Our food storage inventory revealed an abundance of beans and a dearth of spices to make the beans palatable.  Mom wrote on her calendar for us to trek to a little kitchen supply store she likes—a mother-son outing in search of bulk spices like ground cinnamon, whole bay leaves, and garlic powder.  I arrived home from work at 4:30 p.m. (with work still to do at night), and asked, “Should we go?” “Yes!” she answered as she rose from her recliner.  A quick internet search showed the store closed at 5:00, and we had a 20-minute drive.  We raced across the Salt Lake valley and watched the numbered street signs flash by: 9000 South; 8200 South; 7800 South.  The store was at 7579 South Redwood Road.  “I’ll dash into the store and tell them we need just a few items,” I suggested as we got close.  “Then I’ll come back for you.”  But for all our looking, neither of us saw the store where it should be.  In my haste, I looked only at the closing time, and not the location, of the store, which turned out to be in Ogden, over an hour away.  Apparently, our store had closed (though Yelp said it was open).  “Oh, pshaw,” Mom sighed with disappointment.  “Well, let’s stop at a health food store I know on the way home.”  We zipped back across the valley and parked at The Good Earth, which, for a change, was where we expected the store to be.  “I hope I wasn’t too hard on your cute car,” I lamented.  “Nonsense,” she reassured.  “You’re the best driver in the whole world!”  We meandered through the store and found small bottles of spice at huge bottle prices.  But in the bulk food section, Mom found some roasted green pumpkin seeds to munch on, and I discovered a treat I can pretend is healthy: cubes of cocoa, almonds, sesame seeds, and sunflower seeds, sweetened and glued together with dates.  Though we did not find our spices (or even our store), we enjoyed our adventure together and talked the while.  “What a successful failure!” we cheered together.  Back at home, we decided Mom’s existing spice collection would easily last a year, and that we did not need to buy more after all.

(Image by Fernando Espí from Pixabay)