Location, Location (Food)

The man that I love and live with recently told me of his fondness for linguistics and learning about different language trends and traditions. He said that a person’s locale determines not only how they talk, but what they talk about it.

He’s absolutely right. The same can also be said for food.

A lot of times during the summer months, I don’t feel like cooking. My appetite changes and instead of chicken stews and mashed potatoes, all I want is fresh seafood and green salads. So I graze and drink a lot of liquids and then as soon as September comes, I can be found standing at the stove creating thick soup, ratatouille and succotash, roast chicken, lamb and hearty beef chili.

But it is not just the heat that has me a bit bummed about food. It’s my grocery store. Don’t get me wrong – I am blessed to have a store that is not only reasonable but offers fresh ingredients from Korea, Japan and Sri Lanka. It’s just that I am tired of it.

See, when you cook and eat a lot of meals at home – and now that we are both writing full-time at home, we do – you tend to go through a lot of food and well, shopping at the same store might not mean the same recipe over and over, but it does mean most of the ingredients remain the same.

So this week I am venturing out. I don’t know where yet – I still have a little research to do – but I’m going to find us a new home, I mean grocery store. To use at least for a little while. Come September, I will be at my usual haunt picking up black-eyed peas, lettuce, diced tomatoes, chicken, squash, pita, hot sauce and the like. But in the meantime, I’m going to try on a new store for size and see how it fits.

Something tells me it is just what I need.