The Newly-Single Woman Goes Food Shopping

...and what she buys--well, just have a look.




I spent just about what I always spend at the supermarket, give or take a dollar or two (or ten)(or twenty). But there was a noticeable difference in what I bought. I haven't exactly reached the cat food and powdered milk stage, but I think the perceptive reader can tell there's a change in my larder.

For example, Coke Diet 6-8 oz. Have you seen these 8 oz. cans? They're kinda compressed, sort of midget versions of the real thing. I bought them because I never finish my Cokes, and before I was newly-single they would hang around the refrigerator going flat. And annoying D. Who could drink a 12-pack of Diet Coke in 36 hours.

If you scan both photos, you'll see that there is no meat. NO MEAT! Where's the beef? It's not a meal if there's no meat. Gotta have meat. This was the mantra I lived by before I was newly-single. But now--ha! I get to eat what I want, when I want. Maybe I will eat meat and maybe I won't. My call--tra la la!

There are, of course, the obligatory diet frozen dinners for those evenings when I just don't feel like cooking. Before I was newly-single, those were the nights we ate fast food. My cousin wrote Fast Food Nation, so I know how awful that stuff is for you. Now stocked up as I am with Lean Gourmet Meals, I can get my engineered food and multi-syllabic chemical additives without leaving the comfort of my own home.

Then there's the Nature's Path Organic Optimum Zen cereal. This was an impulse buy, I must confess; I went originally for Cheerio's. But how, in my current situation, could I resist a breakfast food that promised me "a 'Zen' moment, where health, mental balance, spiritual fulfillment come together and you can 'be' the best that you are." I'm really liking that whole mindfulness thing, so why shouldn't my stomach benefit as well.

You can see I bought lots of produce. Grapes and cherries. For me. All for me! And salad stuff and single serving cans of tuna and beans and cantaloupe and my own mini watermelon, which is listed as Org Personal H2O (which the wicked might think was a strange device for pleasuring onesself, but it's merely the supermarket's way of cataloging Very, Very, Very Small Watermelon).

And finally, you'll notice the last two items are digestive-related. A bit close to the cat food model, perhaps, but don't you think that a newly-single woman has earned the right to her heartburn.