Falling off the Organic Wagon

Last week as Joe was preparing one of his usual (Over-the) Top Chef meals, tragedy struck in the Moriarty home. Ready to add the finishing touches to dinner, he reached for the pepper-grinder only to find it empty - wood grinding against wood, whining in agony as if crying to us about it's unfilled chamber of misery. So I am being a bit dramatic. But without one of our five kitchen essentials, it really felt as Dooms-Day as I describe.

With dinner ready to hit the table and children crying laments of starvation, there was no time to race to the nearest Whole Foods Market - our main grocer. So I slipped on my flip-flops, and like Batman in Gotham, raced out the door and across the street to Shaw's.

For those of you unfamiliar with Shaw's, it's just like any other regional grocery store: fresh produce at the front harboring a small section of never-appealing and overly-priced organics, meats and poultry toward the rear and aisle upon aisle of blissfully delicious processed, packaged goods. Like a kid in a candy store, my head swirled with the possibility of sugar cereal, extra-soft doughnuts bursting with preservatives, Hostess cakes and all things made regularly unavailable to me by the sticklers at Whole Foods.

Don't get me wrong - I feel privileged to shop at Whole Foods. Each week, aside from our farm share and trips to local farmers markets and the fish store, we have access to a gorgeous array of organic fruits and vegetables, free range meats and foods made without artificial preservatives or Lake #5 (What the heck is Lake #5 anyway?). Many people don't live near stores where you can almost go for aisles without reading labels or feeling concerned about things that borderline inedible passing for food. But all this being said, sometimes a girl just needs her Fruity Pebbles.

Rather than making a bee-line for the spice aisle, I was drawn as if by a giant magnet, to the end cap that harbored boxes of Post cereals stacked from the floor almost to the ceiling. After countless mornings of homemade oatmeal with fresh berries, my gastro system lost all control and seized my brain, ordering my hands to toss brightly colored boxes boasting fortified nutrition, senselessly into the cart. But the destruction didn't stop there. As if hovering over my own body, I moved to the cracker and cookie aisle and grabbed hold of boxed Cheez-its and Chips Ahoy with the spirit of a contestant on a grocery shopping game show.

By the time I caught hold of myself I was standing in the check-out line, nearly shaking with frenzy as the anticipation of devouring high fructose corn syrup and monodiglycerides raced through my head. My body wouldn't know what hit it - this was going to be great! I looked into my cart to assess its inventory. Boxes, packaging, preservatives, artificial color, endless ingredients I won't even attempt to spell.

Suddenly taking notice of the other customers in line around me, reality sunk in like a bad hangover. What was I doing? I had completely lost control. I felt my face flush with embarrassment and the need to justify my purchases. "Um, this stuff is for my kids - uh, my neighbor's kids" I unconvincingly explained to the woman ahead of me. She flashed a polite smile, surveyed her fingernails and paid not an ounce of attention to the contents of my cart. I then whipped around to the woman standing behind me and proclaimed, "I never buy this stuff! We're having a party. " She looked over the top of the People magazine she was perusing and and shot me a look of pure apathy.

That is when I took a brief assessment of the other shoppers' food: boxed goods, canned vegetables, powdered doughnuts and non-organic milk. I swallowed my gasp. I was among friends here. People who spent less time in the grocery store worrying about ingredients, and more time on things that mattered to them - like flavor and baked goods with prolonged shelf lives. There was no need to explain.

I quickly packaged my groceries and headed home bearing gifts of refined sugar and artificial colors - things that would never be seen by my own children, for I planned to sneak in through the garage, bearing only a jar of peppercorns. Damn! The peppercorns!