For a number of years, I have belonged to a grocery shopping service called Shipt. It never was really important to me until the pandemic hit, and then it became crucial to keeping me out of stores. Now, I use it almost exclusively, largely because the local Shipt service shops at my favorite store, Meijer.
In the beginning, Shipt had a membership fee of $99 per year which renewed itself in my bank account unless I told it not to. During the pandemic, I didn't see any renewals show up, but they still shop for me. And this is how it goes:
1. Log in to their site. 2. Search for and click on the items that are requested. 3. List substitutions for items that might be out of stock (and there have been many). 4. Select a delivery time window. 5. Stay by the phone in case the shopper--whoever it is--calls to ask questions. 6. Wait for delivery.
Because it is sometimes exhausting for me just to bring the bags in the house, I usually try to catch my shopper. Instead of their leaving the bags on my front stoop, I hold the door and ask him/her to bring them just inside the door and put them in front of my fake fireplace. (It might be ten feet.) They are always kind enough to do that.
(Here, I should insert that Shipt is not a cheap option. Aside from the yearly membership fee (that I think has been waived), the order placed has to be a minimum of $35 to avoid a $7.99 delivery fee, plus the Shipt prices are a tad higher than if I went to the store and shopped for myself. Then, of course, I believe in tipping the shopper through the website. The end result is that I am paying dearly for the privilege of not having to do it all myself, which really helps me.) One nice thing: I can select preferred shoppers. Over time, they come to know me, which helps!
This is NOT an ad for Shipt! I know there are other grocery services that the pandemic created. This is just one that I had before the pandemic.
Back to the real topic of this post. Once the groceries are in the house, I go through the bags to take out the frozen foods and/or foods that need to be refrigerated immediately. The rest--cans, boxes, etc.--stay in the bags until I take them out, a few at a time. (I'm the only one who lives here, and I rarely have company, so who cares if I have to walk around a couple of bags for a few days?) Most of the time, my shoppers bag refrigerated food and frozen foods together so that I don't have to dig too much to find them. Within a few days, the groceries have all been put away, and no one is the wiser.
Every once in a while, however, I miss some perishables in the bags. So far, I have caught them just in time. Until last week. Somehow, my shopper hadn't packed all of the cold things together. Two days after I got the groceries, I found a pound of hamburger that I hadn't accounted for, still unrefrigerated. Darn! I immediately put it into the freezer. And two days after that, my housekeeper found a pack of Kraft Singles (cheese) unrefrigerated at the bottom of a bag as she put the rest of the bag contents away. She inquired if she should throw them away. I said she should just put them in the refrigerator until I made up my mind. And so it was.
I came from a farming family. My parents grew up during the Great Depression. They didn't have money, but they had food, and food was not to be wasted. My daughter laughs at me because I will take wrinkled old potatoes with small sprouts, knock off the sprouts, and cook the potatoes to eat. Every time I went to visit, she would Grandma-proof her refrigerator and pantry to remove foods that she thought I would be tempted to use past the expiration date or flawed appearance. (I never, ever, offered my family or guests food that could have been tainted. I just knew what still could be used, with help.)
So...that hamburger and those cheese slices were risky. They weighed on my brain. They were likely still okay. (My mother would likely have used them.) To keep or not to keep? To use or not to use? Since I have no sense of smell, I wouldn't be able to tell by sniffing if they had gone bad or not. (The sniff test isn't always accurate, anyway.) We're talking about $12 worth of groceries. There wasn't anyone to ask because no one in their right mind would recommend eating food that was outside of normal health guidelines, as these were.
I considered the options: Use and everything is fine, OR use and be sick as a dog for days with food poisoning. OR, throw away and be out $12, with no hamburger or sliced cheese to replace it.
The verdict? I bit on the bullet and threw it away, then bought new with my next grocery order. I reasoned that the risks outweighed the money. It's not as though I can do that often. Money IS an object, but so is my health.
It's not often that I have these hard decisions to make, thank God. My readers may think it's funny to worry about things that might seem that easy, but we are all driven by our raising. I think my daughter is proud of me! <wink>
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