While most children used their Saturday morning cartoons to prepare for an afternoon of chaos and adventure at the nearest Chuck E Cheese, I used them to prepare myself for the same chaos and adventure but instead for my weekly visit to my local supermarket with my parents. Something about a giant room filled every type of food I can think of at the time, constantly being replenished, it seemed as if the possibilities were endless. A maze of food, if I ever got lost, I knew I would never starve, and that is by far one of the most comforting feeling for a food-obsessed child.
Nostalgia hit me hard this past weekend as I suddenly received that same feeling after finding out we were making a stop at a Stop & Shop in Hudson Valley before going to our AirBnb rental i during our Fall Foliage weekend getaway. It’s obvious that one needs to leave to New York City to experience the suburbia luxury of a supermarket, but I would have figured that after so many years that same rush of excitement would have dwindled. After all, I live in New York City, the mecca of food, where anything from remote spices from Ghana to the breeding of doughnuts and croissants can be found. Farmer’s markets have are as common as local bodegas, and talks of food access issues are a faint memory. Yet, even in the abundance of food in the city, the classic supermarket still has the same appeal to me that it did as child.
I would like to think of myself as a rather educated consumer, and I know that our society is going away from the typical supermarket approach of finding everything in one spot, and rather going back to the days of shopping in specialty stores with local ingredients. But as a New York City rent paying resident, I am okay for now with my supermarket filled with discounts purchases. I appreciate that my loyalty means something to ShopRite and that I will be rewarded in points that will put money back in wallet. While walking down the aisles of ShopRite, I felt a little bit guilty knowing that I do not to choose from twenty different brands and variations of Ketchup, but at the same time it was good to know that I had that choice and could purchase it half the price of ketchup sold at the Amish Market by my apartment in the city. My internal struggle is between my more sophisticated knowledge as a Food Studies student with my student budget; it seems very difficult at the moment for the two to live in harmony.
Supermarket shopping helps alleviate some of that financial burden, because all though 4 yogurts for $5 may not seem like a lot at the moment, if your purchasing yogurt every week, that difference can subsidize a trip back home to Miami, to visit motherland of all supermarkets, Publix. If a supermarket like Stop & Shop that I have no actual ties to can elicit such behavior, one can only imagine the state I am in when I enter any Publix in Florida or the South after months of being deprived.