Grocery Obsession

There’s a copywriter at Dominick’s Finer Foods that surely has foodie hell in mind. Or he -- she? -- works for an ad agency in the pay of Dominick’s, a popular grocery store chair here in Chicagoland, though for some years now it has been owned by Safeway, reportedly to that company’s regret, since it wasn’t used to dealing with unionized grocery workers.

On Friday’s, Dominick’s deli sells large pizzas for $5. Since I’ve been home on Fridays, I’ve often gone there with the kids and taken one of these pizzas home for lunch. It’s mediocre pizza, better than frozen but not parlor quality, but it is enough for the three of us, with some leftovers, for that low price. On the box it says, “MAKE EVERY DAY A DOMINICK’S PIZZA DAY!”

Every day...? Every week is too almost much. What’s for lunch? Oh, another pizza from Dominick’s… ugh. No, please, no more pizza...

That’s bad enough, but not long ago I bought some potato salad from that same deli. It too is mediocre, but it saved me the trouble of mashing potatoes that night for dinner. I noticed this on the label, a little advertisement for the deli’s sandwiches: THEY’RE SO GOOD YOU CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT THEM.

Must have… sandwiches. Must have… SANDWICHES! I can’t STOP thinking about THEM!

But of course there are 12-step programs for the sandwich-afflicted, if we accept the disease model of sandwich obsession.