A Trip to Oliver's

I usually go to the grocery store on Tuesday, but we were having a wine emergency, so I went today. We were supposed to get an inch of rain today but the only rain we got was when I was walking through the parking lot to the store.

Oliver's is a wonderful store with an amazing amount of stuff crammed into it. There is a bakery and coffee, a deli with fresh salads and sandwiches, sushi made while to order and, charcuterie sliced to your specifications. a butcher counter with live butchers and a fishmonger with fresh seafood. The cheese counter carries a huge selection of local and international cheeses. Tastes used to be offered. 

It was crowded. It is a small store containing a lot of stuff making social distancing difficult. They don't make us queue to get in anymore but masks are still required and people still dutifully stand on the footprints on the floor to check out. The queue sometimes extends back into the aisle causing confusion.

The produce section is my favorite, but is not really big enough for the vast selection of organic and conventional produce. The aisles can be crowded with carts, both those of the produce re stockers as well as the ones propelled by the patrons. What to do with the cart while you select your tomatoes can be a problem. So can the bins piled so high with mushrooms or fruit that removing the required amount is like a game of Jenga.

Sometimes things are too high for me to reach. They do seem to put the items in less demand on high shelves for that reason.* I didn't need anybody to reach down the strange looking item labeled 'dragon fruit', although it does look like somebody has taken a few.

You can help yourself to the produce, but the big jars of bulk foods have been replaced by neatly filled plastic containers*. This means you don't have to remember some random number long enough to find a pen and write it on a twisty tie for a plastic bag.

I suspect our plastic use must be going through the ceiling during this pandemic. I hope they really do recycle it all because our recycle bin is always full....But maybe that's the wine bottles...their numbers have gone up a lot too.... 

Oh yes, being a Sonoma County grocery store there is a very big wine section. I replenished our supply.