Food for Thought (APIWATWOL #9)

#9 in my "A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words Or Less" series. (For a description of how this series works, see Installment #1.)


A shopping cart of food. Why the hell did I take a photo of my shopping cart of food? When I randomly pulled this photo for my APIWATWOL project, I asked myself this question...and again was tempted to pick a different photo. But rules are rules, so a shopping cart of food it is.

The date stamp on the photo file indicates that this was my first grocery shopping trip after returning from a family reunion six years ago. We hold our week-long reunions at the Jersey Shore every three years, and anywhere from 80 to 100 Worthingtons gather to sit, talk, laugh, drink, eat and float in the ocean together. (Relatives who go to a gym during reunions are shunned.)

The shore isn’t exactly known for its health food, so the menu for the week is heavy on cheesesteaks, pizza, sticky buns and beer. During our last reunion, I discovered that a vegetable juice bar had opened in Stone Harbor and when I walked through its door the first time, I practically bowed at the owner’s feet in gratitude. After chugging my green juice, I grabbed a slice at the pizzeria across the street. Hey, just because an old dog learns a new trick doesn’t mean she forgets her old tricks, right?

There are things in the shopping cart above that I didn’t even know existed in earlier years. Growing up, I thought there was one kind of lettuce and it was iceberg. Imagine my shock when I discovered the existence of romaine and arugula, both in this cart.

Avocados, bought regularly now, were something I didn’t discover until moving west of the Mississippi in my early 20s. Because Jack-in-the-Box—aka Jer-Mex—didn’t offer guacamole. Probably because it can’t be deep-fried.

See those two quarts of kefir in my cart? Until about eight years ago, the only kefir I knew of was Sutherland. Now kefir is a staple grocery item. I use it to make my morning shakes, another mid-life discovery. In my 20s and 30s, morning shakes were simply the bi-product of a great party the night before.

Next to the kefir is a bottle of kombucha “tea”—one of the nastiest and healthiest drinks around. Tea is a bit of a misnomer though. More like funky mushroom water. Kombucha will always hold a special place in my heart because it was the excuse Jeff used to ask me out on our first date. In a fit of health-crazedness, he had begun growing his own kombucha mushrooms (basically, blobs of mold in giant bowls covered with dish towels) at the media studio he owned in San Francisco when we met. After our first business meeting, Jeff invited me to his studio to try kombucha tea. Fortunately, our relationship lasted longer than his fixation with growing kombucha mushrooms. Now, we’re down to the occasional pre-packaged bottle of flavored kombucha tea. Usually as penance for food crimes like a week spent eating crap food at the Jersey Shore.

In the bottom of the cart I see my usual bushel of organic cucumbers, jumbo bag of carrots and a few bunches of kale. If you’d told me when I was a kid, or even a teenager, or even a 30-something businesswoman who regularly ate fast food, that I’d one day be jamming the likes of cucumbers and kale and parsley through a masticating machine and drinking what was spewed out, I would’ve laughed. Or run away. Fast.

So overall, I’d say the theme of this trip to the grocery store was Reform. When the most decadent item in the shopping cart is a bag of organic blue corn chips, you know you’re in for a fairly boring-but-healthful week ahead.

Food, like life, has its ups and downs, its crazy out of control times and its periods of smart decisions. And the beauty of food—and life—is that we get to choose.

What’s in your shopping cart?

Big Brother

My family has never been known for its subtlety and decorum.  We are a loud, fun-loving, and at times obnoxious group.  An Alec Baldwin look-alike, my brother Tim is tall and imposing, and perhaps one of the most opinionated of our clan. 

Jeff's First Worthington Family Reunion, 1996

Shortly after Jeff and I were engaged in 1996, I took him with me to the Worthington Family Reunion, held every three years at the Jersey Shore.  Close to one hundred descendents of my maternal great grandparents—four generations worth—take over cheap motels and rental homes in Avalon and Stone Harbor for a week of reminiscing, drinking, punning, gossiping, eating, laughing, and arguing over the most inane details of times gone by.  We come from all over the country—California, Texas, Massachusetts, Florida, Michigan—and join with a handful of New Jersey holdouts “down the shore.” 

On the third day of the reunion, my brother and I were bobbing up and down in the waves thirty yards off the shoreline. “Why is it I had to hear that you’re freakin' engaged from cousin Bonnie?” Tim said, his tone equal parts flippancy and irritation. 

I tried to come up with something witty to deflect my brother’s underlying anger, but my mind went blank.  Why hadn’t I told him? I wondered.  We were sharing a rental home for the week.  I’d had plenty of opportunity to make an announcement, or to tell him in private. I could’ve simply introduced Jeff as my fiancé when we’d arrived at the reunion two nights ago. Better yet, I could’ve called Tim after I'd gotten engaged two weeks earlier.

It’s not that I didn’t care about my brother being privy to the big news. On some level, perhaps I cared too much.  Whether consciously or unconsciously, agreeing to spend my life with Jeff meant I was replacing Tim as the most important man in my life, a title he had held, despite our outward displays of banter, since our father’s death when I was six, my brother nine.

Ever since my first real boyfriend came on the scene in tenth grade, Tim had had something to say about my love life.  When he walked in my bedroom one morning to discover that Paul had spent the night due to heavy snowstorms, he took the opportunity to threaten him.  Just remember—that’s my little sister!  Paul didn’t try to get to the next base for weeks. When Tim came home from college and found out I had recently started dating a guy he once played soccer against, he said, “Joe Beatty?  What a douche bag!” I broke up with Joe a week later. As a freshman in college I started dating Dave, five years my senior and working construction.  When I transferred schools at Dave’s request and moved in with him, Tim was furious, but Mom forbade him to intercede, so instead he bought me a cake stand for Christmas.

“A cake stand?” I asked him once I’d unwrapped his gift.  “Isn’t this something you give to married people?”

“That’s my point!” Tim shouted across the crumbled gift wrap, half glasses of orange juice, and wadded up red and green Hershey’s Kiss foils that covered the floor my parents’ living room.  “You’re acting like you’re goddamned married!”  I broke up with Dave before the winter break was through.

It’s not as if Tim hated every guy I ever dated.  Bob passed the test easily, Jim eventually.  But Jeff?  Jeff was different.  As far as I was concerned, I needed no approval from Tim when it came to Jeff.  He was not a guy I was "dating."  He was the man I was committing to spend my life with, big brother approval or no big brother approval.

“Sorry,” I said to Tim.  “I should’ve told you myself.”  No sarcasm.  No deflection with humor.  

My brother and I were quiet, both in our own minds, treading water over rolling waves in the salty Atlantic at dusk. Breaking the silence, Tim finally said, “I like him. Seems like a good guy.”

“He is,” I said. 

And with that the title was passed. 

Lauren and Her Big Bro on Tim's Wedding Day, 2010

Download a PDF of the first 4 chapters of Lauren's memoir, Zuzu's Petals: A True Story of Second Chances, FREE here.  Or you can download the entire e-book on Kindle here.  Happy reading!