Either the morning staff at Safeway are obscenely helpful or I looked particularly lost today. Everyone I passed asked me if I needed help. Conversely I am at my least sociable before I have had my coffee, and I wanted nothing – nothing! – more than to gather my purchases and go home so that I could caffeinate.

The butcher was stocking the shelves in the lunchmeat section, where I had for some reason decided to go. I don’t typically eat luchmeat, you see, because I am a delicate flower and lunchmeat is full of additives. (Yet I will eat Hostess cupcakes. I am a multi-faceted girl.) But I had a craving for a ham and cheese omelet, and where there is lunchmeat, there is ham.

Also, there was butcher. I tried to  avoid making eye contact, but he made a point of talking to me.

“We’ve got some really great sales over here,” he said, gesturing to the Butcher’s Block stuff.

“Um,” I said.

“This is really good lunchmeat,” he told me.

I floundered. “Are there nitrates in the ham?”

“I don’t think so. Here, check for yourself.” He handed me the package.

A quick scan revealed that there are indeed nitrates, but I was now holding the ham and desperate to extricate myself. “I’m sure it will be fine. Lovely. Thank you for your help!” I tossed the ham into my basket and fled.

Now I have a package of Butcher’s Block ham that, the more I think about it, the less I am inclined to consume. There is gristle! And fat! And nitrates! I might put some in an omelet, but I make no promises. Good thing Not So likes ham!

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