Passing it on

Today I was bemoaning the fact that nowhere near me sells hot pretzels when I learned that they have frozen ones in the markets. To be honest, I was reminded that I'd already been told that, but I may have been thinking about myself and missed the information.

So I went to the store, which I needed to do anyway, and found them. Now, I rarely look at frozen food, so I'll offer that as my excuse. Of all the aisles in a modern supermarket (or any store, for that matter), the ones that cost the stores the most money are the ones I avoid the most. It's not a snob thing, but the only frozen stuff I buy is ice cream, lemonade, and vegetables, usually corn, and I can find those quickly. Oh, and sometimes fish sticks to remind me of elementary school Friday lunches.

I know they have lots of frozen meals, and I've tried some of them, but they haven't been a favorite of mine since I first had the TV dinners years ago. Maybe the reason I shun them now is because they remind me of my mom, who ended her days eating nothing but frozen dinners (I believe the Swanson Swiss Steak was her favorite). Or, it could be that they cost so much and make me feel lazy.

Anyway, I looked up and down the aisles and, sure enough, they had frozen pretzels, so I bought some. There was a little bag inside which held six, and the directions indicated that I shouldn't use all of the enclosed salt unless I was preparing them all.

I made one, with hardly any salt at all.

But that's hardly the point.

Among my other purchases, I bought a salami (eww -- beef lips and butt). I can't help it: I like the way they taste. Unlike the shallots I buy, which invariably cause the checker to ask for help or look them up in a book, or the gnocchi that generates a "what do you do with this?" question, the salami scanned just fine and caused no comment at all, except from the bag girl.

She was young, maybe eighteen, I guess, and asked me what it was. I said it was a salami, and I guess I can excuse her because even though it was written on the side of the package maybe she's been trained not to read the customer's food.

She'd never heard of it, and that stunned me. I explained about sandwiches, and that seemed to spark some memory, but she'd never before seen salami except as part of an Oscar Mayer sealed and sliced product.

The more encouraging news, I realized as I walked out to my back with my bags, is that the youth of today isn't as obsessed with euphemisms as back in my day. Or, maybe, it's just her. Still, I gave myself a point for not saying anything about hiding it in the bag.