You know what I hate? Rotten produce.

Welcome to another instalment of “You know what I hate?” In today’s episode, we will discuss how much I hate rotten produce, and I don’t mean the wilting head of lettuce in the crisper I forgot to use. I’m talking about the brand new apples I bought at the grocery store YESTERDAY.

We live really close to a No Frills (a cheaper grocery store chain in Canada) so I usually shop there knowing full well that I either won’t find what I’m looking for, or what produce I do buy should be eaten relatively quickly. Yesterday, I went to Fortinos, a higher-end store that charges more for the same no-name stuff No Frills carries but also has a deli, a beautifully piled produce department, and a whole section for fancy cheese. I went there for ingredients I knew No Frills wouldn’t have and because I wanted to blunder my way though an awkward conversation with a cheese professional. I could have easily stopped at No Frills on the way home but it was about 4pm so I knew it would be busy and I was in no mood to pilot Jeff’s old truck in a parking lot now consisting largely of piled snow. Thus, it was to the Fortinos produce section I went, looking for Granny Smith apples.

It was only this morning, as I made Jeff’s lunch before he went to work, that I found one of the apples had a funny… thing… where the stem should be. It looked sort of like a cobweb so I tried to wash it off. When it became clear that it wasn’t simply going to rinse away, I got out a knife to cut it out. When I sliced into the top of the apple, I discovered that it was literally rotten to the core. I stuffed another apple into Jeff’s lunch bag so he could leave but I’m still annoyed. I don’t care that it wasn’t very expensive, now I have to go back to Fortinos and get my money back. As much as I rag on No Frills, I’ve never bought apples there and then cut into them the next day to find a brown, mushy mess.

How does this even happen? How is the middle totally decayed when the body of it still looks edible? Maybe I was on the right track with the cobweb. Maybe a bug made its home in this apple. Ugh, ew. This concludes this segment of, “You know what I hate?” Bugs. I mean, rotten produce.

You know what I hate? Grocery shopping.

Welcome to my new segment, “You know what I hate?” I’ll occasionally post blogs with this title when some part of the cooking process makes me want to give up and order pizza.

In today’s instalment of “You know what I hate?”, I would like to bitch about grocery shopping.

Little bit of back story: I only just got my driver’s license in August so before that, I had to make Jeff take me to the grocery store. He’d always complain about shopping so we’d only go once a week and I’d do a huge shop. Now that I have my license, I go a few times a week and get what I need for a couple days. Jeff has not done groceries since the summer (I’m sure he’s really upset about that *eye roll*).

Today I drove all over the city to 4 (FOUR!) different grocery stores looking for a ham roast. NOBODY had it. Apparently they were on sale last week. I looked at the time at 3pm and gave up because I no longer had time to cook it, even if I did find it.

I went to No Frills (a cheaper grocery store chain in Canada) first to get spices and pineapple slices, so I’m super happy I have enough dry mustard and whole cloves to last until the apocalypse but no ham to dress with them!!

When I got home, I thought about making lasagne but then I’d have to go out again and that wasn’t happening.

I decided to make Chicken Primavera again and laid down on the couch to have a nap. When Jeff walked in the door, I was just waking up. Guess what we did for dinner?

Ordered pizza.