With the warmer weather here to stay for a while, everyone seems to be more relaxed, more friendly. It’s as if the heat is making us move slower, and as we’re here to stay we may as well chat for a while. At the Home Depot about a week ago, as we were fondling shears in the garden department, a man stopped us and pointed at a wood-handled pair made by Corona, “I work in the gardening industry — these are the ones you should get.” We picked them up, but me being a girl and all, I had to touch every other pair in that same class to get a feel for what I was missing out on. “The wood pair are the best,” called out a passing sales assistant. I guess everyone gets a vote today.

At Trader Joe’s I picked up a couple of small pieces of aged cheddars to try out — a 3- and 4-year-old pair of toddlers from Canada. At the checkout, the sales clerk told me how much I was going to love them. “Try them in a macaroni and cheese,” he urged me. This was something that hadn’t even crossed my mind: I assumed cheddar separated rather easily when heated.

Over at Whole Foods, I opted to get the Charlston Chicken Salad for dinner (a day or two a week, I get the night off from cooking, and the Whole Foods prepared food section is great for treating myself to someone else’s hard work, because there’s so much variety). I knew based on the listed ingredients that I’d probably like this one, so I decided not to taste-test it. But then… “Are you sure you only want a small box?” asked the gentleman behind the counter. I allowed as to how I might want seconds, so he talked me into a medium. Then he pointed past me, “go over to the bakery and get some pita bread. You need to put this chicken salad into the pita with a bit of sliced-up onion and some lettuce and tomato.” His eyes rolled back up in his head in bliss, “it’s going to taste wonderful.”

Silly me. I was just going to eat it out of the box.

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