Navigating the yogurt section at the local Market Basket can be a treacherous experience. Now it used to be that yogurt was only for health food nuts. I remember working in the dairy section at a supermarket myself (at the now defunct Cerretanis) back in the 1970s and yogurt was far from being the most popular item in the dairy. Cottage cheese would outsell yogurt back then. I can only remember a few brands of yogurt back then, Dannons seemed to be the most popular, and it only occupied a small amount of shelf space.
Now, forget about it. There are over a hundred different yogurts and the yogurt section takes up almost 1/3 of the dairy section (minus the milk) and that section is always ravaged. No matter what time of day I go to the supermarket, they are always in the process of trying to re-stock it and they always seem to be right in the section where my yogurt lies (Stonyfield Farms whole ilk French Vanilla or Strawberries and Cream). So I have to sort of poke around the dairy worker until I find what I need. The dairy worker is probably the least personable person in the entire store and as a former dairy worker myself, I can sort of relate.
Back in my dairy days, there were always these little old ladies who would totally mess up my aisle by trying to locate the item with the longest expiration date. It would be say, February 2nd but these old biddies wouldn't be content with a quart of milk with a February 22nd expiration date. No! They would push all that milk aside looking way in the back of the shelf for the one milk carton with a February 27th expiration date. Then they would triumphantly present the milk to me and ask me to "go in the back" to see if there anything fresher. They would tell me that they only use the milk in their coffee and that even with an expiration date nearly four weeks away, it would expire before they get to use it all.
Then they would do the same thing with the eggs, and they'd have to open each egg carton and poke at the eggs to make sure they are not cracked (cracking a few in the process) and when they finally located the carton of eggs they wanted, they would bring it to me and have me break the carton in half because they only wanted half a dozen.
So I do understand why dairy workers in supermarkets are sullen. However, it is especially so with those entrusted with replenishing the yogurt. Yogurt does not bring out the best in supermarket dairy workers, that's for sure. Because as they are trying to replenish the shelf and making the rows of yogurt nice and neat, shoppers all around them are demolishing the entire section, reaching WAY in the back for that freshest yogurt and getting everything all mixed up.
As I was checking out of the supermarket, the woman in front of me had a bratty kid who insisted on putting the items onto the belt himself. Sure enough, he dropped a jar of applesauce and it spilled all over the floor. Chaos ensured. Everybody behind me in line, knowing there was going to be a delay, started clanking their carriages against each other as they frantically searched for another checkout line that didn't already have 5-6 people waiting. As I was next in line anyway, I decided to wait it out and eventually, some 16-year-old kid came by with a bag of sawdust and poured it over the spilled applesauce and carefully picked up the larger shards of broken glass as the cashier filed her nails with a bored "I want to be anywhere else but here" look on her face. Meanwhile, the bagger merely stood there gawking into space until the front-end manager shooed him away to help bag on another aisle.
Finally the applesauce was swept up (sawdust works wonders on spills) and the line started moving again, but not before the bratty kid who spilled the applesauce had time to slip about six candy bars to his mother's purchases (I don't think she noticed) and I got to scan all the headlines of the tabloids which haven't changed in thirty years - UFOs are still abducting people and celebrities are still getting new hairstyles and going into rehab.
Another thing that hasn't changed since I worked there in the 1970s, supermarkets are still pretty much segregated along gender lines. The cashiers are typically all girls and the few boys that work the registers are effeminate. Mostly boys are bagging the grocieres and only boys (never girls) will collect the carriages in the parking lot. Men work in the butcher shop and little old ladies work in the bakery. The deli always has somebody looking just like Richie Cunningham slicing up the meats and cheeses (his father can be found supervising the forklift drivers in the warehouse). The store manager is always male and never younger than 55 years old.
They say that wine is the "drink of the gods" but Madeira wine is definitely the drink of the founding fathers. I have discovered Madeira wine recently and highly recommend it. Madeira is a fortified wine from the island of Madeira (off the coast of Portugal) which became famous during colonial times when its fortified wine became a major export to the colonies because of its indestructable qualities. To reach the colonies, the wine would pass through the tropics and the heat it was subject to actually enhanced the wine by increasing the flavor and imparting a pleasant burnt quality to it. Eventually, customers would request Madeira wine that circumvented the globe and be willing to pay extra money for it! Why this particular wine is the only type that doesn't get ruined but actually enhanced when exposed to extreme heat and constant rocking (in the holds of ships) is a mystery.
Madeira wine was a favorite of many of America's founding fathers such as John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. The wine would be shipped to America in "pipes" which when I first heard the term, sounded like those narrow slender cannisters that the ice wine gets packed in at the liquor store. I imagined myself back in 1776 sitting down to a pipe of wine after signing the Declaration of Independence (in a signature large enough so that King George III could read it without his spectacles!). However, it turns out that a "pipe" of wine back in the day consisted of approx. 145 US gallons! I would have had quite the hangover the next day. Now John Hancock would order up to 25 pipes at a time for his personal household consumption so if you wanted to go to a real party back in the day, John Hancock's residence would have been the place to go! So anyhow, as I sit here by the fire and sip my Madeira in my pewter tankard, I am very much in touch with my founding fathers as the Madeiras available today, even though it is no longer transported in wooden ships, is not much different than the drink of our forefathers. That is because the modern aging process (for the finer wines) is accomplished by gently rocking the casks in heated warehouses for a number of years!
However, be careful when buying Madeira wine. Many liquor stores have "cheap" Madeira-style wine that is only suitable for cooking with. Rule of thumb is that anything less than $15 a bottle is not worth drinking. Decent Madeira is in the $16-24 bottle range and many of the finer bottles (aged 10 years or more) will run $40-80. I've tried both and there is no major difference between the two so unless you have money to burn, stick with the $16-24 bottles. Two of my favorite moderately-priced madeiras is the Sandeman "Fine Rich" Madeira ($17) and the Broadbent 5-Year Reserve ($24). Pour yourself a glass sometime! And if you open a bottle, don't worry about it spoiling. It can sit in your refrigerator for weeks and taste just as good as the day you opened it! Not that Madeira often has the chance to last more than a few days in my refrigerator.
Some of you may have heard about the instrumental post-rock band called "Explosions In The Sky". Their music is eerie, epic and cinematic and the more you listen to it, the more it grabs you. If you ever saw the motion picture (not TV show) Friday Night Lights, their music was featured in the soundtrack. Otherwise, you may never have heard of them as they don't get much radio airplay. Their music is composed for nothing more than a set of drums and three electric guitars but they create brooding, ominous melodies with crashing climaxes. Check them out sometime if you are in the mood for something a little different. I like to listen to them as background music when reading science fiction novels.
Snowbound in New England. It's been a while since I had this much snow on the ground in these parts. This afternoon, I had to shovel a path through my yard to get to the firewood. My dog cannot walk through the yard without getting buried over her head so I had to shovel out a cubbyhole for her to relieve herself in. Snowbanks on my street are so high that they are over the mailboxes. As you walk down my street, you can see the mailboxes poking through the middle of the snowbanks - very strange sight. The ice dams on the roof are especially bad this year.
