I drove up to the IGA in Erwin, North Carolina yesterday to buy my lunch. They have a good little salad bar, a BBQ Chicken Wings bar and sometimes they have perfectly ripe avocados. *I didn’t need an avocado yesterday because I brought half of one with me from home. But I did see that they appeared to have several ripe avocados for 99 cents each. **This is the salad bar & wings bar & ripe avocados “that launched a thousand ships.”

Actually, about 3 weeks ago or so, I stopped in here for the first time and bought 3 BBQ chicken wings (3 different flavors), made a salad, and bought a perfectly ripe avocado for 99 cents and had what was one of the most delicious impromptu meals I’ve had in a very long time. As I ate that lunch in my car, parked at the little community park down the road from that IGA, I repeatedly said something to the effect, “that’s one delicious meal.” They have various Ken’s Salad Dressings, and I liked the Ranch & Honey Mustard versions. It was so good that I returned either the next day, or the next to try and repeat the experience… and it was close, but not quite to the level of the first experience.

So that first great experience led me to eat many, many, many salad bar lunches since then. And now I am often boiling my eggs at home, bringing some cauliflower florets in a sandwich baggie, and also some cucumber slices, mung bean and broccoli sprouts (golden raisins, onion). I had bought a container of Broccoli Sprouts and then it came to me, instead of letting them go to waste, why not substitute the sprouts for the florets. After all, the sprouts are supposed to be more nutritious than the florets.

I’ve found an athletic park in Erwin that has a large parking area and one smaller area has some shade and a view through some tall trees. Pleasant and relatively private. *The current Street View doesn’t show that they have paved this area and made a smaller parking area, but they have.

After lunch I drove over to the Lillington Library to see if they had any books for sale that I might want, and they had very few for sale, and none that I wanted.

Then I headed across the Cape Fear and past the antiques store in downtown (their OPEN sign was on), and on to the Lillington IGA. I like this IGA because of their green grocer section. It is always well ordered, and it is refreshing to stand there looking at the order. But yesterday I meandered up and down most of the rest of the store. They had Neese’s Scrapple and I think Souse, and that made me think about asking their butcher to give me a “short course” in the difference between snapple, souse and C-loaf. Later the AI was almost useless in explaining the difference.

Their canned goods prices did not appear to be exorbitant, as had those in the IGA in Rockingham last week. I then noted a nice looking salad bar, took a few pictures, and also noted a container of multi-colored tortilla strips. I thought they might be wontons, but no they were “Fresh Gourmet Tri-Color Tortilla Strips.” I thought them a little pricey, and now see they are available at Walmart for about a dollar less. *These strips appear to be about as harmless as the wonton strips. Little nutritional value, but a nice addition of texture to a salad or soup. I’m gonna try ’em.

I left the IGA and headed back into downtown and the antiques store. I like many of the things they have for sale, but rarely do I find anything that I will actually buy. Except yesterday my eye came upon a shiny, aluminum bar stool. It looked very much like the one I use as a “Lazy Susan” by my easy chair. I thought it might be taller, and when I got it home, it was by about 8 inches. A little smaller seat diameter, and I also see that the width of the stool legs is more narrow, so I would guess less stable if you actually wanted to sit on it. The price on the stool was $12.95. I walked away from it and finished my usually route, clockwise through the store. I then came back to the stool, looked at it and decided to buy it. I walked up to the counter with the stool in hand and held it up for the clerk to get the sales info off the sticker on the seat. The sticker had the price, but it also had “Susan C.” which was the person to whom the profit of the sale would go (I guess minus a small fee to the shop owner.).

I put the stool in the back seat of my car and got into the driver’s seat. Almost immediately I got on my phone and googled for “aluminum kitchen stool, round” seat, and an image that looked like what I had bought appeared with a suggested price of $180. Hmmm… $13 vs $180, I think I just got a deal. I’m thinking I may have bought my stool, several years ago, from maybe Wayfair, but for probably about $65. It’s a little tall, and the legs are close together, and the seat a little smaller, but I’m happy. *Both of these stools have a rotating seat, so that becomes a Lazy Susan, and there are bracing bars all the way around about half way up the stool legs. I can put a “make shift” shelf there. *I’ve done that with my first stool. I have a square plastic plate that I bought at the IGA in Erwin. It was dark blue with a white pattern that I liked and only cost about $2.99. But, it’s just a little too small but if I turn it “catty cornered” so that the plate edges sit on the metal rungs of the stool, it makes the shelf stable, and I now have 3 jars of nuts sitting on it comfortably.

I’ll need to measure the stool seat diameter so that I can buy a round place mat for it. I already have on on my first stool. I use a pet feeding bowl on that to contain various items: nail clippers, box cutter knife, assorted pens & markers, chop sticks, letter opener and remotes.