Aspiring foodie:

Last week, I went to the local grocery store chain in Provo, Utah to pick up some essentials: rice, olive oil, salsa, milk, cheese, produce, etc. The place is called Smith's and if you go late on a Saturday night in sweats and messy hair you will likely see everyone from your dreaded TA, to fellow students you know you know, but can't remember how, to former lovers, to, if you're real lucky, current crushes. Sometimes you say hi, sometimes you pretend to not see them. Either way, at the end of the night you make a quick vow to never go to the grocery store again in your oversized, bleach-stained high school swimming t-shirt. Until it's next week and you're out of milk and once again you're too lazy to change out of your leggings or put makeup on that pesky pimple.

However, this post isn't about seeing tall, dark, and handsome while perusing the yogurt section and looking like a bag lady, it's about how even though I live on an extremely meager student income, I still impractically insist on being a food snob and buying the most expensive products. Let's just say, I'm not very good at being poor.

First of all, rice. The other day I was scouring the shelves for rice. And all I could find was bags upon bags of cheap long-grain or medium-grain rice. What is this? Where is the jasmine rice? Who stocks these shelves? I looked harder. I found a few specialty bags of basmati rice. Okay, that's great and all if I want to make Indian food. But I don't. I want jasmine rice. Finally, packed away in the corner, I found a very small, very elite, very overpriced bag of jasmine. And I bought it.

Olive oil. I blame my mom for making me an olive oil snob. You can't just buy store brand oil olive, I don't care where it says it comes from. Also, American olive oil is out of the question. So the olives are grown in Napa, California which has the exact same climate as Tuscany? I don't care. I want real Italian, extra-virgin olive oil. The end.

Cheese. Maybe it's my northwest heritage or maybe I'm just an elitist, high-maintenance prick, but I will only ever buy Tillamook cheese. It's just better, you guys. The taste, the texture, the everything. I want my Tillamook cheese or I want nothing.

While I may be a food/brand/quality snob, I also know that my food tastes pretty excellent because of it. So even though I'm poor poor poor, I'm not going to apologize for it. Or stop.