Fellas, have any of you discovered that you have become a master in the art of supemarket shopping combat?

No, I’m not trusted. I’ll make ridiculous purchasing decisions and squander our meager resources. Maybe when I grow up.

@Yes! I remember those days! But beware! The training was gradual, in fact imperceptible, Be on the watch for those “requests” (following careful tutoring) to pick up obscure items whose existence in your mind are mere slivers of rumors. They’re almost certainly “fitness tests” engineered to eventually render you the laughing stock of your male associates.

Confusing question. I have always done 90% of the grocery shopping. Is grocery shopping some kind of female thing? In my experience, men do most of the grocery shopping since they are doing most of the cooking.

Both shopping and cooking? Trained from birth, or just a “natural”?

When it comes to finding the best deals, call me an ace.
When it comes to finding my way around a grocery store, call me an idiot.

In the same way that “I’m always in the middle of a book”, I’ve always got a shopping list. It’s a rare day when I’ve actually crossed out every single item on my list (since I know in advance that I won’t get everything I want at any one store), but the next day I’ve got a new list started. And I will almost never walk into a supermarket without my list – on paper – or I may be spending lots more money than I would have intended otherwise.

And I always start with the produce, and generally cross off at least half of my items there. I’m a big salad eater. I realize how ambiguously that last sentence reads, so let me clarify: I’m a big guy. I eat big salads. I very much enjoy my salads. See? No more ambiguity.

If that’s the worst of it, you got off lucky. Enjoy the time alone at the store,

@stanleybmanly Well in the event you are widowed you will need to know how to choose the perfect melon, pineapple, Kiwis and Coconuts unless you plan on living on hideous canned fruit cocktail for the rest of your days.
When selecting Cantaloupes, hold them up in line with your breasts, one in each hand and then exclaim ” What do you think of these melons!” This is a sure fire way to get assistance from the nearest produce clerk.
Now…after you master your produce picking challenge drop a note and I will assist you with grocery store stand up comedy, makes shopping so much more fun.

Yesterday I asked a gentleman to choose which meat to put in my quiche, organic caramelized onion chicken meatballs or a mind blowing artichoke and garlic sausage.
We debated the merits of both for several minutes, and decided the chicken meatballs were the winning choice

Last week when searching for a specific veggie broth I told the manager that his “brothel” was inadequately stocked. :-p
I also make up on the fly poems for the produce boys, and drive my cart around faux recklessly pretending to almost run into people. I can amuse myself for hours in the grocery store. Hell, I can amuse myself for hours anywhere. lol

Dont send a Man to the Grocery Store.mp4: http://youtu.be/BYrkcbN0syU
Not you Sir, is it?

@ZEPHYRA the former me!

@stanleybmanly BRAVO!!!!!!!!!!!!

We go shopping together and cook together. I actually know how to pick produce better than she does.

@Coloma I waited to show your answer to my better half and a contingent of her criminal gang. They all hooted awhile, then went back to plotting ways to further bully their husbands!

@stanleybmanly Haha…my pleasure to contribute to your fruity familial fracas.

OK fellas. This is your challenge for my shopping list. I need you to bring me a rutabaga, a jicama, some oyster mushrooms, 2 good sized portobello mushrooms, a carton of button mushrooms, some shallots, a red onion, a brown onion, a white onion, one bunch of scallions, 4 small red potatoes, 2 medium sized sweet potatoes, 2 large russet potatoes, a head of romaine lettuce, 1 red beet, 2 golden beets, a medium sized knob of ginger, a bunch of chives, 2 sweet corn cobs, one lb. of Brussels Sprouts, 3 Braeburn apples, 6 Granny Smith Apples, one good sized ruby red grapefruit, a carton of blackberries, a box of dark brown sugar, a box of confectioner’s sugar, a carton of strawberry kefir, one 32 oz. container of fat free plain Greek yogurt, a package of Van’s whole grain frozen waffles, a container of Pacific Brand mushroom broth, one 15 oz. can each of canellinni beans, red kidney beans, black beans, chili beans and pinto beans, one container of chile powder, one container of smoked paprika, one container of cayenne pepper, one container of crushed red pepper, one container of sage, one container of celery seed, one container of Kosher salt, and last, but not least, one container of cardamom.

Quick now, I’m making dinner tonight!

Holy God! That is one stupefying list of produce. What the hell is strawberry kefir? And is “medium” printed on the sides of the sweet potato? Do you expect me to believe that you are going to incorporate that mountain of stuff into a SINGLE meal?

@stanleybmanly You have exactly 17 minutes to complete the list challenge. Ready…set….GO!

@Kardamom Haha…I need a Jicama too, I think that might be too advanced for poor Stanley at this stage of his indoctrination.

You must be insane! I’d stand a better chance of constructing a nuclear weapon in the time alloted! Stanley knows what jicama is and can even recognize one of the things on sight. It is the most neutral thing ever to grace (taste wise) the interior of a salad bowl. Mrs. bManly is famed for her salads (which is the primary reason that association with produce is above my “security clearance).

There’s a nice satisfying crunch to the “false potato” though.

I think I made a mistake in the way I phrased this question. There are a multitude of mysteries in our kitchen which only confuse me. Magical looking devices appear in the dish drying rack for example, and I swear I have no knowledge of their function or where they hide when not in use. Then there’s that spice rack with more vials and containers than there are elements in the periodic table. The wife threw a fit when she caught me using her salad spinner (what a great invention) to dry out a stack of currency that a diabolical 2 year old had thrown in the bathtub. My question is more about the tactical aspect of shopping warfare. Like analyzing the sale paper every Wednesday for the things I KNOW we need and gobble up. I have terrible checkout line karma. Mine is always the line where the register runs out of tape, or someone wants to pay in pennies, but I have a far better eye for assessing the lines than the missus, who to my unending annoyance, demonstrates not one care regarding the length of a line. It drives me crazy. The lines in our supermarket often elevate tempers to literal fist fights, and I’ve taken to shopping at 3–4 A M.