7th Avenue Met Food

After a visit to the pediatrician's office this week I ran into Met Food to buy a few things. I am not getting a cent for saying this, just so you know, but shopping in that place makes me happy. Why? I feel like there are so many good things packed into that small place in a manner that allows me to come across mysterious things that I can actually afford. It has none of that suffocating preciousness or contrivance I run into at some of the newer designer markets.

While quickly scanning the aisles I came across a brand of refried beans I'd never seen before called La Morena, bearing a image of a fetching latina up to her shoulders in beans. Why didn't I take a picture of that or buy it? La Morena is the nickname for the Virgin of Guadalupe, the brown-skinned Mexican Madonna always shown within her glorious mandorla. Curiously, her mandorla shares its shape with an ear of corn, and some people connect her with the Aztec Tonanzin, another mother goddess, sometimes called "Bringer of Maize." I find that it is always a enormous pleasure to run into her in any likeness because she has a spendlor that captivates me and relieves my sense of monotony and tediousness.

The people who run Met let me take a picture of the store, requiring no explanation, which was very cool considering how paranoid some shop keepers & others are when it comes to photography these days. The woman at the register ducked out of the picture.