Snider's Super Foods

In a grocery round up of Silver Spring, I hit up another local grocer this weekend: Snider's Super Foods.

(photo from yelp.com)

Tip: do your grocery shopping where old people shop, because they're the ones who have been eating longest. This place is swarming with people who want to pinch your cheeks and get a pound of potato salad on sale. I thinking I subconsciously started humming the tune from "Driving Miss Daisy" while I was in here. The aisles are tiny and cart bumps make neighbors out of strangers. It's a meet-cute waiting to happen. I can only conclude with: 88 CENT AVOCADOS!

On a related note, check out: Old Jews Telling Jokes

have Ikea, will shop

Ikea: to some, it's a shangri-la of cheap modern furniture, to others, it's a personal hell of self-assembly. You know you're in that first group when you have memorized the names of most of the pieces in the store, and even attempt to pronounce them in some sort of swedish.

Ever since my first trip to Ikea Woodbridge the summer before I started college, I have managed to acquire, at some point or another, what I estimate to be at least half of the items from their catalogue. Now that I live in the DC area, I have both the College Park and Woodbridge locations within driving distance, and that my friends, is the subject of this week's blog post. En blog om Ikea!

A good friend from college came to visit the other day. We went to Ikea (her suggestion, strangely enough), and we spent a few hours in the store, sitting on everything and rating it from "excellent" to "not terrible" to "terrible."

So, I think, that with my borderline-obsessive knowledge of Expedit bookcases and Malm nightstands, there is really only one thing left to do.

I will offer up my services to the public as a personal Ikea shopper. Hate browsing through the showroom and self serve aisles? Not a problem, I will do it for you. I might even assemble the pieces for you if I'm feeling feisty. Not only can I tell you the price and model of most of the items in the store, but since I have tested many of them personally in my own home, I can make a recommendation on whether you should buy a certain piece or not.

The Mikael desk line? Highly recommended. It's roomy and has plenty of shelving options. The Aneboda bed, on the other hand, is a no-go. It's squeaky and has rough corners. The Komplement shelving devices? Yes. So useful. The Lerberg shelf? Surprisingly versatile, and won't rust if you put it out on your patio. The tylosand sofa? No, it looks OK in the store, but it'll look saggy in a year, and it's harder to re-arrange than it looks. The Dignitet hanging wire for pictures and curtains? That thing should be banned, it's terribly difficult to install and cutting the wire is dangerous.

And as for my friend? She has kindly offered to marry the heir to the Ikea fortune.