Shopping with Emeril

Of all the nights to have forgotten my phone, not to mention my digital camera ...

Monday night, I stopped at Whole Foods Market on my way home from running a few errands to grab something quick and healthy-ish for dinner. Our Whole Foods is fancier than most, party because it's new, partly because it's in a fairly posh part of town, and partly because it has to compete with nearby Wegmans, which in my neck of the woods is like a culinary Disneyland.

Anyway, I mention the fanciness factor because the store has five mini-restaurants in it that all serve beer and wine, plus there is a wine bar upstairs. So when I walked into the restaurant and heard some bombastic guy in the back of the store whooping it up, with a crowd egging him on, my first thought was, "Who is this drunk idiot in Whole Foods on a Monday night?" (So charitable of me, I know.)

So I headed back in that direction, not to see the drunk guy, but because whole organic chicken was $1.99 a pound and that's usually where they keep it, and at that price I wasn't leaving without some.

As I approached the refrigerated sale bin, this big blond guy rushes up to me and physically blocks my way like we're in a basketball game and he's my defender. Bewildered, I gave him an "are you kidding me" look and tried to get around him. It was then that I noticed that there was a huge crowd of people over by the fish, not a soul near the chicken, and a huge flank of television cameras pointed right at me. Oops. Minus one for lack of observation.

I asked what was going on, and the blond gentleman turned into a living, breathing promotional spot for Emeril Green, celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse's new show on Discovery's "Planet Green" channel. I turned around in disbelief and saw that, indeed, Emeril Lagasse was standing twenty feet away from me, cooking and hollering and carrying on.

It was very cool. But I didn't have my phone to call home, so I couldn't stay and watch, and I didn't have my camera, so I didn't get a photo. However, I did find this photo, which is a close approximation of what I witnessed:



Anyway, if you watch the show, you might see me -- I'll be the disheveled girl wearing a lavender tunic and khaki walking shorts, standing by the chicken with a very surprised look on my face.