I am not nice enough to work at Trader Joe's

It might be because I am getting older; or because I am getting bored of eating the same thing all the time; maybe it's because dining out is just too damn expensive, and again, becomes boring after a while. Whatever the case, I've recently decided that I want to be an amateur foodie, that fustian (GRE word!) label adopted by high-falutin' yuppies who occasionally cook and tell everyone they do so.

For this purpose, Whole Foods and Trader Joe's are definitely my friends - a couple of weeks ago, I managed to make a surprisingly successful Indian-inspired lamb dish, complete with naan and curry rice (don't get too excited, it was just rice-maker rice with curry powder in it; but it was good!). Whole Foods has really good, cheap, Indian sauces, and you just cook up the lamb with the sauce for a super easy but delicious dish. I'd bought some fresh pesto from Whole Foods, and spread that on olive oil-sprinkled naan, topped with a bit of grated cheese, and stuck in the oven for ten minutes - easy, quick, and so so good!

Then, there was the ham tacos adventure, again surprisingly successful! Basically, just sautee the ham a bit with some fresh salsa, chopped onions, and spices, and fill tacos with said ham, top with fresh guacamole (I cheated and bought Whole Foods guac, instead of making my own, and it was delicious), and you have a quick, easy, and nutritious meal.

It helps that I have a good partner in eating. A few weeks ago, M made the best chicken-tortilla soup I've ever had! It sounds like it took a while to make, but the results were definitely delicious.

Last week, I took on the baking challenge. I don't think I've ever actually baked anything from scratch before, so when we decided to make cookies for Valentine's Day, I was a bit skeptical. But, our chocolate chip, dark chocolate M&Ms, and sprinkles cookies came out mmmm mmmm good! Perfect for the rainy long weekend.

Today, I'm attempting to make a polenta pizza dish I found in the New York Times. Seriously, it doesn't get yuppier than getting recipes from the NYT, but I have a feeling it will be delicious. I made the polenta this morning, and it's chilling in the fridge while I avoid doing homework at the library (more on that later). When I get home, I'll cook up some spinach with pancetta, cover the polenta with feta cheese (substituted for Gorgonzola, which the recipe called for), tomato sauce, and some fresh basil, and bake it all up.

Okay, now to the point of this whole post - with my renewed interest in cooking has come a renewed relationship with Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. I was at TJ's last night, buying up the spinach, pancetta, feta, etc. for tonight's dinner, and realized how friendly the Trader Joe's staff is. And not fake friendly, but genuinely nice, enthusiastic, and really chatty. I remember thinking this when I first moved to Palo Alto and started going to the local TJs a lot during the summer. But it's been a few months, and I was completely zoned out last night, so when the cashier started up a conversation while bagging my groceries, I was slightly surprised. "Why is this person talking to me?" I asked myself. That's when I realized, I am really not nice enough to work at Trader Joe's. I don't care what people have planned for their weekend. I couldn't care less about what people are planning to make with the things they buy from the grocery store. I truly don't want to make small talk with people I will probably never see again. I want to stay in my bubble, and have that bubble bump up against other people's bubbles without those bubbles actually merging into a conversation arena. For the majority of the time, I want to be left alone until I choose to make small talk with a very select number of people (apparently, aside from being anti-social, I'm also rather arrogant. Note to self - Food for thought?)

Here is evidence to back up my discovery about my lack of niceness. I got to the Mountain View Public Library, set up my computer, was syncing my iPhone with I-Tunes, and realized that there were - gasp - children running rampant among the shelves. (This seems to be a recurring problem). I could not see them - there were two! - but I could hear them. I could hear them giggle and whimper and make strange, alien, sounds that only small children can make. Did I think, how cute? No, I thought "Shut up, you little rug-rats!" Now, if I were as nice as the young man in Trader Joe's last night, I would have probably thought nicer thoughts, and even if I was annoyed to the point of doing something about it, I'd have done it in a nice, pleasant manner. Not I. Two more minutes and I would have walked over, looked at the mother with squinted eyes, and said something like, "Ma'am, this is a library. Please keep your snotty children quiet! I can't concentrate with all this noise!!" (Okay I wouldn't have said "snotty" but I like to dream).

The snot-nosed ones have since gone downstairs, I think. Little matter, because now I have my headphones on and Joni Mitchell is singing to me, so I couldn't hear them anyway. But the point is - I am not a nice person. I daydream about yelling at strangers' children, and wish cashiers would just leave me alone. I could never cut it in the country song mythical small town where everyone knows each other. That's a nightmare scenario for me, living somewhere where one can't ever be anonymous.

Now that I have that out of the way, I should really get down to studying. I had signed up for this writing class through Stanford's Continuing Studies program, and I haven't done my homework in five weeks! This is why, on a Saturday, I am holed up in the library. So, back to work!