Sniff the Butter

This past week I helped watch my friends’ four kids while she and her husband were on a getaway to Bali. One morning I had the three-year-old with me and we ran into a store to buy some vegetables before we had to do kindergarten pickup.

I was just hoping for some carrots or maybe some green beans, but on this auspicious day, the store happened to have broccoli, which is quite a treat here.  I was in a hurry, and the broccoli – individually wrapped in plastic wrap – looked decent enough (i.e. no visible bugs and not too much mold) so I grabbed four and checked out.

When we got to school to pick up the kindergarten boys who live on Pos 7, I noticed the car was starting to smell weird.  The boys confirmed it for me when they hopped in the car.

“Ew, what’s that stinky smell?” one exclaimed, pinching his nose.

I glanced to the back of the car, where my groceries were, hoping it wasn't the broccoli I just bought.  “Ah, who knows.  We’ll just ride with the windows down.”

“But – but – there might be drunks!” one boy protested.  Our neighborhood is known for drunks and even our kids know the "windows-up" protocol for driving up our road.

“It’ll be ok,” I assured him. “I just came from Pos 7 and there were no drunks out today.”

When I got home and finally dealt with the groceries, the first broccoli I unwrapped released a terrible rotten smell into the kitchen.  Into the pig bucket it went.

‘Maybe it was just that one,’ I thought hopefully, gingerly opening the next one.  Nope, all four stalks were rotten – they looked fine on the outside but were positively nasty once opened.

I related this story to some friends this past weekend and they laughed and commiserated with me and we started to share rotten food stories.  One friend had just bought some cream cheese that was all crumbly – if cream cheese is frozen this is what happens.  Another friend recently had a UHT box of milk explode on her at home, just after buying it from the store.

You never know what you'll find in the grocery store

We shared all the things we have to do at a grocery store. Sniff the butter (recently David and I were at a store and saw a friend by the refrigerator - David sidled up to me and said, 'Did you see her? She was surreptitiously smelling the butter.' I shrugged. 'What's the big deal? How else will you know if it's good?'). Squeeze the flour to make sure it’s not got a hole in the bag (that means bugs). Make sure something is still vacuum packed if it’s supposed to be. Squeeze fruits and vegetables for freshness. 

We learn these things the hard way. Some things we can catch before we buy them. Others are truly a gamble – like meat.  Once I bought ground beef that smelled like a donkey when I cooked it up. 

But we soldier on – because, well, we gotta eat.  And we laugh, too. And we don’t judge each other when we see one another sniffing butter at the store.