Let’s say you live alone, have an income comparable to when you babysat the neighborhood kids in high school, refuse to let your future dead corpse decompose by filling it with as many preservatives as you can while you’re alive, and are most definitely a lady-type. How do you successfully shop for your own groceries? It is the middle of January, after all, which means you probably haven’t acquired more than five to ten grocery items in one trip since early November, insisting that you’ll just subsist off holiday food and your pre-finals stockpile of $2 frozen entrees for the next couple of months. You’ve finally, reluctantly, thrown out the coagulated remains of gravy, stuffing, and bacon spinach dip into which you’ve been dipping chunks of turkey breast because mom didn’t send a bag of chips home with you from Christmas.

Where once there was an impressive array of Tupperware containers now there is…nothing. A vast emptiness. You fear reaching your hand all the way to the back of the fridge lest it get lost in the swirling vortex that no doubt sucked out the remaining contents because you could have sworn you at least had half a container of Velveeta back there. Quick! Get ye to your local grocer’s, squire! But bear these tips in mind:

1. Fuck lists. Seriously, fuck them. You’re way past a shopping list, buddy. Unless you need the comfort of having something to carry with you like a security blanket, in which case get a piece of paper and just write “food” on it. Shopping lists are for responsible people who plan out meals, successfully maintain savings accounts, and aren’t on a first-name basis with the Jimmy John’s delivery guy. If you think starting a massive grocery shopping trip with absolutely no guidance sounds intimidating, well then you fucking should be intimidated. If it helps, just tell yourself that you won’t be bossed by some draconian piece of stupid paper. You aren’t getting four boxes of Scooby Doo Kraft Macaroni and Cheese because some jerk (you) told you to; you’re doing it because you (a jerk) want to!

2. Ignore all previous suggestions to the contrary: go shopping hungry. You’re typically told to go shopping on a full stomach so you aren’t tempted to buy the bajillions of tasty treats you have cravings for when you’re hungry. But the expired mayonnaise and moldy jar of French onion dip in the fridge aren’t going to make sweet condiment love in your refrigerator and somehow repopulate the whole thing for you. You need to be hungry so you buy lots of food. At a minimum, you should definitely walk past the collection of whole rotisserie chickens under a heat lamp and say to yourself, “Yes. That is a good idea.”

3. Produce? Who do you think you are, Bobby Flay? Produce is like abortions: we definitely shouldn’t get them, because we know ultimately the heartache it may cause. But it’s nice to know they’re available to us if the situation should arise that we absolutely, definitely, unavoidably need an abortion. Errr….to buy produce. Anywho, avoid the section that has brightly colored healthy things that look like they’d make you feel sprightly and energetic. Unless you’ve got a specific meal planned that requires a plant-based substance, you’re just going to end up watching the majority of it rot away into a slush of brown goo at the bottom of your crisper drawer. It hurts to know you’ve failed; don’t put yourself through that.

4. Pretend the world’s about to end. Shop as if an advanced race of aliens has made first contact, and the nerdy bespectacled programmer, after having slaved over a computer program of his own design for hours upon hours, has translated their first deep, guttural message: “We’re going to go ahead and harvest your brains for our kitchen sink sponges, if that’s not too much trouble.” SHIT! Humanity’s going crazy! Assholes are body slamming old ladies to try to beat them down the canned food aisles, and old ladies are screaming in terror and angrily cursing the God that has forsaken them. You’re welcome to get in character, if it helps. Strap on a football helmet, wear your steel-toeiest of steel-toed boots, and tromp through the grocery store like you’re being followed by a brain-sucking extraterrestrial. Buy foods that will last you at least a year in your underground bunker. Don’t bother with brand names: in a post-apocalyptic nightmare scenario, nobody’s going to remember what the fuck General Mills was, anyway.

5. The last person you should trust is yourself. “I’m going to make myself a lunch every day this month!” No you won’t. “I’m going to cook lots of lentil-based things so I should buy this five pound bag of lentils!” No you won’t, and no you shouldn’t. “I will eat a salad with every meal!” Bullshit, and that lettuce is going to wilt into a puddle like Ryan Gosling just brushed its hair out of its eyes. Absolutely nothing you tell yourself you’re going to do will you actually do. So you may as well take this as an opportunity to learn a harsh life lesson in a relatively benign situation: you will always be your biggest let-down.

6. Yogurt, I guess. You wouldn’t be a lady-type if there weren’t at least a handful of varieties of yogurt in your fridge at any given moment. You don’t even have to eat them; just have them there in case someone opens your fridge one day and wonders why you, a lady-type, don’t have any yogurt.

–Katie Sisneros

Photo by rick, creative commons.