The great Caper Shopping Caper

There are a few county convenience stores in our area, the ones with one gas pump out front, which are always stocked with milk having a freshness date that may be exceeded at any moment. They also have three kinds of bread: white bread, another white bread, and wheat bread which tastes, smells and feels like white bread. There are 78 varieties of snack chips, 67 varieties of beer, and every carbonated beverage known to mankind.

Now don't get me wrong, we love our local country convenience store and would hate to be without it, but the message seems to be: if you can't get along on chips and beer for a few days you may lack the necessary survival skills for country living. I realize that small stores must limit inventory to things which retain their freshness, sell well, and are basic necessities of life, like cheese puffs and natcho chips. If you need capers, rye bread, fresh artichokes, or fresh anything, you really must venture further afield.

While living in the city, I usually shopped less than seven times a week. (This is only because I was sometimes able to send the kids out for a forgotten item. ) Three supermarkets were actually within walking distance and passing one of them in a car on my way to or from anywhere, usually sparked a remembrance of things needed. All that changed when we moved to the hills among the shopping deprived. I reformed my ways, shopping less frequently for larger quantities.

I knew our house would require a reasonable size pantry. It would be my own supermarket, in effect, large enough to store provisions for several months... because it sometimes takes that long to get your car repaired around here. One boldly creative thought was to build a pantry in the shape of the USDA" food pyramid" with the cereals and pastas on the lower levels, the vegetables and fruits at eye level, and the canned hams, pate du foie gras, beef jerky and squirt-can cheese on higher shelves. A major drawback to this design is that a tall ladder would be needed to reach really important things like peach brandy and chocolate truffles up at the tippy-top. A simple walk-in pantry with plenty of shelves and a footprint slightly smaller than the country convenience store (no gas pump), works out nicely.

When we have a group of people over, my sister in law likes to give those who haven't been here before, a tour of my pantry where they are astounded to see cans of corn as high as an elephant's eye, as well as green beans, tuna fish and garlic Alfredo sauce. I don't believe she charges them admission, but perhaps if I added a few jars of capers they might be more impressed.

Shopping trips are now carefully strategized. Traveling 30 minutes in one direction brings me to a reasonably good store where I can buy meat, green vegetables, and even capers. Forty minutes in the other direction gets me to a HUGE supermarket which carries a boggling inventory including four different brands of capers. This travel time is allowing, of course, for stops required by the road crew flagman who has the power and proclivity to stop traffic in either direction for a period of time scientifically calculated to achieve the melting point for all frozen foods which may be in car trunks.

By now you may be wondering "what is with the capers?". Personally, I never use them except to rate markets. Some hotels and restaurants are rated by one, two, three, three, or four stars. Supermarkets can be rated by how many kinds of capers they stock. The number of brands is generally related to the size and scope of its total inventory. Therefore a "four caper" store has just about everything one could imagine.

For an hour's worth of travel time in either direction I can reach the warehouse stores. It is dangerous to shop in these stores because they require you to purchase food items in sizes large enough to feed a joint session of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Not only that, the congressional size packages cost about the same as two normal size packages at the country convenience store, so you convince yourself by sheer mathematical logic, that it is too good of a bargain to pass up, even if you end up throwing half of it away. That large size bag of frozen peas takes up as much space in my freezer as three good size holiday turkeys, leaving no room for chocolate fudge mint chip mocha ice cream which will probably soon be revealed as having unprecedented and surprising health benefits.

Surprisingly, the warehouses usually have only two kinds of capers which do, however, come in 20 gallon cans. I wonder if you can use frozen peas in recipes that call for capers?

While I'm pondering that one, I think I'll go rotate my pantry stock.