Reverend Ref +

EXCUSE ME, DO YOU CARRY BARLEY?

So last week Mrs. Ref agreed to make the soup for the monthly Soup & Scripture night at St. Paul's. What this really entailed was her preparing all of the ingredients, putting them in Ziploc bags, and then me actually doing the mixing and cooking of said ingredients. It works this way because she doesn't usually come up to VC for Soup & Scripture, but she will do soup occassionally. She chose to do a beef & barley vegetable thing.

Honestly, I've had better soups . . . but that's not the point of this post. The point of this post is to tell you about the grocery store. Walter's is the local market. A tad overpriced, but hey, small town, far from anywhere -- it's the whole supply & demand thing. Anyway, the only ingredient that Mrs. Ref was missing to this beef and barley concoction was the barley.

So Tuesday morning, before I left for VC, I was required to stop at Walter's and pick up a package of barley for the soup. Wandering around the store for a bit, I was unable to locate said barley package. So I did what men normally don't do . . . I found a clerk and asked for directions.

"Excuse me, do you carry barley?" I asked one of the ladies with the helpful Walter's apron.

This is when you know you live in a farming town:

"We don't carry barley. You'll have to go to Williams Feed & Seed for that."

I found a clerk I knew, and she pointed both me and Clerk #1 to the barley. It's in with the soup mixes, if you were wondering.