TJ's

Trader Joe's is like it's own little bubble of happiness... as hippie as that sounds, stick with me here, though I may be high on chai seeds and fermented kombucha  (I promise neither of those actually contain mind-altering substances).

This morning was full of adult things. I mean sure, I guess I'm an adult, but I don't always like acting like one. Who wants to go spend a considerable amount of time at the bank? Who wants to drop two weeks of pay on a speeding ticket? Who even wants to get out of bed before noon on such a snowy Saturday?
See, even adults don't actually want to do those things.

So as I stepped up to those automatic doors, I was in need of a little relief. Thankfully, it came in the form of dark-chocolate almond-bark.

If you've never been to a Trader Joe's, you're really missing out. It's almost like a Kroger meets health food store, but yet you feel like you're on vacation while inside.
I'm really not that high-maintenance in any aspect of my life, including food. Honestly, I eat an apple with almost every meal and drink twice as much coffee as a normal person. Nothing crazy.
But when I go to Trader Joe's, my high-end, food-snob, health-conscious self materializes out of nowhere. It's all I can do to not run through the aisles gleefully pulling into my arms all things colorful, organic, and weird. My wonderful strange-food-loving friend and I carefully perused each section, cringing a little at the prices, but being more distracted by the incredible variety and interestingly odd foods. Oh, and the coffee selection... don't even get me started! After walking up and down, back and forth, through the dried fruits and past the dairy (or everything dairy-free) cooler, we finalized our choices and headed to the counter, where we were serviced by a very friendly, greasy-long-haired, and gauged hippie. Truly wonderful.

 In the end, we walked out $60 dollars and 45 minutes poorer. But it was so incredibly worth it.

(and of course, we drove the long way home with hippie music blasting. Check out Young Blood by Lynx- so good!)

Ps. for anyone out there on the world wide web who cares, this was my purchase list:
- Blue corn tortilla chips
- Guacamole hummus
- Thai vegetable Panang curry
- Multigran and Flaxseed water crackers
- Tintern cheese with chives and shallots
- sweetened and dried mango slices
- Fair-trade Honduran coffee
- Dark chocolate almond bark thins
- Sweet sesame seaweed
- Soynog (from nearby Olympia health foods)

Pretty successful day, I'd say.