The $180 Screwdriver in My Freezer, or, the Annotated Grocery List

by Mark Morelli
August 15, 2008

I now understand why presidents want the line item veto. I exercise that same power every time I grocery shop.

"Buy everything on the list," my wife insists with brave futility.

A comedian reads the crowd and may cut out jokes or make up new ones. A musician, inspired by audience's mood, may jam a few more verses (or cut straight to greatest hits.)

I browse aisles and riff, using my wife's list as a loose guide. I suppose I could robotically buy whatever's on the list and bring it home like a messenger boy.

Instead, I explain to my wife, "My family deserves better. I am our family's elected representative. It's my responsibility to purchase in the family's nutritional and budgetary well-being."

"Now you're a grocery politician?" she asks.

"Grocery statesman," I correct her.

"Well you're bringing home the pork we don't need," she says, holding up a pound of bacon.

"BOGO," I say. "Good investment."

"It's not a good investment if it's all fat and nobody eats it," she says. A nutritionist, she's trained our daughters to eschew any food that produces enough oily drippings to make a rainbow.

"Rainbows are beautiful," I say. "They are purple mountains majesty with eggs over easy. I now yield back my time to the Chairman..."

Pizza Shells: The Greatest Debate Yeast of the Mississippi
"Where are the pizza shells?î She digs through the bags. "The kids love making their own pizza. It's creative and saves money, you said so yourself."

"The savings cut deep enough," I say. "We can do better." While it's true that I consider an empty pizza shell a canvas upon which a chef-artist can paint verdant pepper greens, tomato reds, mozzarella whites and carnivorous browns to create edible abstracts, I refuse to buy pizza shells when in ten minutes you can make dough with yeast, water and flour - at 1/5 the cost!

That's the American way. Or maybe the Italian way.

In any case, for the sake of bipartisan harmony, we agree to disagree about the outsourcing of pizza shells. It's on her every list. Depending on who shops, it comes home or stays at the store.

Our larger debate is the purpose of the list itself. We see it differently.

She sees Commandments. I see Suggestions.

She hears a classical score played note for note.

I hear When the Saints Go Marching In, never played the same way twice yet.

Her shopper is a Stenographer. Mine's an Editor.

The last time we broke bread together was this morning. The last time we bought bread together was 1997.

Shopping Cart-ography: Mapping Your Family's Well Being
Show me a cart filled with low-cal, fat-free foods, lean meats, grainy breads, fresh vegetables and fruits and I'll show you a family that plans meals, stays in shape, and hates getting their pricey sneakers dirty.

Show me a cart filled with high-sodium snacks, crappy beer, smokes, cheapo ice cream and lardy lunch meat and I'll show you a guy who goes in on a block of football box seats with his buddies!

Boxes of frozen dinners and microwavable snacks will be gobbled up by rushed kids watching mini-van in crosstown traffic en route to lessons, or wolfed down by kids feeding themselves in front of the TV while their parents read text messages as they negotiate rush hour traffic.

The shopping cart not only tells us who we are, but reveals the map of where we are going. And if I fill our cart with what I'm told, then it feels like taking a vacation and not exploring the side streets or stopping to marvel at a cathedral or sunrise or special buy impulse-buying okra once and for all, then I've lost my free will.

Young People, You Don't Have to Live Together to Know if It's Right: Just Hand Your Partner A Grocery List
It's too late for me and my wife. We've been married too long to get on the same page, er, list.

But I urge young couples to watch each other shop for food. Whether you want to stick to the list or enjoy being surprised, you'll find everything you need to by handing your partner your grocery list then seeing what comes home in the bags.

Including whether they're paper or plastic.