Schnucks Archives

April 16, 2023April 16, 2023

Chocolate Rabbits Visit the Cemetery

I had to smile while I was waiting in line to check out at Schnuck’s grocery store a couple of days ago. You know Easter has come and gone when the chocolate rabbits hop into the clearance basket.

Mother and Brother Mark would harvest as many of the rabbits they could find when they went on sale. The orphan bunnies shivered in the basement freezer until they were melted down for whatever purpose the pair could come up with.

April rains bring spring flowers

The gentle rains caused the tulips Mother planted decades ago to welcome Spring, but the next round of winds and rains whipped them to shreds before I could decorate Mother and Dad’s tombstone as was my usual custom.

I decided that chocolate bunny rabbits would make a good stand-in. I hurried to the grocery store and found that the cart still had an abundance of the hoppers.

Dad’s birthday was coming up

Chocolate rabbits for LV – Mary Steinhoff 04-15-2023

Dad died in 1977. If we populated his birthday cake on April 17 of this year, the 106 candles would be visible in outer space.

I thought he’d appreciate that I sampled the rabbit before delivering it.

Mother’s rabbit was fancier

I thought Mother deserved a fancier rabbit than Dad.

It’s fun coming up with something a little different to show them they have been remembered.

Unconventional grave decorations

Mother got pine cones in 2019.
A decades-old plastic Easter egg hiding amidst the tulips that she had planted a gazillion years ago showed up in 2016.
In 2015, she got the last rose of summer.
Some railroad spikes, a quarter squashed by a train, and a tiny blue ceramic floor tile from Cairo has showed up over the years.

July 15, 2018

Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp

I saw a recipe for bacon-wrapped shrimp on the same day I spotted a Schnucks promotion for seafood. I love shrimp, and I love bacon, so this was a good reason for me to put on my pants and venture out into the 106-degree heat index.

The picture shows the result. You can click on it to make it larger and to whet your appetite.

I don’t follow directions well

You can read the website’s ingredients and directions here.

Like I said, I take liberties with what people tell me to do. Where the recipe called for maple syrup, I substituted honey. I don’t particularly like maple syrup, and I thought the honey might stick better when I basted it on the shrimp and bacon.

I usually buy a thick bacon at Sam’s, and I’ve learned that it works best when I leave it in my convection toaster oven for 14 minutes at 400 degrees. I poured off the excess grease at about the half-way mark, and I increased the broiler time by two minutes to make the bacon a little crispier.

Finally, I didn’t have any off-the-shelf chili powder, so I reached for Wife Lila’s favorite, Chimayo Chile Bros Hatch Medium. It added enough heat that it was interesting, but not so much it overpowered the main ingredients.

I ate half the 20 medium-sized shrimp for supper, and polished the rest off for brunch. It was good enough that I’m going to make some more in the next couple of days.

July 4, 2018

Holiday Crisis Averted

I walked up to the young man stocking the soda shelves and said, “Kid, the fate of the Fourth of July is on your shoulders.”

I don’t know if Walmart employees are issued a panic button to push if confronted with “odd” customers, but the look in his eye made me believe he wished he had such a device.

“Here’s the deal. It’s not the Fourth of July unless I can pour strawberry soda over vanilla ice cream. I’d hate to have to tell all those folks who are waiting for fireworks to go off that you’re responsible for it not happening.”

He and a second stocker scoured the aisles and came back with the sad news: the Jackson Walmart had no strawberry soda in any brand.

(By the way, you can click on the images if you want to make them big enough to see the bubbles.)

Schnucks Saved the Day

Hoping to salvage the holiday, I went to Schnucks.

They, fortunately, had at least four brands of red soda on the shelves.

Cue up the firework displays. (For the record, this was taken in Middleport, Ohio, in 2015, while escorted by Curator Jessica, who is still young enough to get excited about things like this.)

After it was over, she asked how I liked it.

My answer was to play Peggy Lee singing Is That All There Is?

Independence Traffic Jam

Yes, children, we had traffic jams in Cape in The Old Days. I shot this one on Independence looking toward Kingshighway on the same day I shot the demolition of the St. Charles Hotel, April 13, 1967.

It took some headscratching to figure out where it was taken. The key landmarks were the bridge over Cape LaCroix Creek, the Wiethop Truck Sales sign, the highway sign pointing to Hwy 61 and the car dealership way off in the background.

I must have been using my 200mm telephoto lens. That would have accounted for the way everything is compressed and looks closer than it really is.

The only thing that’s still there is Wiethop. Moon Distributing Company and Pollack Hide and Fur, which don’t show at that intersection, are long gone. Harris Motor Company has become Aldi’s. The area off to the right contains Kmart, Schnucks, Walgreen Drugs and some other stores.

And, that traffic-jammed two-lane road has become four lanes with a suicide center turn lane.

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