What Happens When Your Husband Helps You With Grocery Shopping

First, let me start out by saying that Jeremiah is a man who strives to serve those he loves. He loves to provide service to me. It is one of his frustrations that I am an independent woman and that I do a lot of things myself rather than asking him to do them.

We currently live with his parents and as a way to "earn our keep" we do their grocery shopping every week and I cook for them. Grocery shopping for six people (five of them adults) every week is such a chore. It makes for a big grocery shopping list and it gets old having to get all of that stuff every week. I definitely miss the days when I only had to go grocery shopping for our little family. Ah, the days of only going grocery shopping 1-2 times a month.

Anyway, Jeremiah offers to go grocery shopping for me and I often take him up on that offer. I usually let him go grocery shopping for me on weeks where the list is shorter (or contains less exotic items). I like to cook and so sometimes I have odd items on my list (like five spice powder or coconut milk, etc.).

When Jeremiah goes grocery shopping I let him do it when the list is simple because bless his heart, he often picks up the wrong thing if what I'm looking for isn't there. For instance, I asked him to get 3 bags of frozen chicken breasts, but they were out so he got 6 bags of frozen chicken tenderloins instead. Aye yai yai! So, then I had to alter my dinner plans to use the chicken tenderloins on days that called for shredded chicken and I found some chicken tenderloin recipes to use them up.

So, a few nights ago, we were having a breakfast for dinner night (pancakes, hash browns, eggs...the works). When I originally went grocery shopping earlier that week, they had plenty of maple syrup. However, when I started making pancakes for dinner that night, I discovered that they were clean out (I think Jeremiah's brother likes to put maple syrup on his pop tarts...I'm not kidding).

So, I asked Jeremiah to pick up some maple syrup on his way home from work.

Jeremiah didn't feel like stopping at a grocery store, so he decided to stop at a corner market in his neighborhood in Sugar House.

He ended up bringing home a $30 bottle of maple syrup (straight from a tree, folks). I felt quite badly. Of course he wouldn't know that there was a difference between pancake syrup (the stuff you can buy for $2-5 at the grocery store that is basically made of sugar and maple flavoring) and the expensive, authentic maple syrup that comes straight from a tree.

But bless his heart, because it was in the right place!

And it could have been worse! It turns out that a neighbor of theirs went to that same corner store to buy some balsamic vinegar or olive oil or something of that sort and ended up spending $250 on it! Apparently, he had the money to spare and he was too tired to go somewhere else for the item after finding out what the price was.

I only wish I had $250 to spare on balsamic vinegar or olive oil! What would that be like?

Does anyone else have any similar experiences stemming from their husband subbing in and doing the grocery shopping?