A Cook's Paradise

I grew up in a small town in Mississippi. Some of my family and friends still live there and for the most part they love their home, but there is one complaint I hear over and over from them - the lack of a decent grocery store.

They have basically three choices: A poorly stocked Kroger; the Walmart Super Center; and a small grocery store called Sunflower. If you are lucky enough to be active duty or retired military you can also shop at the air force base commissary. And that's it. This is a really big issue for the fabulous cooks living there like my mom, Sister III,  Brother-in-Law, BFF and her her youngest child.

One day BFF was complaining she could not find shallots anywhere in Small Town Mississippi . In my continuing effort to get her to uproot her family and move up here, I pointed out that the only problem you would have in Cary is choosing between multitude of grocery stores from which to procure your shallots.

She could pick up her shallots at one of North Carolina's own Harris Teeter's. If she wanted organic shallots she could try Whole Foods, Trader Joe's or Earth Fare. For a friendly shallot, she could go to the brand new Publix. I have never been Lowe's Supermarkets or Food Lion, but I bet they have shallots too. I'm not sure if there are Indian, Asian or Hispanic shallots, but if there are, she can pick them up at one of our many specialty grocery stores.
 
So here I am in Cary with at least ten different shallot buying opportunities, and would like to know how many times I have actually bought shallots or anything more difficult to find than organic milk? None. Zip. Zero. Why? Well it is a two fold answer. First and most importantly, I hate to cook. Absolutely loath it. People tell me it's a shame because I am a pretty good cook (I learned from the best - my mom).

The second answer is that I hate going to the grocery store even worse than cooking. No matter how spectacular they are, and let me tell you, we have the most fabulous grocery stores I have ever been in, I just hate going. Luckily for me, Yankee does not mind going at all. He says it reminds him of shopping with his dad when he was a kid, so he does pretty much all the food shopping (that's what he calls it) around here.

It is sad that I have an abundance of food choices and yet do not take advantage of them at all, while the great cooks from home have almost no choice at all. I guess they are just all move up to Cary AKA Cook's Paradise.

California Dreaming

Number One Son and me at the Santa Monica Pier

The last time I saw Number One Son was right before he moved to Los Angeles in April seeking fame and fortune or something like that. So when I had the chance to fly out for his birthday, I jumped on it.

I left early Sunday morning. My love for something or someone can be accurately judged by how early I am willing to get up for it. In this case it was 4:45am which equals much love. Because of the time change, I arrived early Sunday morning. In all of my travels, I have never been to LA, so I made Number One Son show me everything. We literally covered the entire city in one day.

We started in Santa Monica and drove through Malibu, some of the canyons outside of the city, back into the valley, through Beverly Hills and down Sunset Boulevard. I experienced the famous LA traffic first hand. A side note here - you know your child has become a Californian when he spends as much time discussing his planned route for his trip to Northern California as he does the vacation itself. 'I want to take the One all the way up but I'll probably take the Five to the 101 to the One so I can skip this traffic.'
 

What half a million bucks will buy you in LA

As a mom and a REALTOR, I needed to see his house. This boy grew up in a very affluent, very white suburb of Atlanta. He now lives in a working class neighborhood made up of primarily of  Hispanic families. Because it's LA, the house he lives in, which is a 2300 square foot, rather old, slightly rundown, craftsman cottage, sold for almost half a million dollars in January. That makes much pricier than the typical McMansion in the Atlanta suburb. You know what they say about real estate though. Location, location, location.

He shares this house with five other people, but at least he has his room. It is slightly larger than my walk in closet. With no A/C and one tiny window, I imagine it is similar to sleeping in an oven. The entire postage-stamp sized back yard is cemented over. One of the weirdnesses of living in Southern California is they keep their washer and dryer in the back yard. It is fine there since it never rains. I guess you can do some grilling and a load of whites at the same time.

The view of downtown LA from our hotel window

We met up with Yankee downtown. Noah wanted to have steak for his birthday so we went to this great place called Frank's. It's been in it's location since 1953. I am not sure what the neighborhood was like then, but now it is part of Korea Town. The clientele was a fabulous mix of people from the neighborhood and people who looked like they had been eating there since the '60's.

After dinner we were all pretty pooped, so Number One Son dropped us off at our hotel. Yankee and I flew back home on Monday. It was a whirlwind of a trip, but I was so happy to have made it. It was nice to see the boy settling down in his new, way different environment. I am still sad he is so far away, but I am happy that he is happy.