My local grocery

It is easy to forget how simple things can affect the baseline for the way you enjoy your day.

Looking around the kitchen here I see a bag of tasty tomatoes. There are small, crunchy apples and crisp lettuce in the fridge as well as sweet carrots. These particular bags of fruit and veg all hover at about two bucks at the local grocer and seem to be available almost all of the time. Taste is not a luxury item here! Awesome!

The prices are regular and the food is tasty. Sounds like an advertisement doesn’t it!

If you have read a lot of the entries in here you will know a great deal of this blog is about pain and depression. When you are a depressive person there are times everything sucks badly. When life is framed by pain you are equally prone to bleakness.

Shopping can be a tough thing. I have a particular image in my head when I visit our local supermarket. There is a clown with an evil smile. The clown is juggling balls with prices written on them. Each time the eye strays from the balls the prices go up on one ball. The clown notices someone looking and laughs. But which ball was it he asks and did it really go up? The balls are moving so fast the watcher cannot even see which ball had changed because they have all changed again. Must have blinked. It feels dirty or shabby. Like being mugged emotionally.

Arriving at the local grocer is like being welcomed into a secret club of light and flavor. People who like food and even each other come here. The guy usually at the counter was at the markets when the fruit or vegetables were chosen and he often tried it himself before choosing it for his shelves. The other day they didn’t have apricots at the local grocer because when he tasted them at the markets they weren’t very tasty!

Going to the grocer knowing that the prevaling likelihood is a future with tasty fruit and vegetables that will not puncture any budgets has actually left me with a sense of delight. Thinking of the last pineapple I bought from them actually makes my mouth water. The crisp little apples are a regular in my fridge  after years of toast snacks and a very haphazard view of tasteless and soggy fruit. Once again the word to be used for a snack of a chilly, crunchy, tasty little apple is delight.

Bimble Box Honey. Just the name puts a smile on my face. The local grocer has a bunch of different locally sourced honeys. Trying honey from different flowers is the best thing. It has to be one of life’s delights. That word again. Leatherwood honey from Tasmania still heads the favorites though!

There are a lot of things to be said for eating local honeys. You support local bee keepers. Across the world bees are dying out in most countries. Australian bees are being exported all over the world. Buying honey from the local guy is something we should treasure. It is a true wonder of living in a place like this.

Big commercial honey is all mixed and from anywhere on their range.

Supporting the local farmers also lowers the carbon footprint of the food you eat. Less fuel is used to ship them when they just go a few miles from the farmer to the market to you. They have Hunter Valley farmed multi-grain (don’t ask I dont know what multi-grain means in an egg) free-range eggs. Local and cheaper than the supermarket they seem to have better color yokes and taste as well. Real milk! What a difference that makes in coffee.

Even being in a grocer shop surrounded by the smells of fruit can be deeply satisfying on some level of well-being. Even better if are able to share a joke or have a chat. Simple and satisfying things are right there sometimes. We just forget .

We build happiness and contentment out of this kind of building block. I don’t seem to have the range of expressions to cover the idea I was presenting here. Ah well.