The Pressure Of Too Many Dessert Choices

This past Wednesday I walked into my local Wegmans on Route 57 intent on buying one of their small Ultimate chocolate cakes. Wegmans serves them 3 ways; the large cake for $16, the small for $8.50 and by the slice at $3.75. For me, the best part of the cake is always the frosting, and the small cake gives you the best frosting to cake ratio. 🙂

My first stop was picking up the cake. I had other things on my mind that I knew I had to buy but I took the slight deviation from my normal pattern and decided to grab the cake first. Usually I’ll walk along the prepared foods section to see if they have soup I like but it’s not the season for my favorite soup so I bypassed it; I don’t change routines all that often.

As I kept walking along, I eventually ended up by the bulk section, where candies, chocolates, granola and nuts reside. However, on this day there was a major change. It seems the day before this particular Wegmans decided to upgrade the bulk section to be like the Rochester area stores… which means they added a bunch more candy and streamlined the entire area. Oh no, the horror!

The horror part is because I have a major sweet tooth. I bought the cake with the intention of cutting it into 4 pieces and portioning it out to myself, based on my recent good behavior. I was also thinking about buying some Breyers lactose-free light vanilla ice cream, though I was going to save it until I’d finished the cake, which would be in 4 days.

Now, suddenly, I had candy that hadn’t ever been sold at my particular store sitting in front of me, taunting me… it was too much! My eyes popped, my mouth salivated, and my brain… well, it kind of froze. I had way too many things going at once; what to do… what to do…

First, this doesn’t only happen in the dessert area; matter of fact, it rarely happens in the dessert area because, before Wednesday, there were only a couple of things I’d ever buy. Often, my consternation comes up when I’m debating myself on which foods to buy that I can cook and eat all week, or at least for a few meals. When I have this issue I’ll usually just stand in the aisle and think… sometimes upwards of 5 minutes.

It might not seem all that critical to a lot of people but I’m not only trying to economize but only want to cook once… and I want to get it right. A couple of times I’ve messed up by forgetting something, and I try to avoid that happening.

This time, sweets, desserts, wonderful treats… what to do… what to do…

Luckily, this Wegmans has a bench in the frozen foods area; I have no idea why they have it there but I’ve always figured they put it there for me because I’ve sat there a few times contemplating my food purchasing choices. With all the sweets on my mind, I needed time to think, and, unlike the food aisles, there wasn’t enough room now to stand in the candy area without blocking access.

I sat on the bench and started thinking and calculating. It wasn’t going well initially and, of all things, I saw my friend Kelvin pushing a cart. That was shocking because he lives near a different Wegmans and I’d never seen him in my store before, but he was buying some things for a picnic that was at a portion of Onondaga Lake near where I live.

I told him my issue and his suggestion was to put the cake back and just walk out of the store. Silly man! Put the cake back and just walk out the store with nothing? Didn’t he know me better than that? He walked away to pay for his items and I continued sitting there, thinking…

I sat there at least 10 minutes. At one point a Wegmans manager came by to check something and asked if he could help. I told him my dilemma that was caused by the new candy area and he told me they’d just put it in the day before, which explained why I hadn’t noticed it when I was there a couple days earlier.

Eventually I came to my decision. I already had the cake and I didn’t want to walk all the way to the bakery to put it back. I also realized that if I bought the candy the way I usually do, in sample sizes, that in my present state of mind I’d have bought so many bags of stuff that it would cost more than the small cake, and that, unlike the cake, it was truly pure sugar (I mean, they now have candy corn and those candy pumpkins… the horror!), and I wasn’t prepared for that kind of sugar rush. I also realized that it didn’t make sense to buy ice cream that I expected I wouldn’t get to until 4 days later; why take up the space in my freezer right?

Once I made the decision my life was easy. I moved on, bought the other things on my list, paid for my items and left the store. Because I share a backyard with Wegmans it’s not unusual for me to stop there almost on a daily basis for small things, but I haven’t been there for a couple of days by now. However, because of the dessert “pressure”, instead of cutting the cake into 4 slices I only cut it into 2 slices. That means I had two major sugar rush days anyway… but it was glorious! lol

I should be fine from this point on. Now I’m prepared for the candy area and, knowing that stuff will be there from this point on, I know I can sample a few things here and there instead of going hog wild and buying everything all at once. That’s a good thing because, of all things, it seems they’re now selling some brand of chocolate covered potato chips that I’m going to have to try; oy!