SEPT_OCTOBER_2015_FINAL_no bleed

the Savings issue

by Chris Rose Rose’s Market

T his issue of MyRouses Everyday marks my one-year anniversary working with this magazine. And the theme of this issue — saving stuff — confirms for me that it was my destiny to be in the grocery business all along. I didn’t always know this. And it’s been a long and circuitous route to get here with many diversions along the way —newspapering,TV commentary, even waiting tables — but a look back at my childhood reveals that the grocery business was in my DNA from the start.

Grocery stores don’t just remind me of my youth. I actually had one as a kid. Sort of. Let me explain: My upbringing in the 1960s was conventional. My dad was a doctor, my mom a traditional homemaker. As the youngest of five kids, I squeezed onto a big yellow bus to go to school during the week and squeezed into the family station wagon to go to church on Sundays. But most folks who know me can tell you —

and any reader of my work might reasonably infer — despite the suburban trappings of normality, I was a bit of a strange lad. OK, I was downright weird. The first things I saved as a kid — the first things I ever seriously collected — were sugar packets. Yeah, sugar packets. The kind you get at a restaurant. For free, even still today. As many as you can stuff in your pocket. That may sound odd — OK, it is odd —

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MY ROUSES EVERYDAY SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2015