So I don’t know how to help you process the $6.99 box of Flavor Blasted Goldfish and coffee creamer made entirely of chemicals I purchase every.single.time. To say nothing of the Oreos and Totino’s frozen pizzas. Premade, processed pudding cups? Sure. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese? We take vitamins. Not all our food comes from someone’s farm, is what I’m saying. If 75 percent hails from the actual earth and 25 percent comes from a steel vat of partially hydrogenated oil in a laboratory, I’m willing to make this ideological leap. Mama’s busy sometimes.
But admittedly, some items in our modern grocery stores feel like they are heralding end times. In the deli department, a wandering eye will spot such delightful foodstuffs as an “olive loaf.” Surely you agree that anytime the word “loaf” is applied to a meat product, we are approaching societal breakdown. We have a brand called Steak-umm, which is a “chopped and formed emulsified meat product that is comprised of beef trimmings left over after an animal is slaughtered.” These are the sorts of exported products that make the rest of the world admire America. Oh sure, Italy, you may have hand-rolled pasta from a local wheat mill and cheese made from your cousin’s grass-fed cows, but we have chicken nuggets made from factory runoff meat slurry. Waste not, want not, is what we say, Italy. Here’s a low-quality fast-food restaurant for your nation’s capital. You’re welcome.
Also, I’ve never mastered the art of meal planning (and by “art” I mean basic diligence exercised by most healthy adults). The whole idea of planning out two weeks of meals and recipes and lists makes me want to cover my eyes like a southern damsel. I mean, I write entire books but can’t muster the discipline to compile a one-page list. It’s too much work! What am I supposed to do, think about it in advance and write it all down?? Adulting is hard. So instead, I go to the grocery store and spend three times more money than necessary.
But at least five times during every trip, I recall some dinner idea and spend five minutes pulling up the recipe on my tiny phone in the middle of Aisle 4, like a rock in a river everyone has to flow around. This is immediately followed by a text to whoever is home: Can you check if we have coconut milk? Do we have any green onions left? How many ounces is the can of tomato sauce in the pantry? Is there still a jar of ghee in the back of the fridge? (Everyone loves my grocery store texts. This is how families bond.)
Finally I get to the checkout lane. Without exception, my cart is piled so dangerously high that I am holding six items in my hands and tucked into my armpits that literally could not fit, while simultaneously keeping the precarious bounty from spilling off the cart with my right foot. (One time I checked out with Sydney and Remy, who is Ethiopian, and between the different-skinned girls and ridiculous cart, the checker asked, “Do you run a children’s home?” For the love.)
The intuitive bagger immediately gets a second cart, because my burgeoning basket could basically qualify for vehicular manslaughter should it ram an unsuspecting customer. It weighs around eight hundred pounds and could lay waste to a small child caught in its inertia.
Thus begins the long haul home. As I pull into the driveway, I see my children scatter like a bunch of draft dodgers during the Vietnam War. (Just in case you wondered how naturally helpful the children of a pastor and Christian author are, now you know. Zero percent.)
The unloading and putting away of the groceries is easily the worst part, and here is the singular moment those five kids come in handy. It’s like a small staff. I fetch them from their hiding spots as my labor force, and they manage to eat three entire bags of food between the car and kitchen. After throwing out the old takeout containers, mysterious leftovers, and sad cilantro (why can I never use it in time?), I engage the Tetris of fridge organization and rearrange the pantry from whatever bullcrap disorder my kids inflicted, because it seems fine to them to put the lentils next to the baking powder. Then it is the rinsing of the produce, the breaking down of the cardboard for recycling, the folding of the twenty-nine reusable grocery bags, and the washing of the Tupperware resuscitated from cryopreservation.
From start to finish, this whole process takes around seventeen years.
At least I’ll only have to do it again six days from now.
JEN’S GROCERY STORE DAY SUPER SANDWICH
This is my go-to recipe on shopping day, because by the time I’ve put the food in the basket, put the food on the conveyer belt, put the food into the car, taken the food into the house, washed the food, put the food in the fridge/freezer/pantry, I’M OVER THE FOOD. This is not a day to make an elaborate meal, because I have angry feelings toward food. So, make the grocery deli and bakery your sous chefs:
Bakery:
Ciabatta bread (one loaf for normal families, two for freakishly large families like ours)
Deli Counter:
Tub of pesto
? lb pepperoni
? lb salami
? lb ham
? lb mozzerella, sliced thin
Tub of marinara
Produce section:
Container of butter lettuce (why do the other lettuces even try?)
1–2 tomatoes
Fresh basil
Purple onions, if they won’t incite mob violence
Pineapple
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Slice your ciabatta loaf in half lengthways. Spread a thin layer of pesto on the bottom, layer up the meats, cheese, and veggies and basil, and spread a thin layer of marinara on the top half. Close ’er up, stick on a sheet pan, cover with foil, and warm through for about fifteen minutes. Slice and serve with cute little individual bowls of marinara, because the only thing better than marinara is more marinara.
Cut up a pineapple for your “side dish,” because you are still very much over all the food.
This entire procedure takes five minutes to assemble. Maddeningly, your people will fall all over themselves loving this dinner while barely commenting on the two-hour Indian feast you prepared the night before. I TOASTED AND GROUND MY OWN SPICES WHILE MAKING BIRYANI AND NAAN, and they are like, Mmmmm! Store-bought pesto on bread! Delicious, Mom! You’re a great cook! When in fact, I’ve made a sandwich.
Fine. I’m awesome.
It’s not the load that breaks you down; it’s the way you carry it.1
— LENA HORNE
CHAPTER 5
WE LIVE
In 2015, I had the opportunity to speak on the farewell tour of Women of Faith after its twenty years of faithful service to women. These gals, some in their sixties, seventies, and even eighties, have changed so many lives, I cannot even imagine what their corner of heaven is going to look like. (It will be very crowded with plenty of inappropriate humor, I can tell you that.)
Sandi Patty was one of the longtime WOF contributors. If you don’t know Sandi, there is a zero percent chance you grew up evangelical in the eighties. I wore her tapes plumb out. She is a singing legend, and her particular flair involves super high, grand finishes. The kind where you just fall out. I adore her. I adore her to the ends of the universe, her and her whole big crazy wild family.
One weekend on the tour, she asked for prayer for an impending procedure on her vocal cords, kind of a scary one, and since I am a stable adult, I hollered:
“Not her voice, Lord! Anything but her voice! Take her legs!”