Kathy needed to run out to the store to get icing for some Thanksgiving desserts last Wednesday and I had to run out for something else and we decided to go together. (Early, to beat the day-before-Thanksgiving crowds.)

I thought she was going to Stop and Shop…turns out she was going to Trader Joe’s.

‘Oh, that’s good,’ I thought to myself. ‘I’m not sure I’ve ever been there. That will be a good New Thing.’

Then I thought about how we’ve lived here for twenty-plus years and it’s unlikely I had never gone into Trader Joe’s. I must have been there before. There used to be a Staples next door, and I was there a lot. I knew the parking lot was a terrible parking lot…but I guess that was from all the Staples visits.

Because we walked in to Trader Joe’s and I was like, “Oh, I’ve never ever been in here.”

It was a nice little store.

I know a lot of people who eat Trader Joe’s frozen meals for lunches. I tried a frozen bean and cheese burrito for lunch that day. (It was very good. I used to like the ones I would get from Whole Foods years ago and they kind of stopped selling the ones I liked, the pre-made ones, and I don’t really go to Whole Foods like I used to, and these were a good substitute for those.)

I don’t know that I can do the weekly shop there - it’s not a huge supermarket. In fact, the thing Kathy was looking for - icing for some cupcakes my daughter was making - they didn’t even have.

It was too quick of a visit to do a full inventory of what I could get there or not.

But we needed coffee (we ran dangerously low, which is not something that happens often. I just forgot to put it on the list, I guess), and they had coffee.

And Kathy found these great iced gingerbread people cookies that we didn’t need at the time but now I’m going to need every day for the rest of my life.

I think the thing about Trader Joe’s is that the prices are supposed to be really low, right? We buy so many things at BJ’s now at bulk-ish prices that I kind of don’t have a comparative baseline.

But the coffee was $7.99 and I think that’s around where it was the last time I bought that size coffee, which was probably a couple of years ago. So I guess it’s reasonably priced? (The Mini Ginger People were less than $5, I think, but I would now pay anything for those.)

There was a time in my life where I did look at all the circulars and hit a couple of different supermarkets on one trip to get all the best deals. English muffins from Target, say, unless the supermarket had them buy one, get one free.

I decided there were other ways I wanted to spend my time than go to multiple supermarkets.

But now that I’ve been inside Trader Joe’s…I don’t know. I think I’m going to have to figure out some kind of a different system.

Gotta get me those Mini Ginger People somehow.