Adventures with grocery shopping

 

Sheet pan salmon
Ready to cook

An aside: the sky tonight was the most amazing and beautiful deep peach color. From my cottage, I get to see a little band of sky above the neighbor’s guest house, but with bare trees outlined against that pink, it was striking. When I tried for a picture, the pink was completely gone. And within minutes, it was all dark.

Grocery shopping in our household is a big deal, probably because I’m a foodie and I do a lot of the cooking. (Aside: when Christian cooks, we get terrific meals, but it’s a rare night he’s home early enough to fix dinner.) Ever since what I think of in my mind as “big quarantine,” we’ve been shopping with Curbside Pickup at Central Market. It’s convenient, easy, quick, and I am almost always pleased with the quality of the groceries. Big glitch yesterday. I compiled a list—no easy chore with Jordan and me coordinating—and tried to schedule it for today, Sunday. The whole day was blanked out—no slots available. I’ve never seen that happen.

Ever resourceful, Jordan said, “Use Shipt.” Megan uses Shipt routinely in Austin and raves about it. So I registered. Bingo! They offered me a $30 discount on a year’s membership to Central Market (who knew there were such things?) which means free delivery on orders over $35. Who ever orders anything less than that? I jumped at the offer: three credit cards later, I had been rejected three times. I’d love to know why my credit cards did not qualify and may call to inquire.

So we refigured, recalculated, decided to cook tomorrow night’s dinner today and place a Central Market order to be picked up Monday. I laboriously checked lists and clicked to place the order, only to find out that they had slots open this afternoon. So back to plan A: we are having sheet pan salmon with spinach, artichokes, and cherry tomatoes. And lemon butter sauce. It’s in the oven now, and I can hardly wait.

Which somehow brings me to the subject of mayonnaise. I have read that it is the most polarizing condiment in this country—people love it or hate it. Count me among those who love it and use it generously. Once, many years ago, I served BLTs for lunch to several men who had come to help me ex (he who had five thumbs) erect a shed. When I asked what they wanted to drink, one said, “I’m okay. I’ll just drink the mayonnaise on this sandwich.”

I’ve read several times about using mayonnaise instead of milk, cream, or  whatever in scrambled eggs. So this morning I tried it—one Tbsp. mayo for two eggs. Whisking the mayo into the eggs was not nearly as easy as it sounds, and I finally ended with tiny lumps—sort of like when flour and water don’t mix into your gravy as they should. The eggs were good, light and fluffy as advertised, but every once in a while, I got a disconcerting taste of mayonnaise. Between that and the difficult whisking, I don’t think I’ll try that again.

But I’ll keep an eye out for more innovative ideas with scrambled eggs because, like mayo, they are among my favorites.

Hope the coming week is good for everyone and brings peace in Europe—a huge hope and a prayer.

Sheet pan salmon
Ready to eat