretending) over a layer of mustard and pickles.
You can count on mustard and pickles. And strawberry preserves in a little jar that will later serve as a wine tumbler, because I am not too grown-up to like the way those look when you wash them out and keep them.
Probably I can solve this problem, such as it is, at Whole Foods ("Whole Paycheck," I hear my dad saying in my head). I can buy all the things I took for granted: fancy cheese, fresh baguettes, bulk spices. (I hope they have bulk spices. I really like bulk spices.) I can search out other grocery stores. Things will be different when I have a job, a routine. But standing in front of the cheese section in a tiny, dingy store, I wished for Tillamook. Just for a minute.