Is this the biggest size you have?

While the title of this post may imply a trip to Bloomingdale's, in which I, in all sincerity, ask the saleswoman, "Where are the clothes made for people who are familiar with carbs and who don't shy away from butter?" However, this post is about another kind of shopping in New York - grocery shopping.

I love to cook. Okay, I love to eat, so I have learned to love to cook. As you may already know, the first step to cooking is usually creating a list and going to the grocery store. You might think this would be a pretty universal errand across the country. After all, how different can grocery shopping be from one place to another - it is just going to a store, picking up food, and checking out. Right? Wrong.

From the moment my first trip to the grocery began in New York, I knew it would be different. I was used to driving to the grocery, grabbing my reusable bags from the trunk, retrieving a cart, and wandering the expanse of Publix with a grocery list as long as a short essay that contained everything I would need to cook all week long. In New York, you have to be savvier.

First of all, I do not have a car, so I have to be prepared to carry what I buy home. I find myself eying a twelve pack of Diet Coke, and then thinking, "No way will I carry that! I guess I am drinking tap water again this week." I am also more likely to go to the store multiple times in one week, so that I spread out what I have to carry. It only took one walk home during which I thought both arms would be ripped out of the sockets and an unfeminine bead of sweat developed on my brow despite the frigid temperature to convince me that multiple trips to the store are best.

Secondly, New York grocery stores are constructed so that you buy less at a time. When I first walked into the store I looked around for a cart like a birdwatcher might look for an ivory-billed woodpecker. In other words, I looked and I looked but was pretty convinced carts had gone extinct, at least up North. I grabbed a basket instead, which may be to force customers to only buy what they can carry. I have eventually found a cart in a grocery store, although it's not a full sized cart like I would expect.

It fits in my palm. My palm!!

Lastly, on top of the smallness of the store itself and the carts, even the food in New York City's grocery stores is smaller! I came across sizes of food staples that I had no idea existed! Did you know they still sell Coke in six packs up here? And they sell Aunt Jemima's syrup in a size that can only be described as travel-sized. Not to mention mayonnaise the size of a can of baby food, which would not get my family through one meal of BLTs in the summer. The true kicker though, was when I scanned the store for Velveeta. The delicious and truly American pasteurized cheese product was not displayed proudly like at the grocery in Memphis, but rather placed unlovingly in a corner of the dairy section. Did the Manhattan grocer even realize that this cheddar-y gift does not need to be refrigerated? I sought to rescue the Velveeta from the dairy case, and was flabbergasted by the teeny-tiny specimen I held in my hand. I was accustomed to Velveeta that was three times the size of this one! I shook my head at the tragedy of tiny Velveeta but left the store and happily dumped the whole thing into my chicken casserole. Boy, was it delicious!


As I get used to grocery shopping in New York City, I am also embracing a different kind of Manhattan grocery shopping, known as delivery. For what this city lacks in American-sized groceries, it makes up for in the fact that nearly every restaurant on the island delivers anything and at anytime, and that is something I can get on board with!