trader joes....

every week my son and I do the weekly shopping at trader joes. Great store. Great store. You know who trader joe was? He was the first person to bring frozen mandarin chicken and two dollar wine to the tropics...He also sold women from his boat...he was famous for "two buck chick". And he was also the inventor famous for creating the small,ridiculous parking lot. He would bring boatloads of rushed yuppies to the islands to get the natives used to long lines,near fatal traffic accidents, and juice.

We have a great shopping list my wife made that has basically all the stuff we ever buy,in the aisles of trader joes..in order.(hey,you down with ocd,well you know me). My son and I are to Trader Joes as Norm was to Cheers.

We roll through the store...Ok,you get the bananas, I"ll get the medjool dates,the green beans, and the guyere." One of the great things about Trader Joes is that even someone like my wife,who used to say she does eat anything she hadn't eaten before almost invariably must be tested.

My wife is sometimes super dubious

'What's this?"

"Sharp cheddar with carmelized Onions"

"What's this?"

"Gnocchi with gorgonzola sauce"

"What the heck is this?"

"They're called grapes"

but we always have a little bit better shot by adding...It's from Trader's to anything.

"What's this?"

"Flambed Weasel Tongues.....it's a new traders thing..."

"Oh,ok>"

we love it. One time my wife asked me to buy a non chuck and buck(weird movie). I have a rule though. Since she is no expert....Kansas City having a beef country,not a wine country...I limit my purchase to chardonnays under 6 dollars. At Trader Joes this is doable. They have fun names "Fish Wine", Chalk Hill" "Drink and Go Blind, Cheap Skate"...and she is always fine. My son and I usually shop within the 110 to 140 a week range...and we bought some cool 3.99 wine called Mer Du Soliel. This was the first week we were really trying to provide food for an entire week, and we ended up spending 175.00...Ok, bought more food. No prob. The next week we went back and my wife said "Oh, that Mer Du Soliel was good. Get some more of that. I came back that night and said " Decided not to get that wine again. Turned out it was 39.99. You had a forty dollar bottle of chardonnay.". Now I had a wine friend who shared a 4,000 dollar bottle of wine with my friend. Hell, that's almost a disney cruise.

And now they have a trader joes cookbook, with all the ingredients from Trader Joes. Great idea. My favorite section of the cookbook is called Bachelor Quickies(Two Buck f..., never mind) and it is just stuff you can warm up to impress your date. What? You need a cookbook for that?
Here's a recipe for Seafood Soiree. While the frozen cioppino is cooking, warm up Traders French Bread.... Wow!!! That is pretty tricky....and do ya think the bachlorette(why do I think of dating game when I use that term)falls for that? " Hey, cioppino. Wow,you did a better job with the calamari than you did with boiling water at my house last week. Tell me,how do you do it. Do your warm the bread before you sear the scallops,or after. Good homemade sauce. Let's have sex."

But really, Trader Joes is amazing. I wish sometimes not everybody felt that way. I hear that originally Steven Spielberg wanted to film the harrowing beginning of Saving Private Ryan in a Trader Joes parking lot...He actually tested some footage. The scene with the soccer mom carrying three bags of groceries,only to be struck down by the prius driver , in a great hurry to get his cioppino played allright. However, the scene where the woman,rushing to pick up her son from violin soccer, loses a leg by trying to wedge her suv into a compact spot, then picks up her own leg and and carries it into the store in a cart,just to get some of those peppermint joe joes, didn't test well. People thought is was too close to home. He decided to film in in Normandy instead.

And where I live,everybody wants another Trader's. They seem to be obsessed.

"That old Albertson"s....they're putting a Trader Joes in there"

Trader Joes is going into where tower records was"

"Hey, did you hear? They're paving paradise and Putting up a parking lot...With a big hotel a boutique and a Trader Joes."

But I will continue to shop at the island paradise. It has become a weekly tradition...like poker night, movie day, or family mine field exploration. I am drawn by value...and experimentation...and Mer Du Soliel.