Day 18: There's always plenty of colour and excitement..-- Narrator

"There's always plenty of colour and excitement here on market day."-- Narrator

This quote can be found in the opening animated segment of the 1942 film Saludos Amigos. The Narrator helps set the mood as Donald Duck comes upon Lake Titicaca's marketplace where he meets some locals and a Llama that's just as stubborn as he is.

Market days, or days whenever you go grocery shopping,  always bring some sort of excitement  and lots of color. No matter where you get your food there is always going to be a lot of color. From the colors found in nature to those printed on labels, color is everywhere. Even the finished product of the foods we cook are full of color. Some subtle, others not so subtle.

So is excitement if you know how to look. Though a grocery store or marketplace may seem like the most unlikely of places to find some excitement, but it can be found. Excitement can come from finding your favorite drink as a kid that was no longer made at a local gas station (here's looking at you Surge) or watching a child help pick out just the right fruit or veggie for dinner that night. It can even come from something as simple as getting the ingredients for a new dish that you've been wanting to try or finding a random piece of kitchenware that your local grocery store stocks but no big box store carries. It can also come from the smells and sounds. Take Publix for example. For those unaware, it's a popular grocery store in the South. Every day they have someone at a tiny kitchen stand cooking one recipe from the Publix Aprons recipe line and do an announcement over the P.A. when it's ready to try. It's a great way for people to try new dishes and experience flavors they may not have thought to mix together. That's one sound I absolutely love to hear whenever I'm shopping there! Sometimes the smells bring back fond memories, such as going down the veggie aisle or fruit aisle and the scents bring back a memory of a simpler time like a fresh baked apple pie your grandma used to make way back before life got complicated with adult worries. Every so often you may find an old friend at the store the same time as you, adding to the excitement market day can bring.

Over time as we grow older, we lose the excitement we had as kids going with our parents to the store because it becomes a necessity or a chore. To regain that, we just have to take the time to stop and savor the moment of the sights, sounds and smells and allow ourselves to get excited over something seemingly trivial. 

So until next time, never lose sight of the excitement market day can bring and Keep Cooking With Character!