Couscous makes the world go round

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to buy the following items from the store. You should look in our fridge first regarding the tomatoes, the celery, bread crumbs and the marsala wine (cabinet) to see if we have those.

Bread crumbs
Dijon mustard
Eggs
Salt-free lemon pepper seasoning
Old Bay seasoning
1 1/2-2 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken breasts
4 thin pork cutlets
2 shallots
4 stalks celery
4 plum tomatoes
2 artichokes
1 zucchini
16 oz. mushrooms
1 1/2 lemons
2 Granny Smith or other tart apple
1 pkg. couscous
16 oz. gnocchi (potato dumplings, sold with pastas or
frozen)
1/2 cup Marsala wine - check cabinet, we might have this
pineapple juice
pine nuts
English muffins
Wheat Pita pockets

So my new and exciting job as of late is that of grocery shopper. Sandy gives me a list of things she needs to make dinner, and I brave the scary grocery store in search of the ingredients. This is not the first time I've had to do this. First time was New Year's Eve. I can tell you this, it is no fun.

First of all, what the fuck is couscous?! Where in this grocery store would I even begin to look?! Seriously, how can you find something when you have no idea what it looks like or where it is? I don't even know what category of food it belongs to! Is it even a food?! The only reason I even know how to pronounce it is cuz I've heard it in movies before. And it sounds as ridiculous as it's spelled. "Excuse me, I'm sorry to scare you. I only look like a freak. I was hoping you could tell me what couscous is?" Have you ever been to the store and seen a guy walking around with a grocery list? Of course not. That's what women do! If you ever see a guy in a grocery store with a list, wandering around aimlessly...think of me. And feel very, very sorry for him. The last time I went grocery shopping, I was staring at all the tomatoes. There were all sorts. I had to ask the lady next to me if any of the tomatoes I was looking at were plum tomatoes. How can a plum be a tomato? Wouldn't it be a different color? Why else would you call it a plum tomato?! Stands to reason that the tomato would resemble a plum. The lady chuckled at me.

They should teach this shit in school. This is far more valuable a lesson than the other random subjects I didn't bother to pay attention to. Or I guess girls usually learn when they follow their moms around the store and when they cook. Who knows. So, when you say shallots, does that mean the whole bundle or just one of the buds? And yes, I had to call Sandy to find out. I think the whole bundle is called a clove, like clove of garlic. It's all extremely confusing. And seriously, how the fuck is someone supposed to know if an apple is tart?! What is tart even supposed to taste like?! It's not like you can just bite into it at the store. They should have a scratch and sniff label or something, except it's be scratch and lick.

If it wasn't difficult enough, there has to be a dozen different varieties of each item. Do you realize how many different types of apples there are? Mushrooms? Even corn. Freaking corn! Kernel corn. Niblet corn. Cut corn. I spent at least 10 minutes trying to figure out which bag of frozen corn I should grab. On her last list, Sandy asked for dried mushrooms. I figured it was just mushrooms that weren't wet, like not in a can. Cuz it's not wet, therefore it's dry. Nope. Dried mushrooms aren't the ones you see in the produce section. They're actually shriveled up in a jar.

I don't even want to get into seasonings. Why on earth would you need 100+ different kinds of seasonings? Does it really make that much of a difference? On a side note, we were at dinner once, and we sat next to a table of 3 elderly couples. When I say elderly, they looked like they were in their 60's. They looked and dressed like they were high society. Turns out, one of the lady's family owned McCormick. When I passed her the salt, she was like..."Oh this is my family's brand." They only make up like half the ridiculous seasonings market. So I have her to thank for me on my knees staring at the shelves and shelves of spices, looking for "salt free lemon pepper seasoning". It's not bad enough that I hafta try and find lemon pepper seasoning from amongst some thousand lil jars, but I hafta somehow look for the one that doesn't have salt. How bout you just not put extra salt in the dish?

The kicker in all this is that Bermuda grocery stores are nothing like the ones in the states. The selection is just not there, so I end up having to go to multiple stores. There's a main store that every one seems to go to, Lindo's. It's a bit further from our house but definitely has the biggest selection. Even with this list tho, I ended up having to go to three other stores looking for shallots, mushrooms and artichoke. Never did find any artichoke. Sounds gross anyways.

Before we got here, Sandy's boss said you hafta figure out what stores carry and prepare your cooking around that. I think Sandy forgot that piece of advice. That or she just likes to have fun with the house husband. I'm sure she scours her cookbooks, looking for the most obscure ingredients, while imagining me fumbling my way through the grocery store, looking like a complete retard, asking random ppl if they know what pine nuts look like. It's like that guy in There's Something About Mary..."have you seen my couscous?"