D R A M A_ Q U E E N

Drama Queen for a Day
Slim and grim: Drama Queen's favorite terrible diets

- - - - - - - - - -

T A B L E_T A L K

I'm your baby and I'll cry if I want to. Exchange your experiences with infants who wail in the Mothers Who Think section of Table Talk

___________________

Love Sallie Tisdale's "Second Thoughts"? Buy her books at BarnesandNoble.com!
___________________

R E C E N T L Y

Why I didn't report my rape
By Jenn Shreve
I believe Juanita Broaddrick because I know why women keep silent
(03/10/99)

Small massacres
By Patrick Chamoiseau
A child in Martinique reaches into the dark corners of imagination with the miraculous force of fire
(03/09/99)

The walls around the garden
By Fiona Morgan
An interview with Tara Bahrampour, author of "To See and See Again: A Life in Iran and America"
(03/08/99)

Shy
By Caroline Knapp
After years of thinking my shyness only affected me, I realize the social impact of hiding in my living room with the shades drawn
(03/05/99)

Didgeridoo
By Anne Lamott
A new member of the big, comfy underpants set ponders why women are ostracized for "letting themselves go"
(03/04/99)

BROWSE THE SECOND THOUGHTS ARCHIVES

- - - - - - - - - -

Salon Columnists

- - - - - - - - - -

Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

- - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - -

[ SECOND THOUGHTS | BY SALLIE TISDALE ]

-----Lost in the supermarket

-----------A trip to the store leads to appalling moments in
------the world of too much and nothing good enough.
- - - - - - - - - -

Feminist writer Sally Cline says that women don't cook, they cater -- women do it all, take care of each detail of eating. That's a lot: planning menus, budgeting, finding sales, making lists, sorting through cupboards, driving to the store, shopping, loading the car, driving home, unloading the car, emptying the bags, packing and repacking refrigerator and cupboards, cleaning refrigerator and cupboards, starting new lists, looking through leftovers, making snacks, making school lunches, looking for recipes, substituting ingredients, cooking, setting tables, serving, managing the meal, feeding the children, clearing tables, putting away food, doing dishes, emptying the dish rack, wiping down the counters, sweeping the floor. Starting over.

Right now, I'm most concerned with the part in the middle -- shopping. "When you hate to cook, a supermarket is an appalling place," wrote "The I Hate to Cook Book" author Peg Bracken. But I love to cook, and I have the luxury of my work schedule. I've often enjoyed markets. I like to do my grocery shopping in the middle of a weekday, when only old people and the unemployed are in the store. Sometimes I linger, wandering up and down each aisle, snooping in other people's baskets, wondering about the stooped old man in a polyester golf shirt who's buying three jars of maraschino cherries. When I'm not in a hurry, I find comfort here, a kind of ritual we all must share somehow.

For many years, I've gone to the same supermarket, part of a small, well-managed, locally owned chain. I know the clerks and they know me. I make extra trips elsewhere for better produce and less common ingredients, but I'm at home in this ordinary middlebrow world.

I could easily shop elsewhere. Sometimes I go to one of another small, locally owned chain of stores. The one nearest my home is spread through the first floor of a remodeled dairy-turned-upscale shopping mall. (Dairies aren't what they used to be.) This store is about "quality." All the banners say it: "We Sell Quality." That means racks of good wine, $6.95-per-pound vine-ripened tomatoes, an "olive bar," black-tip shark and imported red curry paste, spread more or less evenly between shelves of greeting cards, Campbell's soup, toilet paper, macaroni, ketchup, ice cream, magazines and deli cases. The kind of "quality" sold here feeds the American appetite for variety and availability -- a deep, inarticulate belief that we deserve what we want. And we deserve it now: This store is open 24 hours a day. Now and then, I shop here.

Sometimes I go a few miles farther on to a bigger store -- part of what was once a small, locally owned chain of natural foods stores, recently bought by a national corporation. In its inception, this store sold only organic foods, and it still sells a lot of what is essentially "alternative" ingredients, like tempeh and bulk herbal teas. It carries smaller brands and sells some locally raised meat. A little of the fish is harvested from sustainable stocks. Much of the produce is still organic. There's a certain inconsistency, of course -- it sells shark and swordfish, too, both of which are approaching the endangered list. Most of its food is far from organic, and quite a bit is heavily processed. The new "flagship" store on the edge of town is a 40,000-square-foot megastore that offers groceries, produce, complete ready-cooked meals for takeout, a restaurant, a cooking school, video entertainment and the true alternative products of the 1990s: diet counseling, massages, facials, beauty salon makeovers and a sauna.

N E X T+P A G E: Trips to foreign lands

Become a Salon member. Click here.