Sometimes, just when you feel like your day can’t get any worse, someone comes along to turn it around completely. That happened to me last week at my local grocery store. The woman behind me in the checkout line (who looked like the love child of Edith Head and Ina Garten) stood there kind of looking incredulous, so I immediately thought that I was doing something wrong – some breach of checkout etiquette. Instead, I soon found out that she was actually just in awe of how tasty the yogurt she just ate was and asked me if I’d tried them (I have – they are the fat-free Chobani varities). We had a brief coo-fest over the delicious and (presumably) healthy little cups before she glanced at the contents of my shopping basket and asked, “do you cook a lot?” I told her that I cook pretty much every day. Here’s how the conversation continued:
Edith Garten: You like to cook?
Me: I do.
EG: You like sun-dried tomatoes?
Me: I do.
EG: Well they sell a brand here that you’ve GOT to try.
Me: Oh, really?
EG: Dude, they’re off the chain!
She proceeded to tell me the brand and all the different applications in which she uses them and all I could think of while she was talking is, “this 40-something woman just called me ‘dude’ and told me, very sincerely, that sun-dried tomatoes are ‘off the chain.’” Of course, I couldn’t stop grinning.
I’m not exactly sure what pleased me so much about the situation, but it is surely a combination of her enthusiasm for food (and cooking), along with her awkward, but albeit very effective, manner of communicating her passion for food to me. Like I wouldn’t get it if she said it any differently. And maybe, in some way, she was right. I don’t really even like sun-dried tomatoes that much, but if someone tells me they’re off the chain, I am buyin’ ‘em.
