Your grocery trips sound much like mine. The joys of loving to cook. My kryptonite is the fresh produce and herb section, oh and seafood! :o)

I feel the same way about the cart. Inevitably, when I run into the grocery store for "just one thing," I remember four or five things on my list at home and pick them up too. By the time I get to check out, heavy things are slipping around in my arms and I'm forced to use my knees and hips to help balance the whole works. Not pretty. So I always take a cart, no matter how few things I intend to pick up.

Especially once I found out that a friend of mine tore her rotator cuff by tucking a package of toilet paper under arm while carrying a basket with a couple 2-liter bottles of soda in it ~ I don't even mess with the baskets. It's carts, all the way!

You know, I feel the same way. My daughter, Morganna was putting away the groceries that we never intended to buy at Whole Foods (we were stopping in for one thing: chicken breasts) and she said, "Do we have enough olives now?"

We had four tubs of them.

"But they all taste different," I noted.

"That at least is true." She put away a new cheese I picked up. "And let's talk about cheese, Mom. How much cheese is too much?"

My answer: "One cannot have too much good cheese."

Oh how good it feels to know that I'm not alone! Even as I decry the marketer's ploys to trap me in buying unplanned for purchasers--I'm too weak and always fall for it--makes for wonderful new discoveries but grocery bills larger than life. Here's what I've started doing lately--it's an old trick my Mom used to do (mostly because she had no choice): only enter the grocery store with cash and no plastic. It's the only way.

I concur with your Ranch (YUCK) comments and using a cart -- regardless of how much or little you're planning on buying! Now, a local market has a wheeled carrier for baskets (1 to 2) that's smaller than a regular cart; as a "grazing" shopper, I love that idea!

If you are the Food Whore, I am the Condiment Whore. I am, in fact, on Condiment Moratorium, with explicit instructions from my husband not to acquire any new ones until the ones I have are used up. And since we all know that they fuck like bunnies when you close the refrigerator door, they are propogating and permutating even as I type.

It's hopeless. I'm in heaven, of course.

Love your blog!

Just wanted to say that I totally feel you. And I'm all by lonesome...I don't even have a Husband to cook for. Each time I pull an $80+ supermarket run, I try to justify the one-time-only-purchase "staples" that I need to get, like thai fish sauce, mojo and multiple jerk marinades. Just as casinos pump oxygen to stimulate gambling, I think supermarkets pump in some form of pheromone that makes makes us get all culinarily creative. I certainly don't need three kinds of whole dried chilies, regular and seasoned rice vinegar, irish cheddar and hoop, or granulated + extra fine + cane + dark and light muscovado sugar. It's just madness!!

WHEW...I thought I was the only person on this earth that can not get out of the grocery store (even the World's Worst Grocery Store) without putting a big ole hunk of cheese, a tub of those lovely olives from the olive cart, and anything else that attracts my fancy. Can we talk about all those interesting jars of jams and fruit spreads? Yesterday into WWGS for six items, out of WWGS with six bags. Love your blog, it is my stress relief.

Ewww... speaking of olives, my favorite grocery store just added an olive bar. Seven varieties of olives, and little cups and tooth picks available for sampling. Anyhoo, I was looking them over last night and an older gentleman came up, took a toothpick but no cup, and proceeded to sample three different kinds of olive. With the same toothpick. Sadly, I will not be patronizing the olive bar.

Overshopping is particularly dangerous when you've got a subway ride, a 1/3-mile walk and four flights of stairs ahead of you. So, I try to use the basket to remind me to stick to what I can carry. Then I buy too much anyway and grab a cab. You'd think I'd have learned after six years of this.

Just discovered your blog, and love it. I worked in the restaurant business for years as a server, and your client from hell stories bring me back. I think I've waited on some of those people. :)

But going to the grocery store for 'just one thing', it can't be done. I can kill an hour easy, just roaming the aisles dreaming up things I'm going to make with all the 'must have' items I discover. Humboldt Fog goat cheese is on sale? Must have it. Never mind that it's still about $15 even on sale, its just insanely good. If I get that though, I need the special crackers that go so well with it, and maybe some of that orange fig spread would be nice....

And if I'm hungry at the time? I will fill up that shopping cart.

:) Pam

Oh, I can relate. And I'm not even that great a cook. I am no veggie fan, but I insist that the kids eat healthy, and the hubby is a vegetarian... so I spend tons of time and money in the produce section. And cheese... oh the cheese... I think that the amount of dairy in my fridge right now is equal to the amount of milk a cow can produce in a month. maybe more.

I will join your Anti-Ranch campaign right now. No need to wait until the 3,459th foodstuff is imbued with the tang that can cover the taste of well, anything. yuck.

just counted the cheese drawer - 17 kinds. enough said.

I'll shop with you as long as you push the cart.
I get so tired of that cart.
Plus, it's hard to eat grapes and push the cart.

This post is utterly on the spot!

It is exactly this addiction that led me to come home from the grocery store with a box of salted cod filets from Iceland last week.

On the other hand, I do now know that home made salt cod cakes are very very good.

I've been reading this blog for the occasional bit of humor. It never ceases to make me smile. Normally I understand reasonably the foibles of the serving/catering business, as I was a server quite a number of years ago (and by the way, I was the opposite of Bridezilla, nearly all hands off).
But this post really got me - I almost always get more at the store than I originally intended. How much more depends how much time I have to spare. And it's not like I need the food - as my size would tell that story. It just calls my name.
At any rate, what really spoke to me was The Husband's dragon breath. I have that husband as well, but let me tell you, you haven't smelled dragon breath until you've smelled his breath after a whole can of smoked herring, straight up. It is death! I lose any bit of appetite I may have after that.
Keep the smart stories coming! Love 'em!

I love grocery shopping. My partner thinks I am crazy. I love to visit the grocery store, but I also love the farmer's market. I get most of my produce at the farmer's market and it is such a joy. So many stalls of fresh vegetables, so many colors and smells and etc.

But the grocery store, I love too. I keep myself on a strict budget, so for the most part we eat very simple and delicious food, but every once in awhile I spring for a wheel of brie or something like.

Oh my goodness, I think you and I were separated at birth. My husband DREADS me going into the grocery store for fear we will become bankrupt and be forced to live under a bridge.

I too am a condiment whore. I think I have every kind of mustard known to mankind in my fridge and I am always on the lookout for a new one.

I need help.

BTW, I love your blog. It is by far one of the wittiest things on the internet.

Haha. Yup, grocery stores are the ultimate pushers. I have such a love/hate relationship with them. And I have to add my name to the list of condiment whores. It's really inexcuseable.

I'm pretty sure that my grocery store has a $50 minimum...at least, that's what I keep telling my husband...

- hfs

I think it's a disease. I have it too. The key is to make sure that even though you went for one great thing and bought 100 great things that they were all on sale! "But, honey, they were 3-for-1!"

Fortunately we never go into debt because I go to at least six different grocery stores and know which ones carry the highest quality yet lowest prices for each item I want to buy.

Thanks for the fantastic stories, food whore. You were the first person I gave a link to on my new food blog because you are such an entertaining writer. Write on!

By all the comments, you know that you are not alone. And just to make you even more secure, I'm raising the next generation of Grocery Whores.

Going to the store by myself is sketchy, at best. My kids joke that I go for bread, milk and butter, but come back with half the store. Bringing my oldest son with me ensures that we will return to the townhouse with double the amount of cheese I would have "needed" to get on my own. If it's my youngest son then the cart will be stuffed with every kind of mushroom from the produce section and six kinds of olives. But going with my daughter is just dangerous. Everything from four pound bags of farina to pomegranates to water crackers are game for her. And the last time I brought all three of them with me we spent $359.

My daughter is so used to the time and money we spend at the grocery store that the other night she gasped when she saw we had only been in the store for 30 minutes (which she had inaccurately predicted as 10 minutes) and only spent $48.

Yes, yes, yes!

What you and all the others have said. I can't go into the store for one thing. I come out with 15 more.

Great writing, as usual.

Happy De-lurking week!

Speaking from experience, the best way to avoid overspending at the grocery store is not to go inside. At all. Of course, this advice is moot at the Farmer's Market. Fortunately, the growing season is kinda short around these parts. Regardless of what anyone says, cheese really is the staff of life. That and chocolate.
Oh, and when you decide to lead that Anti-Ranch protest in Hidden Valley, I'll be marching with you arm in arm. (That comment just broke me up, by the way :-)
Great blog, Food Whore!