Write a grocery list for an imaginary grocery store

Whimsical Writing prompt for January 5th

Jan 05, 2024

To skip the memoir writing and get right to the writing prompt scroll down to the asterisk. (Who knew I could wax so poetic about grocery stores?)

If you’ve met me you know likely know I have an affinity for grocery stores. They are a safe place where I (generally) know how things work. You can wander for hours in a larger one without anyone wondering why you’re there. You’re getting groceries. It’s a simple contract.

My partner and I spend a lot of time in grocery stores. There aren’t a lot of late night hang outs for a couple of sober weirdos. So each night after I’d finish running a show, and they got off work at 10pm (this is when we lived separately in Seattle, between 2016-2018) we’d head to Metropolitan Market which was open either 24 hours or really late and we’d wander together. I’d get a pack of blueberries, and they’d get a sandwich and a weird beverage. We made gentle acquaintances of the late night clerks. We observed the other late night shoppers. Late night grocery shopping is a special time, and our brethren were the anti-socialites, the late-shift workers, the folks also looking for a safe place to be in the dark.

We went to a lot of grocery stores, all over the Redmond/Bellevue and Seattle area. You can tell a lot about a neighbourhood by their grocery store. We love grocery stores so much that we jokingly started a podcast called the Kind Nudibranch and the Garbage Witch Explore the World and Share It With You. We’ve recorded hundreds of episodes (no hyperbole, we began recording May 2018) but only released 17. We have intentions to release all of them because they accidentally track our bizarre love story which involved being apart and long distance for over two years, not by choice but separated by employment issues, divorce proceedings, our house being built a year later than expected, borders and then finally, a global pandemic. During most of that time we would meet up once a month, in strange places and record podcasts in grocery stores.

Spoiler alert. We are still together and very much in love, and now we live in a home nearly 6,000 kilometres (3500 miles for my U.S. readers) from the place we originally met. And we have explored grocery stores in so many locales across that wide expanse.

And that’s why I chose this prompt.

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The Whimsical Writing Prompt for January 5th, 2024

Write a grocery list for an imaginary grocery store

List for the Grocery Portal

in no particular order, because at the grocery portal once you think of the section you need, it appears in front of you, no more searching for the milk at the opposite end of the store, or wondering where the minute tapioca could possibly be.

-pickled beets, because then I can put as many in my spinach salad as I’d like, there is never enough

-goat cheese (for the salad)

-pine nuts but only a few, not a giant bag

-a strange drink, maybe dragon fruit lemonade mixed with blueberry iced tea (do you say ice tea, or iced)

-pumpkin spice popcorn (why not?)

-pre-made pico de gallo for my scrambled eggs in the morning

-salted butter sticks (a necessity in our house)

-a box of firm blueberries that will be good for a least a week, so I can snack on them intermittently, and give them to my extra picky dog when she won’t eat anything

-some sort of chocolate thing for my partner

-gummy candies for my eldest

-supplies to make fried chicken for my youngest

-a shakeable yogurt beverage

-imaginary soap (says my youngest when he interrupted my list making, and he asks to help) because even in imaginary land you need to bathe, says he

-a box that whenever you open it there is something random inside (this is my partner’s addition to the list)

…

This list could go on forever, but my timer went off, and I have real live tea biscuits to eat.