You know you’re growing up when…

you’re really excited about receiving gift cards to Target and Staples for your birthday so you can buy a filing cabinet and other organizing goodies. This should really help get our new place in order once and for all! I can’t believe I’m so excited to shop for office supplies. This almost beats the year I got a bike for my birthday. Almost.

I’m off to take my grown-up self shopping!

To market we go

As much as I hated my grocery store in Spanish Harlem, I have to admit the prices were low there (at least by NYC standards). It carried a lot of generic and store-brand products, so we hardly bought any name-brand foods, which of course saved us a lot of money. That’s like Cheap Grocery Shopping 101: Buy Generics. As a tradeoff, I had to put up with a not-so-nice shopping atmosphere and a produce department that was a joke (ever picked up an apple that someone’s taken a bite out of and is now rotting alongside the other bruised apples???). It’s no mystery why Spanish Harlem has the highest rate of diabetes in Manhattan…some weeks I just couldn’t bring myself to buy “fresh” produce at all.

In our new neighborhood, we have a few options for grocery stores. The first one we went to is just a couple blocks away from the apartment. I’d never heard of it before, but I’ve since learned it is a chain. Something felt off as we perused the wide, well-lit aisles checking out prices. Once we hit the cereal aisle, I finally caught on to what was missing. There were no generics! At all! A big canister of Quaker Oats cost more than $5; the generic brand at the old grocery store cost a little over $2. I eat oatmeal almost daily for breakfast, but paying 5 bucks for a canister of it feels so very wrong. Same with jelly, cheese, applesauce, Mister Redhead’s sugary cereals, and frozen veggies. It was like all our usually cheap basics just doubled in price. Nightmare! Ironically, there were lots of sales on junk food. I suddenly saw myself living off of Oreos and Doritos and forgoing the pricey frozen veggies and oatmeal.

The next week, we ventured further and found another store. It’s actually the same chain as our Spanish Harlem store, but that doesn’t mean much in Manhattan, I’ve discovered. I’ve been in a few of these particular stores, and they’re all vastly different when it comes to displays, prices, and selection. This one was at least clean, so I had a good feeling. AND, it had our good ol’ generic brands. They’re priced slightly higher than the store in Spanish Harlem, but at this point, I was just glad they had oatmeal for under $3. I think we’ll be frequenting this store, even though it’s almost six blocks away from home (each blocks makes a difference when you’re lugging four grocery bags in each hand!).

Mister Redhead and I were reminiscing about the days of shopping at Super Target in Des Moines. Our grocery shopping experience in those golden years really calls for a list of highlights:

1. It was practically relaxing to push a cart through Super Target’s expansive aisles. So much space! So much light! So many options!
2. I have dreams about the produce there. Apples without bruises, vegetables with vibrant colors, lettuce that wasn’t wilting. Now, I’m not naive. There’s a good chance that this giant chain was able to get such glorious looking produce because they were dousing it in pesticides and whatnot. But until I grow my own apple tree or get over my farmer market claustrophobia issues or cave into Whole Foods mania, I’m just fine with a few pesticides.
3. The prices were ridiculously low. At the time, Mister Redhead’s credit card allowed him to cash in rewards points for a $100 Super Target gift card. For $100, we’d load up two carts with all types of foods–I don’t think we were even buying generics at that point. We could go weeks without buying food again. It blows my mind that I was a broke college student and never worried about what I was spending on groceries. It wasn’t until I moved to NYC that I started experiencing major sticker shock.
4. Here in NYC, we can only buy as much as we can carry home. But in Des Moines, we had a car, which made those two carts full of food possible. Just wheel ‘em to the parking lot, load up the car, and drive to our duplex (which, by the way, we paid one-fourth the amount of rent as we’re paying now for a one-bedroom in Manhattan…but that’s a whole ‘nother post!).

All right, enough reminiscing about Super Target and edible produce and cars and reasonable rent. I live in New York now! I’m logging off my computer and going for a walk to enjoy this city, bruised produce and all.