pre-Irene grocery shopping

so yes, our plans have changed.

my mother-in-law celebrates a birthday on Monday so the original intent was a trip to New Jersey on Friday, back to the city on Sunday evening for a birthday dinner (David Burke Townhouse), then Monday morning you sure look fine blah blah blah.

but Hurricane Irene suggests that she may visit this weekend so we go to New Jersey a little earlier on Friday, buy health food store groceries before dinner, take the train back immediately following dinner (A Toute Huere in Cranford (thanks Alex!)) and a stop at local grocery store on the way home.
we buy peas and Mountain Dew and peanut butter and peanut butter and water and water and potato chips.
we do not buy bread or Coke Zero because they are completely out of both.

this is not a complaint.
this is not a problem.
we're not going to starve (though it might help to have a little more caffeine in the house).
we're fine.
and we decide to go to another grocery store this morning for bread and Coke Zero.

which we do.

they have Coke Zero (I grab three 2-liters).
we think they have bread because we see it in a passing grocery cart, but we don't actually make it over to the bread section of the store because there are 20+ people in the Express Line.
it runs out the aisle, past the Entenmann's, past the refrigerated Pillsbury biscuits, past the eggs (white, brown, organic and cage-free and factory) and the cottage cheese and the ricotta cheese and the block cheese and the shredded cheese.
it runs past the Weight Watchers and Healthy Choices, past the frozen pizzas (Celeste and Jeno's and Ellio's) and fifty-seven different kinds of popsicles all the way to the Ben & Jerry's and Haagen-Dazs and Breyer's.
we leave the store empty-handed.
(the above video is from grocery store #2 which, you can tell, we also left empty-handed)

we're home now, and may actually stay.