I went to the market today to do as much do-ahead grocery shopping as
I could in preparation for Christmas Day dinner. I'll do a Friday
swoop-and-grab for perishables on Friday on the way home from work and
if Friday's expedition is as unsuccessful as today's, I'd better plan
a route home that includes multiple markets.

I had a fairly extensive list, so not finding a few items wasn't
utterly surprising, but *what* I couldn't find was: dried cherries,
chocolate wafer cookies, instant coffee (not the kind with crystals),
Kalamata olives and asiago cheese. Now, I'll give you the asiago
cheese, although Von's had 7 different labels of brie alone, 4 kinds
of Havarti, multiple Feta, romano and parmesan cheeses and a few
examples of what you really shouldn't attempt with cheese. But
Kalamata olives? There must have been a dozen and a half labels of
olives, most redundant to their neighbor, and a few were use-specific,
such as martini olives. And the wafer cookies? They had by my count 6
types of Oreo cookies and perhaps twice that many chocolate chip
cookies, yet no chocolate wafer cookies, which are pretty basic, IMHO.
And doesn't anyone make instant coffee anymore? The stuff that has the
consistency of dust? I have a mocha torte that requires a small
quantity of instant coffee and I know from prior experience that the
coffee *crystals* don't dissolve at all well in the batter*. And the
dried cherries? They had maybe 6 kinds of "Craisins," several
different varieties and labels of raisins, they had dried prunes,
pineapple, apple, apricot, something called "Berries and Cherries,"
another something called "Goldens and Cherries," which are white
raisins and cherries, but no dried cherries.

Popped by Albertson's and they didn't have any of the missing
ingredients and the deli clerk, when asked, thought he'd "heard" that
parmesan was a good substitute for asiago. I am devoutly praying that
the Market Fairy hits Gelson's before Friday.

* I bought a small tin of one of those instant fake espresso "coffee
drink" whatsits hoping that that will do if I can't find "real"
instant coffee.

Terry Pulliam Burd

--
"Most vigitaryans I iver see looked enough like their food to be
classed as cannybals."

Finley Peter Dunne (1900)

To reply, replace "spaminator" with "cox"