Putting My Whole Self into Whole Foods

I’m not exaggerating when I tell you I was held against my will at the Salt Lake Whole Foods store last week.

Delicious food weaves its spell and human beings must fall prey to their lust for organic, aged, imported products. Or I’m saying they do, for the sake of my argument.

I went there, innocently, hoping to find sour cherries to make a pie for my beloved, but pretty much ignored husband who for some idiot reason I told I could make any flavor pie. Like I was a cook, like the only thing stopping us from feeling like the dwarves coming home to Snow White was just a little creativity.

When we got married, he said his favorite dessert was pie and I said, “My darling, we will always have pie.” Then I got pregnant and started throwing up and we memorized the McDonald’s menu and that’s how we got along for the next upteen years. We ate kid food, even when the kids weren’t here.

And now here I was at the epicenter of adult food: sharp cheddar cheese, homemade sausage, big loaves of chewy peasant bread (actually made by peasants), and the most expensive meat you can imagine.

There’s a reason Whole Foods is called Whole Paycheck by the people who shop there.

People who shop at Whole Foods must use birth control. You can’t pay for that food unless your wife has a job as a tax attorney and you’re a heart surgeon.

There is children’s food there, but it’s the kind of cute kids’ food adults eat, the ones who wear backward baseball caps and pigtails, to show they’re young at heart. If one of your kids dropped an organic carrot on the floor that cost $15 a pound , you’d put the kid in the trash and wash off the carrot.

So, I wandered around until I had spent the necessary whole paycheck to prove my innate coolness, then I ate cheese all the way home. And when I got there, I put the amazingly expensive lamb roast I bought (I would tell you how much I weighed before I told you how much that roast cost) in the freezer where it will wait for two years for the perfect special occasion.

And then, in September, 2013, I’ll throw it away because of freezer burn.