While I'm Sitting Here

I might as well blog. Why not?

Carolyn's wonderful gift came on Monday! A lovely gift card AND a nice eco-friendly (also, this being Trader Joe's, luau-friendly) shopping bag, and a bag of dried cranberries, which I love.

So, since I knew Carolyn would want to know, I saved the receipt...and I'm sure you'd all like to know, too. So:

TJ's salami and cheese platter. This is the kind of thing I absolutely love and NEVER allow myself to buy...if I'm having a party, I feel guilty because I haven't cut up all the cheese and salami myself, and if I'm alone, it just feels like rank self-indulgence. But I had a present! So I bought it.

OLIVE OIL! I have been bereft for weeks.
And two bags of salad...see above.

A package of prosciutto...on which I can live forever (no, no, not this package, just prosciutto in general)

Some nice fresh garlic...surely this doesn't need an explanation.

BACON! Again, bereft for weeks. (And eggs and toast are very nice, but they need...something.)

TWO packages of my beloved TJ's crabcakes. Admittedly, the price has gone up...they used to be $2.99 and are now $3.29. However, ONE crabcake at almost any other place you can name is $5.99, and TJ's come two in a package.

A pack (just one piece) of flounder stuffed with crabmeat (do we begin to see a pattern here? I love fish, and it gets expensive...)

A wonderful loaf of sliced Tuscan bread - at exactly the same price I've been paying for horrible supermarket sandwich bread.

BRIE! YAY!

TJ's Everything bite size crackers, which are exactly like everything bagels in little cracker form and have now replaced Wheat Thins and Triscuits in my personal cracker pantheon

A tin of anchovies, because I love sliced egg and anchovy sandwiches...an old New York thing which you used to be able to get at any deli and which nobody has heard of in years

Cheddar horseradish spread, which I like, just because I do.

So there. A shopping list for the snack deprived person.

I must add that the salami and cheese platter met a terrible collection of fates. First of all, Sarah (and Seth) have been cleaning her room because my wonderful mother-in-law Ben turned up last night (as I mentioned) en route from Geneva to Washington. So Monday night I thought Sarah certainly deserved a snack after her labors (Seth wasn't with her...I owe him dinner). And I hauled out the cheese and salami platter.

Then Ben arrived around 8:30 last night, and I hauled it out again for a little snack before we ordered tons of Chinese.

AND I PUT THE REMAINS AWAY CAREFULLY IN THE REFRIGERATOR (well, Sarah did) BECAUSE I HAD PLANS FOR EVERY SINGLE LITTLE LEFTOVER PIECE OF IT.

Can we all guess the end of this story? Of course we can. My cousin, the stomach that walks like a man, came up at 3 in the morning to cook dinner (he does this), and seeing Sarah and Seth chatting intimately on the couch (according to him) decided not to cook, but instead to see what he could find in the icebox. And now the whole thing is gone. The salami, the havarti...everything. And if I haven't made it clear...I WANTED THAT. When I mildly announced to him that he had eaten my lunch for the next two days, he had fits. So I made him buy me a half pound of extremely expensive Gourmet Garage ham. And an inhaler, although he doesn't know about that part yet. This is known as, up yours, pussycat. Nobody touches MY cheese and salami platter and gets away with it.

I am now going to go and eat some nice leftover Chinese food, of which there is LOTS. And I haven't even started on my crabcakes or salad or finished the horseradish cheddar or ANYTHING! I am truly blessed.

Love, Wendy