January 2010

Clearly I bake a lot, and all that baking means I use quite a bit of the staples:  eggs, butter, sugar, honey and FLOUR!  One day I arrived at the Whole Foods flour shelf, and the old mother cupboard was dry! There was no more whole-wheat pastry flour.  It was then I learned a useful Whole Foods trick:  special whole sale ordering,  Not only would my cupboards be stocked for longer at home, but I’d receive a 10% discount!  I gave my name, phone number, and in a few days, I had a phone call saying my flour had arrived.  Then I procrastinated.  I would forget to go to the customer service desk, I’d be in a rush, I was holding out for a ride, so on and so forth.

There is only so much allotted time before the order returns to the shelf, and the discount disappears in a cloud of flour.  I was dangerously close to that time.  I had no choice but to pick up my package, and at that point in time, picking up the flour meant walking it home.

No Grain.  No Gain.  I also had a bit of that pain people usually associate with gain.  Four 48oz bags of flour, plus additional groceries in my backpack, 1.9 miles from store to home, at least one hill and one rather steep and steady hill, oh and a touch of snowy rain or rainy snow on top of that… I made it!

Someday if I have grandchildren, I will bake them little whole-wheat, chocolate-chip cookies and tell them how I used to walk uphill in the snow just to have flour for baking!