Guess What’s For Dessert!
I stopped by the grocery store on my way home from work today. The lady in line in front of me had an unusual assortment of groceries. These are the exact items that were in her cart, no more no less.
6-1 qt. jars of pickles 2-chocolate fudge brownie mixes 1-box golden grahams cereal 1-small plain milk “chug” 16-candybars (mostly Baby Ruth and Nestle Crunch)
Can someone please tell me what she was going to make?!
I beleive she was making some sort of poisonus candy cereal, which she would take over the world with. After mixing the candybars,cereal, and milk, she would add the pickles. This concotion could threaten future leaders of the world.
Maybe she was going to the movies? And prefers pickles to popcorn?
i suppose. but wait!, you seem to have forgotten that e=mc squared, and therefore the pickle juice, when mixed with nestle chocaltate residue, would explode, killing everyone within a…..radius
I’m with Joe. I’ve seen people try to sneak all kinds of things into movie theaters, so a few quart jars of dills under a shirt tail would be no surprise. Besides, people do like to eat different things at the theater. At the Tower theater in SLC, they sell pickled eggs and “scary dogs” (pickled sausages that are so chemical, your lips get cauterized). If you want a recipe for disaster, just put those two together. My friend cleared three rows in front of us before the previews were over.
This is not dessert, it is performance art and Josh was the audience. I’ve heard of this postmodern style art performance before. It is supposed to help us all question our mindlessly kept traditions of combining certain foods for the sole purpose of “taste” while excluding important factors; such as color (the milk is “the man” the green of the pickle is “the man’s” greed, the chocolate bars represent the historically inaccurate oppression of the African American, the golden grahams are societies’ unsuccessful attempts at “staying golden”, but may also be the Americanization of Polynesia), and texture (the crunchy yet soft pickle juxtaposed with the soft yet chewyness of the baby ruth is unified by the creamy fluid of the “chug” thus bringing together the yin and yang of our spirits). It just goes on and on.
I am glad that so many people responded to this post. Verona Fagg, the sweet sister making the purchase, is actually a good friend of mine. Unfortunately, the story behind the groceries is not very interesting. You see, Verona turned 37 yesterday and decided to have a little birthday party. Josh, If you take a look at the side of the Golden Grahams box (because I am sure you bought one as well) there is a recipe for “crunchy brownies” that basically calls for mixing 4/5 of a box of Golden Grahams with 2 boxes of fudge brownie mix. This, of course, Verona then served at her party. She bought the milk “chug” to finish off the remaining 1/5 of the Golden Grahams (which she did at breakfast this morning, I am told). The candy bars were an alternative to the brownies; however, she could have saved her cash as only about five people (besides Verona and I) showed up to the party. I didn’t tell Verona this, but I expected as much. After all, the highlight of the night was a foosball tournament, during which a jar of pickles was awarded for the six best trash talk lines.
Now that makes sense!
I had assumed she was making Pickle Fudge Delight. But maybe that isn’t as common a recipe as I thought.
Well I guess it’s possible, but perhaps the postmodern performance art was subconscious, in any case I’m sticking to it. My next guess was the party thing though.
I’m with Dave, ALL purchases of non-essential items in peacetime, are a direct reflection of our fragile psyches. To gain true understanding we must look deeper for meaning beyond the obvious. One explanation might be that her selections were made hastily. She probably hurried to check out before you and might have worried that a man of your stature would purchase hundreds of items and force her to confront her fear of celebrity-obsessed periodicals while she waited behind you. What worries me is the deep insecurity of this stranger. The need for comfort foods has driven her to sweets, but once she has placed them in her cart she is filled with self-loathing. She buy’s the milk as a counterbalance, rationalizing that advertisements use to state that milk “does a body good” and that current marketing dictates that wise shoppers always know the answer to the question “Got Milk?” The portion of milk chosen evidences the fact that she would be so blatantly swayed by impersonal mass demographic marketing. She does not choose a gallon of milk, which would suggest a behavior of regular milk drinking, for herself and her loved-ones. But rather she selects a Chug. A clever packaging ploy to get people to buy milk at a 200% markup. The brownies represent more than her guilt for the plight of minorities in suburban Utah, it shows her strong desire to be something that she is not – tan, ethnic, interesting, and cultured. Dave is right on, when he observes the true meaning of Golden Grahams. But to her Golden Grahams have a much more intimate meaning – love. The only man she ever loved was a Polynesian American who stopped their relationship so he could return to the islands and reconnect with his history and culture. Which bring us to the pickles. This more than of her other items caught the attention of her fellow Food 4 Less shoppers. Josh lists them first in his record of her purchases. We all know that ONE pickle goes a long way, and a single jar of pickles will last 2 – 3 years in the average fridge before being completely consumed. The question instantly rushed to Josh’s mind “What could a person want with SIX jars of pickles?” The simple answer is attention, but the deeper answer is affection. (Dave, notice the subtle spelling difference) reports of athletic teams drinking pickle juice before hot games to help their endurance are her excuse. It is, after all, unbearably hot in Orem in July. This shopper plans on hiking Timp during the heat of day, drinking nothing but pickle juice and eating nothing but Golden Grahams. If she succeeds then she will have proved to herself that she is worth loving, and ready to join the ranks of the Included.
She wasn’t making anything, she was pregnant.
So are you saying Martin that in buying the Golden Grahams and the Brownie mixes, she is attempting to fill a voided cultural space by a previous lover? Thus in consuming the mix and the grahams, she is not only attempting to be cultured/interesting, but reconciling the guilt she harbours for keeping her former love from his Polynesian roots while satisfying her need to be with him? hmmmm…I like this. Good point.
my guess is she was getting ready for 4:20?
hah, hadn’t thought of that!
Well – I’ve let this mystery boil long enough — there is a clear and simple answer to all this. One that will cause you to slap your forehead and say AH-HA, why didn’t I realize this.
She was buying the ingredients for her special Jello recipe to be made for the ward Pioneer Day party.
I’m sure there is no further need to explain, once you stop and realize she was in Utah and of course has a whole shelf in her ‘cold storage’ dedicated to Jello’s (never to run out).
The strangest thing happened today. I visited this normally wholesome and whitty weblog and some hacker had posted a vulgar story that made several references to male genitals. I thought I must have typed the address to Bizzaro amishrobot. Two minutes later it was gone? was it real?
It was no dream my friend, I was just checking the formatting on a new vulgar story I am writing.
I think it had already been made, and it was a baby.