new nut butter alert
it’s the summertime and i stretch my mosquito bitten legs out into the wild and yawn
—because the sun makes me sleepy
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summerhill as i’ve gotten older i’ve realized i cannot live in a place where there isn’t sun or greenery: it’s sick and silly but new york dulled me / where there’s undergrowth in georgia there’s wet concrete in the city
(i think often about bethany cosentino moving from california to new york and lapsing into seasonal depression because of the weather - and even more so how she moved home and made a career out of making music that sounds and smells like sunshine)
so the summer is my favorite season, though i sweat and overheat and get headaches so easily in the humidity. as june stretches on, i’ll spend less and less time outside and complain until no end about the weather - though i’ll be slick with sweat and covered in sweet seasonal comedones and smell like grass and propane, i’ll be content to be out of the winter and in the sun again — with one pale leg stuck in the front yard and another one in the darkness
there are so many quirks of the summer that i can’t stop thinking about — ripe strawberries and peaches! biweekly visits to la mejor de michoacan and the cookout drive-thru for fresh banana milkshakes; trips to the lake and cookouts and drinking diet cokes on patios in the shade; eating well and very much: grilled corn and grilled chicken, bowls of vinegar-soaked english cucumber and red onions, and many many spoonfuls of banana pudding eaten in secret
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eat me speak me as i’ve gotten older i’ve begun to enjoy grocery shopping more and more and i now find it to be a calming thing / a basket in hand i peel through aisles and study closeout prices, squeezing apricots to assess their ripeness and never buying them anyway / staring at tubs after tubs after tubs of yogurt all lined up congruently on refrigerated shelves / filling bulk baggies with raw almonds and stealing pieces out of the bag as i race to the frozen section / where i study flavors of full-fat gelatos and sorbets and try to convince myself to buy a pint instead of purchasing milkshake after milkshake from drive-thrus / where i’ll end my sweet trip by undercharging at self-checkout for pink lady apples
georgia grocery stores are so much better than those in florida, where publixes and winn dixies and walmart neighborhood marketplaces infest every four-way intersection. kroger is a fine fun fantastic thing and my absolute favorite place to be in the suburbs
my own vision of paradise is the disorderly quarter-aisle dedicated to damaged and discounted goods, where gluten free crackers and jars of ragu gather dust underneath industrial-grade light fixtures and you never know what you might find (the allure of thrifting clothing right there in your very own local grocery store, would you fucking believe it?)
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the verdict georgia grinders is expensive and i would’ve never purchased it if it wasn’t in the damaged goods section for half of its shelf price. i feel no more or less of a georgia transplant after eating my first spoonful of the overpriced honey roasted almond butter but do not regret inching towards overdraft for splurging on it
it tastes of nothing special or life-changing — it tastes normal, it tastes sweet. it’s chunky and goopy and has yet to emulsify with its own natural oil
i was out of almond butter anyway (my squat plastic jar of kroger-brand crunchy almond butter was scraped clean — all that remained were hard chunks of nut and nothing else), and the crystallized honey cuts the paste-like tang that ruins most types
it’ll do
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