Before I met Mrs Mom, shopping was something I did once every two weeks, usually on the bi-weekly occasion of getting paid. My usual route consisted of:

A stop at the local utility pay station where I would pay all my current bills.

Filling up the car at the gas station with the least expensive gas I could find.

Lotto tickets (Hey you never know) at either a convenience store or the gas station

Two “dollar stores” ( snacks, bathroom stuff, pack of gum for my toolbox at work, hand sanitizer, sandwich bags etc.)

Aldi – where most of my actual groceries were purchased (bread, lunch meat, milk, cereal, coffee, half and half, sugar, bagels, burger patties etc. )

and then a trip to a regular grocery store for anything I couldn't find at Aldi.

This was usually accomplished in one whirlwind tour of my humble little city, then I would come home and put everything up and I was done for two weeks.

Then along came “Mrs. Mom”....

Shopping then transformed into a nightly excursion, usually extended by an inadvertent omission of one item we either couldn't find or just plain forgot to buy the previous night despite a nightly shopping list, or Mrs Mom had a new recipe she just had to try that required something we didn't have in the kitchen. My once near-empty refrigerator and freezer are now packed solid with meats, Ziploc containers of leftovers and the largest assortment of salad dressings, jams and jellies you will ever see outside of your local grocers shelf. My once-barren pantry shelves are brimming with various mixes, canned goods and a truly diverse potpourri of spices. And yet it's never enough; we wind up treading a well-worn path back to one of the several grocery stores almost nightly. 

Albertsons, Tom Thumb, Kroger, Aldi, World Market, Central Market, Trader Joes, Sprouts... I'm beginning to become all too familiar with each and every one of them and the regular inventory they carry. I know which stores stock lavender dish soap and which ones don't. I know which ones have rice in one pound bags and which ones only have it in five pound bags. I know which ones have the best prices on soft drinks and which ones have the best selection of produce. Not that I'm complaining mind you; sometimes this can be knowledge that helps me stretch a dollar just a little further. One of the stores I just named above has a regular weekly “Buy One-Get Two Free” sale on their meats including steaks, chicken breasts and pork chops, so guess which one we buy the most meat at? There's absolutely nothing wrong in my book with paying $45 for a heavy sack of meat I can just barely lift. And Mrs Mom frequently adds a much-needed level of common sense to our shopping; otherwise I could just as easily come home with a sack full of frozen fish sticks and peanut butter  Snickers. 

In my pre-Mrs Mom years, my diet consisted of frozen dinners, sandwiches from Subway, take-out food from a select hand-full of my favorite independently-owned restaurants and when I was feeling really rich grilling a steak or hamburger on my modest little tail-gate grill. Fast-forward to my Post Mrs Mom years and I have gained enough weight to require purchasing larger jeans and boxers thanks to Mrs Mom feeding me a diet of real food. Mrs Mom never ceases to be amazed on the rare occasions we do dine out how the owners of my favorite independently-owned restaurants come out of the kitchen to chat with me ( “Where have you been?”) because this is one example where familiarity did not breed contempt. But when she tries to pry me away from either the safety and comfort of my nightly SEINFELD re-runs because we forgot one item on the shopping list the night before I have to make a concentrated effort not to roll my eyes because I know it's another evening of “Hi ho, hi ho … it's off to the store we go....” and Mrs Mom has to remind me it's not just shopping; it's RESEARCH....

When we first decided to set up housekeeping, I envisioned shopping together would be something akin to the photograph at the top of this blog post.

Just the two of us, arm in arm, picking out groceries,while gazing lovingly into each others eyes as we strolled down endless aisles of pristine store shelves filled with all of our favorite foods.

Instead, it looks more like this:

I boil it down to one factor: Mr Mom doesn't like cute food or pretty products. While I prefer the dish soap that makes the kitchen smell like you're vacationing in the South of France, Mr Mom prefers to get the nondescript yellow dish soap from the 99-cent store that does its best to ground me in the reality that the view from my kitchen window isn't rolling hills of lavender but the overflowing recycling bins in our neighbor's yard.

While I liked the cute little gherkin pickles in handy individual single serving packages, he wanted the super-sized garlic dills the size of full sized English cucumbers, because they were more manly. 

There is a store in NYC that I think is really on to something. They have what they refer to as a Man Aisle, filled with everything Mr Mom would consider essential: Doritios, BBQ sauce, beef jerky and giant sized jars of dill pickles.

But never under-estimate my ability to adapt. I've learned now that when I want something I put it in the cart, without a word, because the minute I share how adorable I think something is, I get "the look" -- you know -- the "I can get this cheaper at the Dollar Tree" look. 

Bless his heart, he's learning though, albeit on his own terms. We needed dish soap last week and he stopped to pick some up on the way home -- from the 99-cent store of course. I braced myself for the industrial sized faux lemon monstrosity that he would be walking through the door with at any moment. Imagine my surprise (and pleasure) when I opened up the bag to find a beautiful bottle of pink summer bouquet scented dish soap instead. It sits proudly on my sink -- you know -- the one with the window that overlooks the rolling hills in the South of France...

A running gag in THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES was Jed or Granny offering “possum gizzards” to the Beverly Hills city folk, who would always gag and pale on cue. I had a couple of friends who moved from Texas to Los Angeles during the 90s; we were constantly making BEVERLY HILLBILLIES jokes. Imagine our shock when we were walking out the door of their palatial home just off of Pico Boulevard one evening and there on the porch was a possum, hissing and snarling at us. “Dibs on the gizzards!” I said as everyone howled and the possum fled in terror, probably at the Jethro Bodine inflection of my voice . 

And while I don't remember my grandparents in Arkansas ever cooking possum gizzards, Mrs Mom has unearthed a couple of recipes in a couple of Southern cookbooks that actually utilize possum. So just as a public service I will now share them with you. 

The first one is from the 1998 First Baptist Church Acteens of Whitesboro Texas cookbook. You may need a translator and I assure you the spelling is NOT mine:

“Thez ugly ole varmit iz gud, but you gotta cook as much fat as you kin outta them'r yo' mouth will be kivered in fever blisters! Bleed possum furst, then dip in scaldin' water with a handful uv little rashes in it. (I presume/hope the cook meant radishes) Scrape hit lak a hog, gut' n be shore to cut out musk glands under the front laigs; soak overmite in salty water wid pepper added to taste. When tender, bake in greased pan'n put sweet taters all 'round him fore cooking; hit'll probably take 1 ½ to 2 hours to git him jest rite. “

Hungry yet? 

Then from the appropriately titled “White Trash Cooking” cookbook by one Ernest Matthew Mickler (1986) comes this little gem of a recipe: 

Aunt Donnahs Roast Possum

“Possum should be cleaned as soon as possible after shooting. I should be hung for 48 hours and is then ready to be skinned and cooked. The meat is light-colored and tender. Excess fat may be removed, but is no strong flavor or odor contained in the fat. 

1 possum 1 cup breadcrumbs
1 onion, chopped 1 hard-boiled egg, chopped
1 tablespoon fat 1 teaspoon salt water
¼ teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce

Rub possum with salt and pepper. Brown onions in fat. Add possum liver and cook until tender. Add breadcrumbs, Worcestershire sauce, egg salt and water. Mix thoroughly and stuff possum. Truss like a fowl. Put in roasting pan with bacon across back and pour water into pan. Roast uncovered in moderate oven (350 degrees) until tender, about 2 ½ hours. There's only one thing to serve possum with- sweet potatoes. You only eat possum in the winter.”

Ooooo-eeee that sounds delicious, don't it?

In the last year or so I've been setting a trap in my backyard to trim the number of stray cats in my neighborhood and consequently have trapped a large snarling raccoon and no less than eight possums at this writing. I have been taking them to a local park and letting them go but now am experiencing some slight regret; I could have fed the Clampetts for a week. Oh well there's always Next Time.....

Hold on a minute here! There will be no next time, let alone a first time! Mom draws the line at cooking road kill, or trapped animals. I've seen them snarl when caught. Not exactly an appetizing picture for sure.

Mr Mom jests (I hope) at catching dinner, since I know he's got the softest heart in America, and disliked the idea of hunting when he was a child, other than the time spent with the "men folk". 

Now while I certainly understand the need to survive and admire greatly the spirit of his ancestors in providing for themselves and their family, I'm just not able to go there. My family up North was used to dining on moose and deer meat, and occasional elk, and I do remember excusing myself from dinner as a child at my grandmother's when she served up rabbit stew, herself. 

Mr Mom and I come from very sturdy stock of pioneering souls who did whatever they could to feed their families and to survive in times much tougher than hopefully we'll ever have see, and for that we're most grateful, but I'm equally as grateful that providing food for a family these days is a lot easier than it was back then. Any possums caught around here can rest assured that they're simply going to get a first class ride to Possum Holler to live out their life fully and in the luxury of a forested haven for misplaced marsupials.