My Awesome Friends: Part 6

Though it comes late in the day...here is Part 6 of the blog saga of awesome times and memories with my college friends.

Part 6: Grocery Shopping

My roommates will all tell you that when it comes down to the core of eating...I eat terribly. My main diet at JMU consisted of peanut butter, cereal, and chips & salsa. It was bad. There were some times I was so broke that I literally only ate spoonfuls of PB for dinner. It was rough. And I was terribly unhealthy. For long stretches of time I would go without milk, fruit, and few vegetables....without noticing. I changed it a bit senior year by eating lots of lettuce and meat wraps...usually turkey, chicken, or tuna. Regardless, I still are terribly on a consistent basis. It's a wonder I'm alive today. Some of the guys were pretty bad too. I don't even recall Doug having a food cabinet...though I know he did. I just never saw it with anything other than cans of soup. Stud only ever had Ramen in his cabinet or huge containers of homemade Italian food and NYC bagels in the freezer, which he nursed for months. Chris ate the strangest crap ever considering he found out he was allergic to...well...everything. Everything was organic or vegan or that kind of junk. Christian ate kind of poorly too....until he got a girlfriend. After that he sort of had to impress her with his occasional cooking abilities. Sometimes, during the summer when it was just Christian and me, he would feed me with their leftovers. It was awesome. Falafel? A thank you very much Christian and Hollins!

Well, when it came to groceries and grocery shopping...our usual house routine went a little something like this. Everyone in our house had a car, except for Doug. So, he usually was the one who was worst out of all of us in regards to amount of food in his possession. One day, out of nowhere, you'd hear Doug ask when we were going to the store next for groceries. Every once in a while you felt bad because nobody had to go, so he was screwed for a little longer, unless he borrowed a car or rode his bike there. But, most of the time Doug asking was a way of notifying the whole house that we were low on food. These same giant house excursions would also happen when we needed beer for a big night/weekend, and also for tailgating for football games, and also for snow days. On those occasions we always did it big, always rolled deep to the store, and always needed to buy a TON of stuff. So, after Doug, or sometimes someone else, would ask us...we'd all gather up our canvas bags, hop into one car and go to the store. Sometimes it was Food Lion. Sometimes it was Martins. But...the majority of the time...it was glorious old Kroger. We started this thing where whenever we went, we began to notice no one parked in the Employee of the Month spot. After a while, I decided to park there one time, even though Christian suggested I not. Well...after that, we became the Employees of the Month, and always parked there if it was open...which it was 99% of the time. We'd roll into Kroger, 5 deep, sometimes 6 or 7 if Colin and Jared came, and we'd all go shopping for grub. I usually went for meat and cheese, lettuce, LOTS of peanut butter...the container I usually bought had to have been at least 2 pounds. I went through it quicker than you'd think. We'd occasionally buy cheap stuff, stuff on sale, stuff about to spoil, etc. And we always...ALWAYS...went for the Manager's Specials. They'd take an item that was on or near its Sell-By date and they'd mark it down significantly. Once I even got a pork loin for $3 that was usually about $11. Most of the time though it was baked goods. We'd go in looking for regular groceries and come out with assorted junk and a Manager's Special chocolate cake and apple pie. How does that make sense at all? Well...to the mind of a few broke college guys...it's 1+1=2. It just makes sense. Perfect sense. So we'd leave the store. We had our bags incredibly full and were probably tired, hungry, and a little frustrated by this point because self-checkout it stupid and always thinks you're stealing items by not putting them in the bag so you have to try to swipe it again, start over, or get help the entire time and could have saved lots of time and effort by walking 20 more feet and getting into a regular line like everyone else. UGH. Then we'd fill up the seats, floors, and trunk of the car with all of our junk until we got home to the BatCave. Once back, we'd have to spend the next few minutes taking time to find room in our packed fridge for all the food. Our cabinets were usually bare...but somehow our fridge was almost always full. I opened up rotten milk, spoiled beets, and some moldy rice one time because we'd forgotten about it and it was taking up space. In case you were wondering...rotten rice is like a rainbow of mold! Greens, teals, reds, whites, blacks...it was beautiful. "What does it mean?!" It means you let your rice get moldy...idiot. Then once we were all settled in with our new food, half of which was junk like Manager's Specials, popcorn, PB, candy, sugary cereal, and such...we'd all head to the living room, turn on the TV and watch some late night shows like Colbert, Cheaters, Planet Earth, or something along those lines, we'd all hang out, relax and watch the shows while we ate the same old crap we already had before we went shopping anyways. Peanut butter always tasted great...and grocery shopping was always an adventure with the BatCave guys.

End of Part 6: Grocery Shopping

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