Never Shop Hungry

Never shop hungry!

Nope, you won’t get off lightly, we all think ‘I’m just going to pop into the supermarket and grab some milk, and bread, and dental floss and come straight back out’. But this is a lie that you tell yourself every time!

One that I told myself today, ‘I am just going to pop into the supermarket on the way home from school drop-off and pick up something for dinner.’

After narrowly avoiding being a key witness to a bingle in the car park – please drivers, you should never reverse without looking behind you lest the driver in the car opposite yours is planning the same manoeuvre (or you run over a work colleague on a motorbike – but that’s another story and there were no witnesses), I parked the car in one of those ‘should-I shouldn’t-I’ parks where the car on the left is on the white line and the car on the right is on the white line. I managed to pop the boot and climb out through the back (momentary congrats to myself for wearing respectable underwear and managing to avoid the paparazzi).

‘I’ll just grab a trolley’, I thought, in case I pick up any leaky, poorly wrapped dinner items. Carefully selecting the trolley with the least hand-cheese encrusted handle (seriously, they should provide disposable gloves or a complementary blow-torch to sanitise that thing).

Through the fruit and veg section ‘Ooo the apples look good, hmmm, the kids need some more bananas, oh yes, we are out of potatoes, wow that’s a great price for avocados!’

At the end of the fruit and veg section was a Mother’s Day display laden with goodies. Chocolates, fluffy robes, slippers, electric window washing devices, rugs, smelly treats….hang on, electric window washing devices? Wow, how awesome to be able to wash all of the windows with a gadget that makes it easier! It is a water tank, spray bottle, squeegee thingy and an electric sucker all wrapped up in one mighty glass cleaning machine – and all this could be mine for a mere $39.95. Yes, because if there is one thing I am planning to do this Mother’s Day, it’s have a great time washing the windows…back away now!

After managing to drag myself away from a 2-in-1 stick vacuum (only $29.95, but surprisingly not rated highly in any on-line reviews), and wandering past the deli fridge…yum haloumi, I could create a delicious salad for lunch with that, oooo cherry bocconcini I love that stuff, goodness marinated artichokes I don’t know when I would eat them or to accompany what (look kids, artichoke hearts on toast for dinner!) but suddenly I had a hankering for them.

Down the chocolate aisle – I’m not a huge eater of chocolate, but that ravenous hunger made everything seem appealing – so many items on sale, all at eye level and all in colourful packets – so shiny and bursting with cocoa-filled goodness. There were actually quite a few people lingering in that aisle, pretending that they weren’t really looking, facing the high-bran, low salt, no sugar cereals but with eyes darting to the packets of mini-crunchies two for $3, and pulling a back-handed flipping manoeuvre of several of those treats into their basket, grinning smugly in the delusional belief that no one saw them. Umm, we can see them, they are in your basket…

Biscuit aisle, rice crackers. Really, why do I always think that I need more rice crackers? My pantry is so full of unopened packets of them that I could start an on-line distribution business.

Milk – just in case I need to whip up a half a dozen lattes.

Yoghurt, hand soap, something for lunch (yes, by then I had forgotten my grand plans for that salad by aisle 7).

Toilet paper – it’s on sale, I’ll stock up lest anyone pops in to home to use the facilities (it does happen, I read an article just last week, I’d hate to be caught short). And a new home décor magazine, I haven’t read the last one yet, but really I do need to know how to ‘Rock that storage solution with felt baskets’.

I finally heaved that trolley, laden to overflowing with the one-or-two items that I had gone inside to purchase, to the checkout.

Yep, never go shopping whilst hungry, stick to on-line shopping, you can eat some of those rice crackers whilst making your purchases.

Now, off to whip the artichoke hearts into a delicious healthy meal.