Patience (Cucumber Salad)

Last Friday morning I did the shopping for our camping trip in the Catskills.  Since we would be buying up most of our food at the Kingston Farmer’s Market, there was a short list.  I got in and out, but as I was driving home, I realized that I had forgotten to pick up some extra batteries for the lantern.  After a quick u-turn, I was back at the Giant, searching for the battery display.  Since everything has a charger these days, batteries are no longer stocked with the impulse items at checkout.  I had to ask two stockers before I found what I needed and hurried to pay. 

It seems that there are never enough checkers at Giant.  They run everything off of metrics or matrices, nothing gets done without a stat to support the decision, however they can never seem to get the right number of folks to the registers to take care of the people who want to get going.  The self checkout lines were jammed and only three registers were open at a time when double that would have been about right.

I thought I had lucked out.  There was one register with a single person in line.  Too bad, because the woman in front of me had a cart filled to the brim up top and fully stocked on the bottom with cases of water and mixers.  I knew that this would take some time.

The clerk eyed up the situation and asked the woman with the $300 order whether she would let me slip by to pay for my single pack of batteries.  The woman rolled her eyes, groaned, then plainly stated, “Then I would have to wait!”  She wasn’t gonna budge, in spite of the clerk’s reasonable suggestion and the absolute stone cold fact that I would have been gone and out of her life in under a minute.  So I waited and tried to pull something zen out of waiting for her to go through her accordion file of coupons and try two credit cards before the good one worked.

I did get something out of this experience, a bit of calm, a meditative moment and a recipe for those who don’t like to wait.

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Cucumber Salad

1 large cucumber, peeled and thinly sliced 

           (preferably bought from Migliorelli’s at the Kingston Farmer’s Market)

1/4 red onion, thinly sliced 

           (once again, preferably bought from Migliorelli’s at the Kingston Farmer’s Market)

1 tbs. fresh mint 

           (the best is out of Cathy Farrell’s garden)

2 tbs. olive oil

the juice of 1/2 lemon

salt and fresh black pepper

Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl. 

Stir. 

Serve, eat.

‘nuf said.

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Some shots from the Kingston Farmer's Market.  Give me a call, we'll meet in front of the stand where the guy sells blue potato chips, buy the place out, then go down to Fleisher's for Denver steaks to grill.