If You Trim It, They Will Come

I was standing in line at the grocery store the other day, waiting for my turn to check out. I’m in a hurry. Duh. Who isn’t in Tel Aviv? And all of a sudden, out of the blue, the woman in front of me is not happy about the fact that the several mammoth heads of cauliflower she has chosen — they’re beautiful mind you — these several, mammoth heads of beautiful cauliflower that look like brain coral are ensconced in a think layer of leaves. Well, she doesn’t want to pay for the leaves. No way. She wants someone to come trim them for her before they are weighed.

Hell, I don’t blame her. I feel the same way. But it would also be nice to get home soon because I’ve got a ticket of sooul food orders to get out the door. Plus, with COVID-19 hanging around, I really don’t want to spend time socially un-distanced. And of course, as luck and streamlined economic times would have it, it takes time to find someone qualified to trim the cauliflower, another eon to locate a proper knife, more precious hours discussing how best to trim these beautiful things. I should add that having grown up in a family grocery business, having spent way too much time in that grocery store, I try to spend the absolute minimum time possible shopping for groceries.

It is then that I channel my maternal grandmother Annie Melaver, who started the grocery business — M&M SuperMarket in Savannah, Georgia —back during the tail end of the Depression. She was the youngest of 5 sisters, most of whom had started their own small corner grocery stores. It was a family of business women. Anyway, one day, my grandmother Annie is walking around the produce aisle and spots a young boy, probably no older than 7, standing in front of a big pile of grapes. He’s plucking off the grapes from the stems, placing the grapes carefully in a bag and leaving the stems behind in the bin. My grandmother wants to know why he’s doing that. Because I don’t want to pay for the stems was the reply. My grandmother, a hard-nosed businesswoman with a compassionate soul born of needy times, totally understood and agreed.

I figured my soul food order could wait a little bit longer until this woman’s cauliflower was properly trimmed. Grandma would have wanted it that way.