Unexpected Item in the Bagging Area

Welcome, self-serving reader, as this week we talk about shopping for groceries and other mundanities.

There are two words which spring to mind when thinking about grocery shopping over here: the first is choice (there are 20 versions of everything) and the second is gorblimey-Mary-Poppins-HOW-MUCH? Because yes, the cost of living is insane in the Bay Area. We easily spend 2-3x as much on groceries here as we would back home, and "popping into the supermarket for X" usually turns into spending a baseline of $20-30.

I also don't really like American supermarkets much. They tend to be darker, smaller and less well organized than their UK counterparts and there's something vaguely grubby about them which I'm not a fan of. So these days we tend to get groceries delivered, which is mostly a great experience, but occasionally provides some classy and unexpected entertainment.

And so it was last week, when we found we'd received one more bag of shopping than we were expecting. What treats were in there you ask? Well, heavy cream, half-and-half, squirty cream, pumpkin puree, sweet potato puree, crumbled gorgonzola, a bag of shallots and a bag of lemons. In case you didn't know, this week it was Thanksgiving! We tried in vain to contact the delivery company and give this stuff back, but eventually we disposed of most of it via Helen's wonderful choirmates.

Talking of unexpected items: what do you think this is?

Excitingly, this blue reflector in the street is a thing they place adjacent to fire hydrants over here, presumably so that when you're tanking it down the street in your fire engine you can find the things. I'm not sure what you do if there's a fire in the daytime though; these things really do stick out at night, but during the day, not so much. Anyway, we learned this because on an especially slow news day recently, there was a story about hydrants not being particular well maintained in Oakland, so there you go.

We've just come back from a quick trip to San Francisco to go and see the Golden State Warriors play, so now we've ticked off 3 of the "big 4" sports here. More on that next week, when I've got over the heavy cream!