Peony Disaster Averted

It’s the little things in life that make me happy—that is while I’m waiting for the bigger things like world peace, a decent vegan cheese, and rain to fall in California.

Thank you, thank you, thank you Trader Joe’s for finally stocking peonies.

Now for those readers in Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and all the other countries that read this blog, let me explain. I adore peonies; we can’t grow them here in So. Cal; and Trader Joe’s is the poor man’s Whole Foods.

It carries all sorts of unique varieties of food I’ve never heard of, let alone thought of sampling, hence, TJ’s (as us regulars call it) has made me a much more adventuresome eater over the years.

And while Whole Foods had a broader selection of gluten-free, vegan and organic foods; it is my humble opinion that if I were subjected to a blind taste test, EVERYTHING that was delicious, that my husband would eat, would originate at Trader Joe’s.

Plus, one cart full of food wouldn’t cost the equivalent of the gross national product of Andorra.

Just to prove my point, you must try their gluten-free chocolate chip cookies in the bag. They make me swoon and I’m not given to swooning over anything with the words gluten-free in the description.

That being said, I was feeling a tad let down lately by their blatant lack of peonies. You see I count on those six stem bouquets of loveliness to show their beatific, tight budded faces around March or April; so you can imagine my panic the last couple of weeks when I thought I had possibly missed their short annual visit.

It was a microcosm of the larger macrocosm of my life. ”Am I unlucky enough to have missed out on that thing I love that makes me happy?”

Hey! I wasn’t being completely batshit insane—it is late May you guys!

In my rat bastard of an imagination that sometimes sends my head adrift to places terrifying and massively disappointing, TJ’s had a literal plethora of peonies for five days back in March when I was confined to bed with a nasty head cold or even worse yet…the week my dog died and I couldn’t bring myself to shower let alone grocery shop.

That’s what I’ve been thinking the last four weeks or so. That I was the only one in the greater Los Angels area to have had the misfortune of missing the peony window at Trader Joe’s.

“These are such an amazing deal, better than at the flower mart,” enthused the woman next to me in a crowd of forty plus peony addicts. I kid you not. “They’re more than double this price,” she breathlessly informed me as she swiftly and expertly sorted through the various colors and conditions of the bunches.

Everyone knows you have to find the perfect bouquet. Of the six peonies in the bunch you want two to be half-open, two of them three-quarters open for color, and two in a tight bud to open later in the week.
You only get the ones that are open all the way for a dinner party that very night (and shame on you for waiting until the last-minute) because they will be unsightly the following morning. Opening all the way too soon, they go from gorgeous to ghastly—like a Catholic schoolgirl on a first date…

I suppose THAT should be the moral of this story…but it isn’t.

Here’s the point I want to make:
Take pleasure in the simple things;

Don’t be like me and worry that you are the sap that misses out on all the things that you love;

And for god sakes don’t sweat the small stuff;

And if you’re ever visiting from outside the U.S. it is imperative that you put Trader Joe’s and those chocolate chip cookies on your must see list.

That’s all, carry on,
xox