So I was at the grocery store today to pick up a few odds and ends.  I do one “large” scale grocery run on Sunday morning, then stop in 1 or 2 times during the week to pick up any extras I may need.  (please note, when I say “large” I would be laughed out of the room by any self respecting shopper with 2-3 carts of food every week. It is – after all – only my husband and myself here and we don’t eat that much).  Today’s little excursion included a search for capers.

I have no idea why, but I always have a hard time finding capers in the store.  I know which aisle the stockers use. I even know the approximate location within said aisle.  Yet the few times a year when I want to grab a jar, it takes me over 5 minutes to find them.

They blend.

They are always located with the pickles and olives.   The jars are small.  For some reason I tend to look right past them.  The longer I look, the less I see them. The more irritated I become.  It gets to the point that I must make myself start at the top shelf and specifically look at each and every jar until I finally see them.

Of course I know they were hiding behind jars of olives the first 15 times I looked, yet when I have to make the laborious effort to look at every jar, they sudden sneak out of hiding and are sitting on the shelf as if they’ve been there all along.

With all the new techno-gadgetry out there, I think we need to come up with little tags for these hard to find items.  The homing signal can be coded into your cell phone.  As you waive the phone over the face of the shelves, it rings when it goes directly past the item you are looking for.  Think how much time it would save.

Of course I could always not buy capers.  Just leave them on the shelf.  But I do like them in certain dishes.  At least I have a new jar as of today.  I don’t have to worry about it for a while. In the meantime, I should “write an app for that”.  Heh.