In which I lose my Wegmans virginity

Two weeks ago, a Wegmans opened about 25 minutes from here.

This is A. Big. Deal. if you are a Wegmans devotee living in New England, where there were no stores until last month. I have a few New York-transplant friends who were over the moon at the news.

I asked one if it was really that great and she looked at me as if I asked her if she really loved her kids. Actually, she may love Wegmans more...

The hype was as enormous as the store, physically the largest grocery store in New England. It drew something ridiculous like 20,000 customers on opening day, so I waited until the furor died down before making my inaugural visit.

I planned to meet Flo (center) and Becca (right) for lunch because the store also has a 300-seat food court, and when we meet, we eat. I got there early and tooled around the Produce Aisle looking for delicata squash, which is hard to find in the stores I frequent. They had it. Go Wegmans.

I headed for the Nutritional Bar aisle to find my precious, of which my regular store was out. Not only did they have cases, they also sold them in cases. GO WEGMANS! The arrows indicate where the two cases I bought were. They had four cases of these suckers on the shelf. Woo!

The store's greatest strength is its selection. It seemed to have everything. And while I can't envision driving 25 minutes to do my regular shopping, I can see visiting 1-2 times a month to pick up stuff I can only find there.

Flo, Becca and I enjoyed lunch (avocado maki for me, made to order, yay), and then after they walked me AA-sponsor-style through the Bakery, which is the second-most Food Porniest place on Earth, right behind Whole Foods Bakery, aka, Valhalla.

Whenever we get together we like to take a picture, so of course we opted for the last place on Earth we should be, as you can see above. Look, but don't touch, girls.

Surprisingly (or not) no one thought it was odd we were standing in the Bakery, fondling cakes and getting our picture taken.