Elrena tagged me for this on a day that I had gone to the grocery store for celery and seaweed, and that just didn’t seem like quite enough to blog about! (We used the celery for Tony’s puttanesca recipe, by the way, and the seaweed for sushi).

Now it’s been over a week and it took till today to get back to the grocery store which demonstrates a) how successful I’ve been in getting Tony to take over the grocery shopping; b) how little in-person shopping of any kind that I do. I do as much shopping as possible on-line, even though that has tended to limit me to big chain stores; I’m trying to search out more places like this fabulous site, Etsy, which lets you buy handmade objects from individual people (nothing here I particularly need right now, but it’s all awfully pretty).

In the meantime, things have been purchased, of course; the weekly produce delivery has come a couple times, and I ordered Ben a tux for his Halloween magician’s costume (yeah, a tux is probably overkill, but for $15 on e-bay, who can resist?) But no shopping trip worth a blog post, which does makes me think that, much as I like a pretty new lipstick like the next girl, maybe I could consider joining The Compact and go without anything new for a year (yes, they make certain exceptions for kids needs, and for food and medicines); I mean, if I could still go to Crossroads occasionally for a new-to-me shirt, I think I’d be good. And given how infrequently I remember to wear lipstick, I could probably make it through the year without a new one…

Anyway, I did finally go to a store today, with Eli, and even though we didn’t buy very much, it is perhaps a blog-worthy experience. You be the judge.

Here are the rules for the meme:
Pick a recent shopping trip — for clothes, shoes, groceries, doesn’t matter. The only guideline is that it will be easier to play if you purchased at least a few things.

Now tell us, about your purchases:

1. What are you proud of?
2. What are you embarrassed by?
3. What do think you couldn’t live without?
4. What did you most enjoy purchasing?
5. What were you most tempted by? (This last one may or may not be an actual purchase!)

So, we went to the grocery store, a small, family-owned chain in the neighborhood, and bought a gallon of 2% milk (for the boys), a half gallon of skim milk (for me), a bottle of soy sauce, a big container of non-fat plain yogurt, and two bottles of dishwasher rinse aid.

1. I am, oddly, proudest of the rinse-aid. I have hated to buy the stuff, it seems like a ploy concocted by the dishwasher manufacturers and chemical companies to make you buy more junk that just goes down the drain, and it has seemed fairly poisonous. But the dishwasher works a lot better when we use it, so what to do? Today, I finally found a “greener,” biodegradable version of the stuff. And it’s cheaper than the regular kind. So, yay.

2. I’m not embarrassed by anything I bought, but I am annoyed that I forgot to bring canvas shopping bags. We have half a dozen, and I need to start keeping them in the car, especially now that San Francisco is, in an effort to reduce the use of plastic grocery bags, charging for their use. I used paper today, and got the canvas bags out of the closet — one step closer to the car.

3. We couldn’t live without the milk. The boys and I eat cereal every morning for breakfast, Eli drinks 2 glasses of milk a day, Tony makes a cappuccino or two every day, I put milk in my tea. We have become the kind of family that always needs a gallon of milk. We’ve got several brands of organic milk to choose from, all of it local, too.

4. Nothing terribly exciting on this grocery list, but I think I most enjoyed purchasing the rinse-aid (I know, I know), partly because of #1, partly because it was the one thing light and durable enough that Eli could take it off the shelf and fling it into the cart. Watching him enjoy that so much made me buy two bottles.

5. Well, we were tempted by a few things. Eli, oddly, was most tempted by the Silicone-Zone Bar Board Set, four colorful anti-skid cutting boards for your cocktail set-up. We don’t really drink cocktails around here, though maybe Eli’s trying to tell me we should! On the other hand, I was most tempted, as I always am, by the pretty, robins egg blue Nigella Lawson mixing bowls. But I have three sets of mixing bowls, including a really lovely ceramic set Tony gave me, so I just admired these and moved on. We were both tempted by ice cream: “Mama, look! ah-keem! and more ah-keem! lot ah-keem!” said Eli. Mmmm, ice-cream. But I know we have a gallon in the freezer, so we moved on.

And now for the tagging: Libby, Violeta, Momifesto, LoveBug and RolleyPolley, Fertile Ground, and anyone else who needs a kickstart to a blog post!