Kids on those !@#$ wheeled shoes. Oy.
Or the people that realize they forget something while checking out and have to go back tearing through the store for that gallon of milk. Oh wait, that's usually me.
If you're willing to travel a little bit over to Harvard Square, I'm a huge fan of Henrietta's Table in the Charles Hotel on Harvard Square - really delicious, fresh, local, straightforward food. We had a few large group dinners there for work that went quite smoothly - we had quite a wide range of eaters there, including a few vegetarians, and everyone left happy.
I also just went to the downstairs (casual) part of Upstairs on the Square in Harvard Square a few weeks ago and was quite impressed. A little more gourmet but a really nice range of different kinds of price ranges and food in a really neat space.
To be honest, I didn't live in Boston that long but I never found a seafood place there that I was crazy about, beyond the typical tourist places... I'd be curious to read what others post.
How about Sel De La Terre? It's a beautiful and convenient location by the Aquarium and I've had fantastic experiences there, and according to their website they do have private rooms.
Reminds me of the time my husband ordered a steak at an upscale restaurant where the menu description said it came with "baby carrots." The steak was a fine size, and quite delicious, but it came with ONE baby carrot. Cut in half.
It made me so happy to read this post, nice to know my shopping habits aren't as bizarre or obsessive as I previously thought. (Well, either that or there are as many bizarre obsessive people out there as me.)
My stores -
1. In season - weekly visits to local farmer's market for produce, eggs, a little of meat and to pick up CSA box
2. Harris Teeter - weekly visits for the rest of the food
3. Kroger around the corner - about every other week for all the stuff I didn't realize I was out of when I went to Harris Teeter
4. TJ's - monthly for vital staples like frozen pizza and Chocolate Joe Joes and mini-peanut butter cups and wine :-)
5. Whole Foods - monthly or so you just need a Whole Foods fix because you need to eat a half pound of cheese samples as you shop. And you're out of something random like quinoa that you can only seem to find at Whole Foods. But somehow half of the wine and cheese and bakery section makes it out of the store with you too. Darn you, Whole Foods.
6. Costco. The husband goes through a box of 90 Nature Valley Granola bars, and we must replenish.
I had a weird opposition to artificial fruit flavoring as a kid (still do) and refused to believe that any other M&M's except for the brown ones were chocolate. So I'd pick out all the brown ones and eat them.
I also had a few other weird texture things - refused to eat popcorn (too close to styrofoam), cotton candy (too close to insulation), gummy candy (too close to rubber). I've broken down and tried popcorn, but not any of the other stuff, which I guess isn't such a bad thing...
Although interestingly, I can recall freaking out at an Olive Garden as a small child because the ravioli there did not resemble Chef Boyardee's. I had never encountered ravioli in a sauce that wasn't bright orange before. Luckily I've gotten over that one!!!
I cook everything I can't get the boy to eat while he's out of town to get them out of my system - soup, Indian food, things involving tofu.
Although I'm also a big fan of french toast for dinners alone as well. Or a big pile of pasta.
I have swayed the husband from a life of turkey sandwiches - it all started when he dug into a bowl of mussels to impress me when we started dating, and he now gladly eats sushi, seafood, and all kinds of vegetables. (This amazes my mother in law.)
Oddly my parents psychically turned into food snobs at the same time I did - wasn't me who turned them, although it may have been my food snob brother. Every so often they extol the virtues of quinoa, or wasabi mustard, and I wonder who they are, and what they did with my parents.
Funny, I just tried it last night for the first time, I added it to collard greens in an attempt to get smoky flavor while still keeping them low fat. While it wasn't quite a substitute for bacon, it was still quite delicious!
Gefilte fish with horseradish! And charoset!
@brook29: Ok, I have to confess myself guilty of the eat-while-shopping thing, but I do draw lines. Would I eat something like prepared foods and sushi that have a disgust-o-factor? Probably not, or at least if I did, I would go to SELF-checkout and handle the empty containers myself.
Still, you're buying it--as long as you do it respectfully, it shouldn't be a problem. I admit I have NO self-control around fresh bread, and will rip the tops off baguettes while waiting in line.
I too, have a physical handicap that requires me to use the handicapped space occassionally. I get royally steamed when I see a little old man drop his wife at the door of the store, then pull into a handicapped spot and read the paper. Is he a handicapped reader?? Inevitably, when I leave the store, he's still sitting there.
On a more pleasant note, it was 92 in the 'Burg yesterday. I was in Walmart sans shopping cart, then found myself picking up more items than I could carry. I kept dropping things and other customers helped me out and picked them up. Then an employee saw my predicament and brought me a cart. Finally in the check-out, a little old lady with 100 items in her cart ran over my foot. Instead of glaring at me like it was my fault, she was mortified and so solicitous that she asked if I needed first aid. Just goes to show that out of the blue, sometimes people can surprise the heck out of you.
These things certainly phase me if I am having a rough day, but the real issue I have is they way that many people blame you for their carts being in your way etc, etc. I wish people, generally speaking, would take responsibility for themselves. You do not even need to say IM SORRY, but a "Oh pardon me," or "I did not realize my cart was there," would suffice.
Now this personally gets to me: I am a 6ft tall thin woman. I played basketball in college and Paris, I do tri's, and am currently an experimental vegan. I know, thank you everyone I am thin and I eat food. You do not need to stare, whisper and shout out things like "Anorexic" as i am walking by with a full cart of food. Do some research, read a book and stop being ignorant. I am sure this does not happen to everyone but it annoys the hell out of me and I wish right there I could take each and every one of them out to the court and sweep the floor with them. Cheers, and maybe next time someone thinks to stare at someone as if they are a painting on a wall they will think twice.
^jenilowrance--I am on the same page as you. I don't use the carts, but I'm chronically ill for the past 10 years. I am 30 and have progressive, degenerative disease and I'm probably more ill than most old people and won't live to see their age, but nearly everytime I park handicapped at the grocery I'm stared down and glared upon.
I have the tag for a reason people, and while I may look perfectly normal most days, I'm not, and I'm fairly notorious for passing out in grocery stores so the less walking I have to do, the better.
I also can't stand the cell phones and the running children. I don't know how many times I've watched an unattended child doing something they weren't supposed to and gotten hurt, only to scream bloody murder in front of the entire store to a parent who's not listening anyway.
At the farmer's market if I'm standing there with produce in my hand I'm actually in line, sometimes I think because I'm so thin I must be invisible people tend to cut in front of me so much. It's a Saturday morning people, take a deep breath and relax, you don't need to rush all the time. And if you see a friend and want to chat, why not walk up on the empty sidewalk instead of standing directly in everyone's way?
And lastly I wish they'd stop filling the self-check out lanes with plastic bag holders. I am doing the right thing by bringing my own bags, please give me a place to put them so I can fill them!
Amen to everyone who gets as frustrated as I do when i'm at the store! Don't get me wrong, not only do i love my local small town grocery store, and i'd say about half of my shopping trips there are sublime. . . but there have been some disasters, and some of the disasters have been my fault.
frustrating things that aren't my fault: the aisles are NARROW. if you are going to park your cart, please don't do so in the middle of the darn aisle! would it kill you to move your cart 8 inches over, so i can move past you???
frustrating things that are my fault: I am one of those awful women who walks in to the store, and comes to a complete dumbfounded halt. the store opens up into the produce department. and i just can't decide if i should hit the lucious oranges first, the organic table, check out the tomatoes. . .it's the same problem at the meat/fish counter. i just get overwhelmed, and i want to look at everything at once, and i can't decide where to go first. yes, lame. yes, i need to grow up. but did you see those catfish fillets? and those prawns? and those artichokes?
I wish people would buy their lottery tickets somewhere else.
If you're willing to travel a little bit over to Harvard Square, I'm a huge fan of Henrietta's Table in the Charles Hotel on Harvard Square - really delicious, fresh, local, straightforward food. We had a few large group dinners there for work that went quite smoothly - we had quite a wide range of eaters there, including a few vegetarians, and everyone left happy.
I also just went to the downstairs (casual) part of Upstairs on the Square in Harvard Square a few weeks ago and was quite impressed. A little more gourmet but a really nice range of different kinds of price ranges and food in a really neat space.
To be honest, I didn't live in Boston that long but I never found a seafood place there that I was crazy about, beyond the typical tourist places... I'd be curious to read what others post.
i don't think that we even need a private room. We are just getting together to meet for the first time, since we come from all over the country and are meeting with some of our international coutnerparts for a few days. i am not sure where we will be staying, but transportation will not be an issue for certain.
In the course of the week, I usually go to the Union Square Greenmarket in New York, Whole Foods, Trader Joes, and my neighborhood grocery store.
If I'm in the mood for something I can't get at the other places, then I add to my list Kalustyan's, Chinatown, and grocery stores in Koreatown.
My jokester great-uncle Lester used to tell me that if I swallowed watermelon seeds, they'd grow in my belly and sprout vines from my ears. To this day, I can't eat watermelon without first carefully picking out all the seeds, even the little translucent white ones.
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