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A few years back when I was hiking with my friend AJ in Louisiana his mother made an amazing gumbo. Since I like to cook, I thought I’d better learn how to make this. I found a good recipe on the internet and off I went. It went incredibly well and since then I’ve made a huge pot about once a year.

This weekend the New Orleans Saints are playing in a playoff game and my friend Jeff is having a birthday party. These two events aligning mean it’s gumbo time once again. Plus, I think it’s been a while since Su has gotten to debone a whole chicken…

I was short some ingredients so I had to go to the grocery store. I’ve been shopping for the groceries long enough that I consider myself a good shopper. I make the grocery list out in the order the items appear in the store so it’s easy to follow the list. I generally know what staples we’re short on so I don’t overbuy. In general, I can find my way around a grocery store and kitchen. One of the reasons I do this is to avoid people, the bane of the grocery store.

Today started off pretty well with a moderate sized list, but nothing too bad. I got to the store before the on-the-way-home crowd got there so it wouldn’t be too crowded. It was all going well until the woman in front of me started to pay with a check. I don’t have anything against paying with a check in theory, but it seems that something always goes wrong when a check is invoked; the person doesn’t have ID, the cashier doesn’t know how to ring a check, etc. In this case the woman tore the check out of the book in a hurry so it was slightly ripped and the check verification machine couldn’t read it. Then the manager came over and tried to run the check. Then the woman wrote a new check. Then the machine didn’t read the new check. Then they figured out the whole system was down so the manager manually overrode in about 5 seconds WHICH COULD HAVE BEEN DONE THE FIRST TIME THE MANAGER CAME OVER.

At this point it’s taken me 10 minutes to shop for a cartload of groceries and 10 minutes in line, but it’s finally my turn. The ringing process goes well until the last item… green peppers. Normally I’ll buy individual green peppers but they looked especially gnarly today so I picked up the 5 in a bag, hothouse grown, cheater bag of peppers. The clerk put in the PLU of the bag and it required quantity so he naturally counted the peppers and typed 5. As soon as I saw the screen ask ‘Quantity?’ I knew what was about to happen but I couldn’t speak quickly enough to stop the clerk. Next thing I know I’ve been charged $15 for 5 peppers. I point this out to the nice gentleman who of course can’t override it without manager approval so the blinky light goes on again.

In the end I escaped with a bag of $3 peppers and 15 minutes in line I’ll never get back. I’m not sure why it always surprises me when the grocery store is an adventure, but today it did.