To me, shopping at a market is like eating a food truck: great concept, hard for me to execute.
When it comes to food trucks, I struggle with standing in line and waiting for my food while standing up. What am I supposed to do while I wait, pace? It makes me feel impatient. I also really dislike eating while standing up. Because where do I sit my wine glass? Strangely, I also hate eating while reclining. Call me old fashioned, but given the choice I prefer to eat in a chair at a table.
Markets are tough because of having to lug around your purchases and pay for things in multiple transactions. I could never buy a watermelon at a market because, hello, who’s going to carry that thing?
Let me just say, I fully support markets and food trucks and know that in many ways they each embody the kind of vibrancy that cities have to have. However, I am sort of a freak about creating efficiencies in my day-to-day. And there isn’t much efficiency in hauling watermelons through hoards of people.
Which is why I’ve never bought all of my groceries at Findlay Market even though I know the prices are great and the food is fresh and the vendors are local and it keeps my cash in town. And all the cool kids are doing it.
Donnie and I arranged to meet Maggie and Carol in the biergarten, and although it was way too early for a bier, it is never too early to chill in your jorts:
Now, typically my grocery list looks like this:
This is two weeks of dinners laid out on top and my frequently purchased items listed on the bottom. I knew this wouldn’t work at Findlay Market, namely because I made this template to mirror the layout of Trader Joes (see “efficiencies in daily living”, above).
I was going to have to improvise at the market, so I drafted this little list of things I absolutely had to get to survive the week:
Of course, before I could look for any of this, I was distracted by the Market’s new chocolate shop, which is the city’s first “bean-to-bar” chocolate company. The owner of Maverick gave us samples and talked to us about how the beans made into chocolate bars.
Not a day goes by that I don’t eat a couple squares of dark chocolate so I was hanging on his every word. At $7.95 a bar this stuff isn’t cheap, but I splurged and bought a bar of the Fahrenheit 513, which is a dark chocolate with a spicy finish. Here is a shot of where the magic happens:
Next, we wandered through the farmer stands, sampling tomatoes and apples and loading up on what seemed like a dozen different kinds of kale.
We couldn’t have picked a better morning to give it a shot: a mid-August day that felt like October, the summer produce at its peak.
Inside, I bought a pound of fresh cottage cheese from Gibbs but wasn’t able to find any yogurt or almonds. I also skipped on buying the only bag of coffee beans I could find because I had blown my budget for luxury items on chocolate and balked at the $17 price tag.
I also left without bananas because I was worried about bruising them while carrying so much other stuff. I will undoubtedly regret this when my potassium-deficient legs cramp up in the middle of the night.
When we got home, I unloaded our haul on the island so we could see how we made out:
All of this for about $45, including the chocolate, not including the cat. Good thing I like salads.
Emer was interested, but Donnie said that he cannot survive on kale and is worried he will be hungry all week.
He must have forgotten that I keep enough oatmeal in my cupboard to feed an entire summer camp. I’m sure we’ll be fine.
-K.
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