NYC Living Part One: The Grocery Diaries
I get asked a lot of questions about life here in New York City. Is your bedroom big enough to sleep lying down? (It’s a good thing I’m short.) How much do you pay in rent? (Give me your tax returns and medical records from the past few years and then we’ll talk.) How big ARE the rats, really? (Any bigger and they’d qualify for government benefits and public housing.)
Judging by most questions, people assume that I either live in a war zone where I don’t dare to venture out after dark without my pepper spray and machete, or that I live directly in Times Square. (Though if I DID live in Times Square, the pepper spray and machete might be useful, if for nothing but to clear the sidewalks of the tourist hordes.)
Since so many folks seem genuinely curious about life here (where I’m from in the South, we call that just plain nosy), I’ve decided to start a mini blog-series addressing some of the unique things we deal with as New Yorkers. I’ll be hitting various topics in between other music-related posts, so if you have a burning question, let me know in the comment section! Today’s topic is a question nearly everyone seems to ask eventually:
Q: How do you get your groceries?
A: One word: delivery.
The groceries already cost an arm and a leg, might as well save on the wear and tear of said limbs by having the heavy stuff delivered directly to my door. Naturally I learned this via a character-building experience. My first year in the city, during a Whole Foods trip (which is actually one of the cheaper grocery stores in town... no really), I learned that I shouldn’t buy apples and sweet potatoes at the same time, even if they ARE both on sale.
It was during the 3rd block of my one mile trek home that I began reevaluating my life choices. I also may or may not have been wearing pretty but useless footwear. Hey, we all have our vices, mine involves lots of bandaids. Of course there were no cabs in sight at the time. Not that I would’ve taken one...the stronger, more hardened city-dwellers would see it and realize my weakness. Shame is a powerful motivator when your arms feel like they are going to fall off.
Enter Peapod, the heaven-sent delivery service which stocks real name-brand peanut butter that doesn’t require draining and stirring or taste like a mouthful of sand, only with less flavor. Peapod also enables my daily Diet Coke addiction, though I do have to pay accordingly. New York City has a Soda Mafia, which means that each 12-pack of cokes also incurs a bottle tax, a truck delivery tax, a gasoline tax, a sugar tax, a non-sugar sucralose tax, a recycling tax, a kale-support group tax, and a small surcharge that goes to the local PETA chapter as a precaution. I feel good that my intake of Coca-Cola products can help so many.
Unfortunately, there are times when I do have to venture into an actual grocery store to buy things, namely produce, as that does not do well delivered too far in advance of using it, such as a few hours before cooking dinner. New York City imports high quality organic fruits and vegetables from local farms and suppliers, which means that the produce begins decaying as soon as it is placed in the sack at checkout. Celery that is crisp and healthy while on the conveyor belt is usually flexible enough to use for shoelaces by the time I get it home.
My solution: I run across the street to the local neighborhood grocery cartel, Gristedes (rhymes with diabetes) and buy whatever produce I need to use in the next ten minutes. It works pretty well for everything except strawberries, which seem to immediately form a covering of furry, white mold when exposed to NYC street air. In all fairness, so do my lungs, so I don’t hold it against them.
The grocery stores around here manage to stay in business selling $7.99 boxes of Lucky Charms and $11 pints of ice-cream (at least for the vegan kind) because often procrastination or lack of planning means that delivery isn’t an option. It happens to all of us eventually. Once, on a Super Bowl Sunday, Liz and I had the bright idea of making non-organic, GMO infused pigs-in-a-blanket while we watched the Super Bowl commercials. (You didn’t think we were actually going to watch the game, did you?) During the seven hours of pre-game coverage, we hit up all the local groceries and markets for the best priced ingredients. Savvy shoppers, don’t be jealous: our efforts meant that each tiny little piggie only cost us $2.00 apiece! That’s just slightly more expensive than premium-grade sushi per bite, and you get so much more saturated fat for your money.
If you have never ventured inside a local market or grocery here in the city, be advised that it’s not an activity for the claustrophobic or vertically challenged. Imagine the entire contents of your local Kroger’s shoved into a space the size of your local 7-11. Shelves resemble skyscrapers and aisles are so narrow, they need one-way traffic signs. Shopping carts do not exist; only little baskets with long handles and gimpy wheels which must be dragged behind you and are somehow magnetically attracted to the top-heavy fruit displays and the shins of crabby senior citizens.
If grocery stores aren’t your thing, and you’d rather shop with the hipster crowd smelling of hemp and henna, there’s always the weekly outdoor farmer’s markets. Columbia University hosts a nice one down the street from us; you can sip on home brewed kombucha and buy a dozen eggs for about $10. Be forewarned: eggs do cost more than this if the chicken has a name. Sometimes the seller has a photo book so you can see precisely which hen your eggs came from. Many folks feel that the sense of superiority that comes from shopping here is absolutely worth the price.
But let’s face it, it doesn’t matter where you buy your kale; it’s going to sit in the bottom drawer of your fridge until it rots. In a few hours.