I Suck At Grocery Shopping

this week, i told my friends (marc and kelley) that i would try my hand at cooking and make dinner for our weekly get-together on thursday. the dinner of choice: macaroni and cheese. like many culinary tasks, i have never made macaroni and cheese... ever. my culinary ineptitude may be one of the reasons why i challenge and make wagers with my friend (hot amy). to the victor goes the spoils... and as i generally win those wagers, i usually get to enjoy the bounty of the food wagered.

anyway, in my attempt to be a little more hands on in the kitchen, i figured i'd try making macaroni and cheese... from scratch and not from a box. marc and kelley lent me a cookbook specific to macaroni and cheese. as i was flipping through the cookbook, i looked at all of the possibilities... and there were a lot of variations. each and every one of the recipes looked delicious. i'm salivating just looking at the pictures.

after a long deliberation, i actually decided to start with the basics: a simple macaroni and cheese recipe that was not even in the cookbook. i actually found a simple recipe online. my train of thought: if i can make the basic version, i can then progress to the more scrumptious version later on. call it a "building block".

the only problem of course was that i needed the ingredients to cook the meal for tomorrow. there's nothing like a little procrastination. lucky for me, i am generally good under pressure. i have been known to write many papers for school the night before they were due.

so needless to say, i had to go grocery shopping tonight for some ingredients. too bad i suck at grocery shopping. on our way home tonight, karen and i went to star market in quincy. to our surprise, we ran into my friend's (joanna) father in the produce section.

joanna's father was looking for a squash. he cracks me up. (in fact, joanna's entire family cracks me up.) joanna's father was going to try to recreate an "everything" meal that he had earlier. the meal consisted of... everything.

as we chatted in the produce section, he told us that joanna's brother (john) was expecting to be a father this year. (joanna's father's eyes lit up with excitement on telling us the news.) and unfortunately due to the pregnancy, john would not be able to visit joanna this summer in seattle. joanna is graduating this summer with her masters degree from a college in seattle. she wanted to have everyone come visit her for her graduation (which i might consider because i have always wanted to go to seattle)... for anyone curious, joanna lives in portland... not seattle.

anyway, it was a good grocery shopping experience. in addition to having a good time with joanna's father, i did actually get all my ingredients for the macaroni and cheese recipe for tomorrow. so hopefully the macaroni and cheese recipe will turn out okay.