There he was piling bags of carrots into the lighted bin, a
man who could help me find it. He might have piled carrots for fifty years.
Or maybe he started at retirement after a job as a textbook salesman. No, he
couldn’t have been a salesman with those teeth.
It strikes me now how serviceable carrots are, how tossable, not easily harmed when stacked and laden with one another.
He stared at me at close range, mouth open, crooked teeth
leaning like uncomprehending children. “Mango?”
“Basil.”
“Oh!” and off he trotted in conversation with the air as I
followed. The basil was far from the carrots, and I needed it though it was
February. I have grown accustomed to having the food I want when I want it, and
the week’s paralyzing wind made me want a panzanella salad with fontina, chunks
of day-old cornbread, cherry tomatoes, cucumber and basil because all the
comments at Giada’s online recipe for it said it was fabulous. I had googled
“recipes with leftover cornbread." Since the first of the year I
have been more diligent about using up what is in the fridge. I am conscious that women
used to know ways in their heads to use up leftovers, but never mind.
The store itself is like this man racing away in front of me,
soft at the edges from age, though he was leaner. The store’s passageways are
barely wide enough to get a cart through, and even sturdy shelves seem to sag
under mountains of onions, potatoes, oranges, peppers of many varieties for
local Latinos and Latinas who know how to cook from their grandmothers. I begin
to see that he is lean because he dashes off to another part of the store when
called upon, rather than point and direct. Like my father, he walk-runs, and
like my father, he loves to help.
He rifles through thin plastic boxes of salad greens and
finds a large-ish one of basil, more than I will be able to use before it goes bad
I think to myself. It costs $3.89, which seems a lot to me, I say, and I
realize that I have said it to him because he is suddenly my father who shopped
at this store for bargains for twenty or thirty years. Two months ago I would not have
blinked at spending $3.89 for basil, but now that I have resolved to take more
care with money and food, this seems too much out of the $20 I have allotted in
my purse for this shopping trip.
After my mother’s hand operation my father took over cooking
and shopping. He never went to fewer than three stores, and he never walked the
aisles; he walk-ran, a man with a purpose. At this store, he came for boxes of
slightly bruised fruits and vegetables that no one else noticed lined up on the
floor tucked under the good produce shelves, or whole boxes of canned beans on
sale four for a dollar. Our refrigerator perpetually smelled of rotting apples
because he bought them past their prime, the whole box costing a couple of
bucks. So yes, a large-ish plastic container of basil for $3.89 was a lot, and the
man who was like my father agreed. But I tossed it into my cart all the same. I
needed the panzanella salad, and I
needed to use up the leftover cornbread.
As we started to walk away suddenly a look of discovery
crossed his face. He remembered a stash of something else. “Thai basil” he said
crisply with one finger raised, and he walked me over to the display where
herbs were hunched loosely and unpackaged. He proffered a bunch of wilted green
leaves with red stems toward my face a little apologetically, and I buried my
nose, smelling the strength of it. “There is almost an anise smell,” I
suggested. He said, “If you use this in your recipe, use maybe half of what it
calls for. It’s strong, pungent stuff. And this one is what,” as he looked at
the sign, “$1.69.” We smiled conspiratorially, and he left for his carrot
piling while I went to put the $3.89 basil back with the stacked lettuce
greens.
Satisfied with myself and the wilted Thai basil as if I were
my father’s daughter I shimmied through stacks of spices and sauces, looking
for peppercorns, all of which were at least $5. Then I pushed my cart through
the automatic door into the dairy refrigerator as big as a semi-truck and
picked up the smallest carton of half-and-half for my husband's coffee. Back out toward check-out and
there was my father-man speaking something to someone and I realized it was to
me. “Guess what just came in the truck!”
Of course the cart and I followed him back turning this way and that around corners to produce where
a Latino man was unpacking a box of pristine basil in plastic. “They still have
their roots, and look they’re grown right here in Michigan.” I could smell it
before I held it by the wet roots. “Spring,” I said. “It’s like planting time.”
The leaves were supple and curved, the color of new grass. The price: $2.89. “A
little bit more than the Thai,” he said, “but this will last a long time
because of the roots” with a fatherly look implying that of the three, this was
the bargain.
