Adventures in grocery shopping

Now that the Hall family is committed to eating healthy meals at home more often, we're making more trips to the grocery store.

When I was just running in for some party snacks, a six-pack and a frozen pizza, grocery shopping was fun. Now there are coupons and long, itemized lists. There are strolls up and down every aisle. There are pulled muscles from trying to get $100 worth of groceries into the house without making two trips from the car.

And forget the icy cold Frappuccinos I used to sip while jetting up and down the aisles. Too many carbs. It's bottled water for me.

But I'm learning a lot about grocery stores and what goes on there. For example, do you know how many things can be made out of soy? Almost all dairy can be replaced with soy. But there's also soy sausage, soy pepperoni, soy riblets, soy corn dogs and soy chicken patties. It doesn't seem right, but try the soy riblets. They're not bad if you're dieting.

I've become an avid student of what people put in their carts. I actually stare shamelessly at items other shoppers place on the conveyor belt at the checkout. Single guys are getting beer, white bread and cold cuts. Single girls are getting vegetables, diet soda and Cosmo. (I happen to know those vegetables will go bad in the refrigerator, passed up in favor of midnight runs to Hardee's and Taco Bell.)

And then there were the mother and daughter who will forever be known as The Thin Family. They were both blonde, gorgeous and skinny. The daughter walked around the store the other day eating a sandwich from the deli.

"Did you get a sandwich?" her mother asked.

"Two sandwiches!" she squealed with delight.

Their cart had hot dogs, hamburger meat, a bunch of white rolls and bread and, the piece de la resistance, two giant bags of Krunchers chips.

Do you understand this? These people were walking along, actually eating in the store, their cart full of high-carb, high-fat junk, just as fit-looking as they could be.

My cart? Low-carb bread, Wow chips, fresh vegetables, soy everything, sugar-free ice cream, high-fiber cereal. AAARRRRGGGGHHHHH! How did life get so unfair?

Oh yeah. It must have been all those years of swinging by the doughnut case trolling for cream horns.

I've also learned that people will come to the grocery store wearing anything. It's as though they believe they are invisible to other humans.

Sure, giggling sorority girls will roam the aisles around midnight wearing fuzzy slippers and PJs. That's adorable. I went to a convenience store in a flannel nightgown at that age and felt as cute as a button.

And, as you've learned, I'll skip makeup on the weekends to this day.

But in the middle of Sunday, the Lord's day, there was a woman standing in the busiest grocery store in town wearing a thigh-length bathrobe. Nobody appeared to notice.

"Do you get many people in here wearing their bathrobes?" I asked the cashier.

"Oh, they come in here in everything," she said, clearly uninterested.

What could you wear to the grocery store that would be worse? A teddy?

Which leads me to, after these weeks of research, what would be the perfect shopping experience:

I'm wearing my favorite PJs and my soft, ratty bathrobe. I get on one of those motorized scooters near the entrance. I have a couple of sandwiches while riding along, filling my car with potato chips.

And when I get home, several hired hands are there to carry everything inside and put it away.

Heidi Hall is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.