Grocery stores, by design, tend to route incoming shoppers through the floral department and produce sections first to provide a pleasing sensory experience.
That's my usual route when visiting one of the two Kroger stores nearby. Although I enjoy the beauty and scent of the floral area, with all the colorful wildflowers lining the Arkansas River Trail at this time of year, there's no need for store-bought blooms. I tend to head straight for the store's stash of spinach, carrots, Brussels sprouts, zucchini, yellow squash, broccoli, bananas, apples, and potatoes.
Those items and other fruits and vegetables are usually plentiful on the store's shelves, except for the first week of shutdowns that came around March 22, when the produce department was reduced to leafy shreds as people panicked and grabbed what they could.
So now I head straight to the bread aisle to seek a loaf of my favorite sandwich bread. It sells quickly; there's usually still plenty of bread to be found, but sorry, Sara Lee, you're not worth twice the price of my preferred Kroger brand.
Next stop is the bakery-supply aisle. Apparently many are taking advantage of more time at home to bake cakes, breads, pies, and other savory and sweet treats from scratch, because the Kroger-brand bags of flour aren't always available. So far I haven't been forced to pony up for pricier King Arthur Flour, or even more reasonable Gold Medal, which is still more expensive than Kroger's perfectly adequate brand.
That's followed by a pass through the paper products aisle, which has only recently started displaying multi-packs of bathroom tissue. Maybe the panic buying of such has subsided and there won't be any need to order via amazon.com.
We have been relying on a few other grocery items that used to be occasional treats but are fast becoming regular rewards for maintaining a semi-positive attitude through covid-19's unwelcome presence. Among them are Kroger's generous take-and-bake deli pizzas (double pepperoni, ultimeat, six-cheese, supreme; I split them, then bake one half, freezing the other--a great deal for $5) and the store's vast selection of decent house-made sushi, with prices starting at $6 for eight ounces.
Kroger card-carrying customers are often sent coupons for items they buy regularly, which means there's always Kroger Delux churned reduced-fat ice cream in our freezer (the coupon gives me 45 cents off the regular price of $2.50). I wish I would forget that it's there.
Other groceries have enticing offers as well, especially Fresh Market's $5 whole roasted chickens on Thursdays (regularly $7.99) and just about anything in Whole Foods' prepared foods-to-go cooler near the front of the store, filled with appetizers, soups, salads, sandwiches, sushi, casseroles, pot pies, quiches, and entrees such as eggplant parmesan and grilled salmon.
Let's not forget restaurant carry-out. This is our ultimate indulgence, a date-night-quality experience that requires dressing decently, arranging an appropriate hairstyle, and wearing makeup and a small quantity of jewelry.
After ordering online, we set the table with real china, real silverware, glass glassware, and cloth napkins. Then we load the three dogs in the back of the car, where they're clipped in to avoid badgering one another or hanging out open windows, crank up satellite radio (favorite channels are new wave, alt nation, outlaw country, and underground garage), and fetch our much-anticipated feast.
Favorite options are venison and goat cheese sliders at Flyway Brewing (along with a 32-ounce growler of its Pintail IPA), sofrita burritos at Chipotle, the ExtraMostBestest sausage and cheese pizza at Little Caesars, and garlic shrimp skewers from Red Lobster (although I much prefer its shrimp tacos, which aren't available on the restaurant's current reduced-offering menu).
And for dessert, we're thankful for generous friends who often bring us amazing strawberries from Holland Bottom Farms in Cabot.
With so many of us falling into dull dining routines while spending too much time at home (our household relies way too much on ramen noodles, canned soups, bagels, and peanut butter), it's worth spending some of our stimulus money on a dinner that's prepared and packaged--if not served--by someone else.
As with so much of life before this disaster befell us, we've got to have something to look forward to.
Karen Martin is senior editor of Perspective.
kmartin@arkansasonline.com
Editorial on 05/10/2020