*This story was first published on One Hundred Dollars a Month on May, 14th 2010, and I still crack up every time I read it. Somethings never change. Grandmothers will always be able to humble you and scare you to death, pretty much anywhere. Even at the grocery store.
Karma, I tell ya, sometimes it just comes around and bites you in the butt!
Like this morning, I headed over to Safeway for some FREE money making cornflakes {buy 4 boxes for $4 use $2 in coupons, pay $2 get $3 off your next order}.
Viola. Mavis makes a buck while she’s there picking up tahini sauce and parsley so she can make a batch of JJ’s Hummus Dip. Sounds easy enough … right?
WRONG!
As soon as I placed the free coupon crack cornflakes in my cart I noticed I had some extra coupons. So I tried to give them away. I went up to 2 different mother’s in the cereal and aisle asked them if they wanted some magical coupons for 4 free boxes of corn flakes.
They both said NO. Which I thought was odd, especially since one lady had 3 boxes of Captain Crunch and 2 Life cereal in her cart. Obviously her family eats cereal, but whatever.
Then I turned the corner and saw an older lady and asked her if she wanted some coupons that would net her 4 free boxes of corn flakes cereal.
And you know what she said???
She said “NO… in fact I saw YOU putting all that cereal in your cart and I wanted to know if you were planning on feeding that to your children”… “Don’t you know what’s in that stuff?”
“No…What’s in it?” I asked.
She grabbed a box of cereal out of my cart {NO JOKE} and pointed to the ingredients and said “High Fructose Corn Syrup. It’s been all over the news, don’t you watch the news? I wouldn’t feed that crap TO MY DOG!”
I ALMOST PEED MY PANTS.
I thought she was going to start hitting me with the box of cereal.
THEN… THEN…
All the sudden I said “Your right, that high fructose corn syrup is in just about everything”
Holy crackers, Did I just really say that? Was I defending corn syrup?
And before I knew it that woman started holding up each and every item in her cart and telling me their 1 word ingredients.
Spinach
Cauliflower
Carrots
Chicken {she loses 1 point for it not being organic}
Papaya
Wheat Germ {2 words but I’ll give it to her}
****
Yep… Mavis got schooled this morning by Grandma in aisle 7 at Safeway.
It was AWESOME!
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Tali says
I stood at Walmart yesterday handing out the $2/1 Olay soap coupons and was surprised that people were happy to take it…usually even I they have the right product in their cart they won’t take it….AMAZING!
Patti says
Hilarious !! O the “knowledge” people love to just pass on.
And people not taking coupons………..had that happen not too long ago at Walgreens. The gal had the items in her cart and I offered her a couple of coupons I had in my hot little hand to go with them. She politely said, “No thank you.” And then walked away from me like I was a leper. I felt pretty foolish. O well. It happens.
Sasha says
Awesome!
Kallie says
I’m torn while reading your posts. I love that you are doing so much that is healthy, and generally push away people who put temptation in my view. Not too many years ago we believed you had to eat highly processed foods to stay within budget, and I was a big couponer. I do still occasionally eat what I try to avoid, but it’s generally a moment of weakness. It really is hard to stay away from foods that I consider empty calories, but we all have to make our own choices. It took us a long time to change our tastes and we don’t crave junk food as much as we used to. I love your writting, I love seeing all the photos of your garden and your produce and I’ll just ignore the tips on things I prefer not to feed our family. I think you are a great example of people moving in the right direction when it comes to food and you don’t try to be perfect which is what many of us need to see. I think too many people think they have to give up all conventional foods to join the food movement or whatever, but the reality is there are a lot of people like me who don’t/didn’t know how to grow or cook foods that didn’t come with instructions on a box. I have had to relearn skills that I’d given up long ago to eat a better diet and frankly there are times I just don’t want to cook. So, thank you for helping remind me to find balance.
Mavis says
Maybe by the time I am 80 a won’t be eating any processed food whatsoever. But for now, I’m trying my best, and I know our family is eating a whole heck of a lot less junk now than we were before. Baby steps I tell you, it’s all about baby steps.
Kallie says
I agree, it’s a process, my hope is my kids will eat better than I do. My knee jerk reaction when I first saw coupons for foods I try avoid was to run away, but I’m glad I didn’t. I love knowing I’m not the only one who isn’t perfect. So many of your posts make me smile and it’s easy to skip by the ones that are not what I’m looking for. I know they help others who aren’t on the same path that I’m on.
Lisa L says
Funny thing about reading – I thought this was an actual deal and headed out to Safeway and couldn’t understand why the cereal wasn’t a $1 and the cat didn’t print!!! 🙂 Oh, right it was from 2010.
Love your blog!
Lisa L says
Forgot to add, I did get 10 cent sugar pumpkins for puree so it was a good trip.
Miriam says
I know you are laughing, but I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. She has no right to judge what you feed your family and if the ONLY place she gets her food info from is the NEWS and not actual real studies or real websites for that stuff, she is going to be changing her ‘fad foods’ a lot.
HomefrontSix says
Yeah but who wants to eat spinach, chicken (organic or not), and carrots for breakfast?
Sonoma Garden Girl says
The problem is that they use GMO corn, which has not been tested for safety and has pesticide inside the seed. They use fake corn to make the high fructose corn syrup that is in everything from yogurt to jam, to ketchup and Best Food Mayo ( GMO Soybeans). The Big Food Companies don’t care about our health. They care about their profit margin, and taking money from us, while keeping us in the dark.
Sorry, just a little fired up about our Prop 37 not passing in CA. We should be labeling all this GMO crap in our food, so people can avoid it.
Tabitha says
Amen, Sonoma. I’m still flabbergasted that people bought the propaganda that changing a label was going to skyrocket food prices. What the? Companies
change the label when the FDA tried to look useful or for marketing purposes WITHOUT jacking up prices. Sigh.
That said, I do think it’s cool to watch Mavis get paid to shop. I have two gluten sensitive people here so we can’t eat the foodlike stuff anyway.
Erin says
I think Mavis won at least one point here. A huge percentage (can’t remember exact number) of papayas are genetically modified. Most. So Mavis. Take a bow. 🙂