The Market

The advent of semi-prepared food offered in grocery stores has become pervasive to almost all level of store.  We think it might have started in the fifties with rotisserie chicken.  The housewife could pick up a large piece of the main meal that was consistent every time.  Greatly reducing preparation and creating more leisure time.  Unfortunately, housewives of the fifties realized leisure time was overrated and ended up experimenting with mood altering chemicals prescribed by doctors fretting over uncontrolled anxiety.  

That's neither here nor there, unless you're a housewife that longs for the old days strung out benzodiazepine and not caring about the state of the world for long stretches.  

The advent of semi-prepared food in the modern area seems to be the deli section in any grocery store.  The corner deli has slowly evaporated from the American small town and has moved over to the grocery store.  While many people would decry this move as the negative side of gentrification, we think that most folks would appreciate the ease of access (instead of going to multiple stores) and lower prices due to scale.  

In our town we have two grocery stores.  The ubiquitous Safeway, which pulls people in like the event horizon on a black hole and the Market.  The Market is a slightly upscale grocery store that offers an organic only vegetable section and quite a few locally sources items.  For a slightly larger bill you can never wait more than one customer in the check out and never be in a crowd.  

In this post I wanted to do a compare and contrast of the two deli sections noting that Safeway's offering tends to lean to the more proletariat palate whereas the Markest takes a swing and possible miss at slightly more refined tastes.  

As I stood facing what seemed like and endless array of chaffing and cooling trays and behind glassine walls, I realized that there was no way in hell that all this food would be consumed before the end of work.  Mountains of slowly coagulating types of beef, Chickens of every time looking like a crime scene photo and even the cold salads appeared to be developing a sheen.  As the only person standing in one half of the store the tableau took on surreal status.  The only thing missing was cheesy overtures delivered in only the way muzak can. 

Yes, there was no way that food was going to be purchased in the four hours before closing time.   Unless there was a here to fore section of society that ran in before closing, they were going to have to reuse what they could or throw much of that away.  I hoped for the former, but cynically felt that later was more the case.

I had to make a choice.  I would have rather gone to Safeway to have their ghastly version of gen. Tso's chicken with greasy noodles.  The lines and crowding in the store, no matter the hours, kept me away yet again, so I ended up staring at the buffet of sadness.  

Unable to make a choice from all the selections I bit my cheek and chose fried chicken that had been sitting in a chaffing tray for several hours too long and some salad concoction that claimed to be Asian in style.  

Contrary to what I thought it might taste like, my hunger provided the much-needed flavor enhancement.  The chicken was decent and not dry, but the salad, which was bursting with color and variety turned out to be a flavorless mish mash that depended on mayonnaise to tie things together.  

In the end, the fault of this overwhelmingly poor selection was not the store, but my own.  They simply cannot offer that level of variety for so long without something failing. I was the weak link in the process.  I should have had cold cereal.  Shame on me for thinking otherwise.

Score: two b's