Once upon a time, long before I decided to be a doctor, I wanted to be a chef. Actually, I wanted to be a dinosaur - but having no idea where I'd pick up my paycheck for doing dinosaur stuff, I fell back on chef. I was probably about six at the time & lacked an appreciable understanding of what exactly a chef did though, because somewhere between pouring cereal into a bowl without missing & learning use a can opener so I could make Spaghettios on my own, I decided that I mastered the art of cooking & could move on. Eighteen years later, it occurs to me that perhaps I allowed myself to peak a little too early in the kitchen. Over the years I've picked up the most basic of cooking skills: I can boil noodles, I can handle eggs, & I can grill meat (sort of...I've never done it solo, but I feel I could handle it without recreating any scenes from Backdraft if I ever tried). I'd like to move beyond spaghetti, omelettes, & burgers into something more substantial. Doing this, however, means going to a place that's always been foreign to me. A place where it's always spring & there's always fresh fruit & vegetables. A place where you get to personalize the fat content of your milk. This place is, of course, the grocery store.

Now, I've lived on my own enough that the grocery store isn't exactly a new concept to me. I've been going to the grocery store for years, & yet I must admit that I still don't entirely understand the grocery store. The produce aisle, for instance, is one that always gets me. If there's region of the store in which people put on their serious faces, it's when its time to pick out fruits & veggies. I kind of understand what people are looking for they're inspecting, say, the grapes. I personally just pick up the largest bag I see - but I understand that green grapes are preferable to brown, & that shriveled grapes are just no fun. Apples inspection, similarly, I suppose is understandabe. No one likes mushy apples - at least not after the age of 2. What's with the bananas, though? What are people looking at when they're picking up & putting down various bananas? Some are large, some are green, but - & I say this with all due respect to the dedicated banana biologists - I don't think there is any other info of interest that can be gleaned from this fruit. Vegetables mystify me even more. I mean, an onion is an onion. They, too, come in different colors - but I think that's it. Are there people who come home from the grocery only to have their spouse immediately complain about the quality of the onion as soon as its pulled out of the bag? I also find it weird when people feel the need to smell the produce before putting in the cart - or worse, putting it back. Choriander is something you name your son, not something to be exposed to your nostrils. (If you're not Ryan Heath, I admit it's probably neither). Med Student Observation: It surprises me that people are very concerned about picking up germs from others, but for some reason infinitely less preoccupied with the thought that maybe exposing food to their facial orifices & then throwing back into the pile could possibly pose a health risk to others.

The rest of the grocery may not pose the danger of bacon flu that the greens do, but the whole process mystifies me. I like, for instance, the World Cheese aisle. In the World Cheese aisle, one will find Buffalo Cheddar, Wisconsin Marble, Phoenix Pepperjack...do you see a pattern here? Little Rock, AR is, understandably, not a global cheese hub - but one would think that in the World Cheese aisle that at least, say, the Swiss would have a moderately better chance at a showing than they would at the World Series. Moving on to the bread aisle, one cannot help but be impressed. There are literally walls of different textures, seasonings, flavors, & caloric content of breads. Now, I have never met a bread enthusiast before - although I expect that's b/c my local grocery has been blowing its budget attracting all of them to stock its grains aisle. (This may provide the explanation for the lackluster corps of geographers in the dairy aisle). It really is mind blowing how personalized bread has become. I mean, I've been into a Subway in the past ten years, so I understand that there are different types of bread out there - but I'd never really about bread having so many flavors. There may be many markets hurting in this economy, but there's no indication that the bread industry has taken a hit. In fact, the plethora of loaves is so overwhelming that I just have to pick up the closest one to me & move on. I've seen people spend hours walking up down the bread shelves. In fact, I think it's the same people in the same outfits each time - I'm not sure they ever leave. Do they want the spicy Italian thin slice with garlic seasoning or the hearty thicker stuff with extra grains thrown in? & what about those loaves on the shelves up so high that only people with growth hormone disorders can see them? Does anybody buy those? Do the grocers replace them? Milk similarly mystifies me. I understand the presence of skim & chocolate, but what is the actual difference between 1 & 2%? (Although actually, since skim is fat-free, I suppose really we're just looking at 0, 1, & 2%). Who decided that milk could have a maximum fat content of 2%? People are weird about the fat content of their milk as well. People will get divorced, switch churches, switch careers, & move clear across the country if they feel it's necessary before they will consider changing their milk habits. Bring home milk with a fat content with literally one percentage point fat content different than they are used to & it's game over. How could you have screwed this up?

Anyway, back to reality, I'm generally okay navigating the grocery store until this point. Produce, Grains, Dairy...these are generic aisles. Then I think, alright, I'm making chili - time to find the ingredients for this. Wikipedia, glorious invention that it is, has informed me of all I need to prepare chili. Ground beef is easy enough - I don't really understand what all the ratios printed on the packages are for, although I imagine the difference between whatever 87/13 & 90/10 could be likened to the milk wars alluded to above. Chili gets more complicated it turns out. I need tomato paste. Wikipediaing tomato paste yields a stub, so no help there - I just learn that apparently you can buy tomatoes sliced, diced, crushed, as a sauce, & as a paste (Tomatoes are apparently the bread of the fruit world). I look for a few minutes, finding nothing, & decide to call my sister. After spending a few minutes convincing her that, yes, I did have the sense to look in the section with canned tomatoes &, yes, I'm sure actually there - I give up & ponder how to get around my tomato pickle. I suspect I could just buy tomatoes & make them into a paste, but that would require venturing back into the produce jungle. I'll take my chances elsewhere. I ask a stock guy pushing a big cart of stuff to put on shelves if he knows where I can procure this paste, & he responds by telling me he's never heard of the product. As I hang my head in despair & defeat, I notice a palette of cans sitting on his cart & ponder how rude it would be to simply pick up a can off it. I still need spices, so I decide I'll go get those & then come back. I have to admit, I'm really only aware of about ten spices, so I was surprised at how extensive the selection was. I don't know enough about spices to know which brand produces the better spices (& please inform me if I should be aware that are different cinnamons or oreganos). I just pick up the ones with the prettiest letters on the boxes & return to get my paste. I see that he has not quite gotten to the product of interest yet, so I walk up to him, pick up a can & thank him for finding it before heading to the register. (Actually, I had to get beans, but thankfully beans are the one food that no one has come up with a way to make purchasing them more complicated.) I can't remember if I needed anything else, but I can finally go home & get into the kitchen. & now that I'm done writing, I actually will. (P to the S, any brave souls want to try my chili?)

Normally right about now I'd be lounging on the beach, but since the sky keeps insisting it might very well rain...I'm stuck inside for the moment. Actually, I fully intend to head to the fitness center in the near future, but I'm afraid I'm gonna run back into the guy who feels the need to belt out every song he recognized at the top of his lungs. He's slightly more courteous if he's not immediately familiar with the tune, but after he feels he's got the chorus down his confidence comes back & off he goes! I understand the desire to sing, in the shower I use those pipes like I'm on American Idol & my continued contestantship depends upon it (I'm currently performing "Pretty Women", just in case I ever do make it on the show I'll have something if they do Stephen Sondheim week). I'll even admit that whilst in the gym, I often can't help but dance to whatever's playing...but I feel this is a much more subtle & appropriate response. Plus, dancing's awesome.
Anyway, growing up I always preferred the mountains. Snow skiing was the only physical activity I didn't suck at, & so I romanticized the snow caps for ages. I still do, but being able to live in Florida (formerly my home away from home away from home...now I have to scratch one since I don't get to live outside of Chicago anymore...O great white city...). There's so much to love about Florida, though, that beaches have slowly been creeping up on my scale for awhile. The women are much lovelier, & there's a glorious ratio of them to men. You get to be tan. You get to pretend you're brave when you get in the water when you & everyone else knows there potentially sharks, or worse...jellyfish (they're so slimy!). The bars are better, the sushi is fresher, & skim boarding is infinitely more fun (though no less painful) than snowboarding. (Sorry, I've always believed snow skiing was superior to boarding...) Sure, you can get burnt on a beach, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't happen anymore since that Baz Luhrmann song.
The best thing about beaches, however, is having cigars on them. I am positive that if we could travel back to see the moments when history's greatest friends genuinely bonded, it would have been over cigars. Camaraderie is never higher than when one smokes a cigar with his friends.
Of course, I think cigars are innately wonderful entities anyway. I like irony, & it is because I like irony that I like cigars. A cigar, you see, is only to be had when one wants to relax. You don't rush through a cigar, in the same way you don't take shots with pinot. Incidentally, I also enjoy relaxation, so it all really goes hand in hand...Anyway, as I was saying, cigars are intriguing little beings. As they are lit, there is a dizzying amount of smoke released. It clouds everything in front of you. Sure, you can blow it out of the way, but the smoke's always there. There's nothing that can be done, it simply clouds & eventually vanishes. There's the thing, though, the two overriding characteristics of cigars are smoke & diffusion. Yet despite the universal sense of loss associated with both of these things, life is at its most lucid. Adrift in an ocean of that which cannot help but be clouded & lost, life is never more diaphanous. It's in these moments that one realizes exactly what it was one was looking for, or what one needs. Anyone who claims to have found truth without the assistance of an Ashton Double Magnum genuinely needs to reconsider their position in life.
I guess what I'm trying to say is...I wish I had a cigar.