Nopalitos

Since my wife works and goes to school, we evenly split all our domestic responsibilities: she cleans the bathroom, washes the dishes, cooks the meals, folds the laundry, polishes the silver, mops the floor, and vacuums the carpet--I water the house plants and grocery shop.

As my wife fully understands, I can't hold my own in a clothing store. But gosh, I sure can blaze trails in the grocery store isles. That's right, I thoroughly enjoy shopping for food. I see every trip I take to the market as an opportunity to refine my tastes and broaden my palate.

One of the things I love most about grocery shopping is the thrill of racing home perishable food in perishable conditions. Like an EMT rushing a Coleman cooler full of vital organs to an awaiting hospital, I race home my grocery bag full of ice cream to an awaiting freezer. The longer it sits in the heat, the less good it's going to do the recipient.

On one of my recent shopping trips, I purchased a 5.48 lb container of "Dutch Milk Chocolate Drink." I didn't fully realize how big it was until I opened the can and found not one oxygen-absorbing packet, but TWO.

My first glass of Chocolate Drink gave me a stomach ache. But now that I'm past the break-in period, it goes down smooth as velvet.

You know you're in for a surprise when the noun "drink" follows an adjective like "orange," "cherry," or "chocolate." Orange juice is the liquid from an orange. Orange drink is the liquid from a garden hose, mixed in a large container with a powdery substance composed of sugar, chalk, and artificial flavoring.

During another recent grocery-shopping trip, I was wandering aimlessly through the produce section, my second favorite section of the grocery store (foreign foods is my first). I came across a quaint little basket of cactus leafs, or nopalitos, as my Mexican friends call them. The thought of getting nutritious substance out of such a feisty plant intrigued me.

I carefully placed two of them in a produce sack, finished my shopping, and headed to the check stand. As the cashier was hastily ringing my groceries across the scanner, he carelessly grabbed the bag of napolitos to ring them up.

"What the [edit] was that?!" he said, as he looked at the inside of his hand. Little dots of blood began to sprout up on his palm and fingers. "We sell cactus?"

I ducked behind the credit card machine and mumbled something like, "oh sure, my wife makes them all the time; they're good with, um, bagels and... " I trailed off until a new cashier was called in as an emergency replacement, and I finished my purchase.

I got the epidermis-piercing nopalitos home and asked my wife if we could include them in our next meal. I had to convince her that since they were in the grocery store they must be good for consumption. She finally agreed to make them, and we had cactus leaves in our soup the next day. It was actually really good, if you ate around the cactus chunks.