nectar of the gods

I eat one of two things for breakfast virtually every morning: (1) oatmeal cooked with a banana, which kind of melts the banana in there and sweetens the oats (and which totally grosses David out), berries and almonds, OR (2) greek yogurt sweetened with agave nectar with berries and almonds. I switched to agave nectar after buying a huge container of it at COSTCO<---- (this will become important momentarily) a couple of years ago; honey is too . . . honeyish, too strongly flavored, for my taste, whereas agave has a very neutral sweet taste.

When we were leaving the pool the other week I asked David if he would swing into Publix to pick up a couple of things on the way home. We are NOT fans of the family trip to the grocery store, so David kind of groaned, but I assured him that it was way more efficient than driving all the way home and then one of us driving back out again for four things. I told him that I'd wait in the car with Caroline, and I handed him my list of four (4) items:

strawberries
blueberries
agave nectar
popsicles

So David headed into the store with Jacob and Elizabeth, and I waited in the car with Caroline. And waited. And waited. After a while, Caroline said "mommy? what is taking them so long?" I told her to just hang on, they'd be back in just a minute. After another ten minutes passed, I told her that if we weren't in our swimsuits we'd go in to look for them. I couldn't figure out why it was taking so long to grab four things. And then it hit me:

THE AGAVE!!




I told David that it would be with the honey, and it should have been with the honey, but I knew that that had to be the problem. I didn't have my phone with me, so I couldn't call him to micromanage the situation. We were just stuck there waiting.

Finally, after like 30 minutes, they emerged from the store. Jacob and Elizabeth started in on me immediately: "Mom, we HATE agave!" And then David began:

D: Yeah, the problem was your elitist sweetener.
C: WHAT? My liquid sweetener is not elitist! I buy it at Costco! Wasn't it with the honey?
D: No, it wasn't with the honey.
C: Where was it?
D: Well, after wandering around aimlessly looking for this stuff for 20 minutes, the big friendly woman in the meat department took pity on us and said "what you looking for, sweetheart?" and I had no choice but to say "agave nectar." And she said "honey, I ain't never heard of that." And then all of a sudden this little mom in her visor and tennis whites appeared at the end of aisle 12 and said "Did you say agave? I can help you." And I thought: "of course you can." So she led us to the organic section, where we finally found it.
C: Huh. They must have moved it.

The kids have been teasing me relentlessly ever since. Whenever I say we need to stop at the grocery, they say: "Do we need . . . (dramatic pause) . . . agave?" Well, they can laugh all they want -- love me, love my smooth, mild-tasting sweetener.