Who Moved My Cheese?

I've got a serious problem, people. There seems to be a conspiracy afoot.

A couple of months ago I was grocery shopping and went to get some grated parmesan cheese. I like the pre-shredded kind, like what Sargento provided. I do not like to grind my own (hello that’s WAY more work than I approve of doing). And I don’t, out of snobbery, like the green can powdered kind. Do they even make that anymore?

Anyway, so I was shopping at the oh-so-ghetto Safeway across the street from my house and lo and behold when I went to refresh my supply of the queso there was NO parmesan, of any ilk, available. This had never been a problem before. What happened? Isn’t parma one of the most popular cheese of all time?

I chalked the missing cheese up to this particular Safeway being HORRIBLE. And since I like to make dramatic statements that don’t impress anyone but me I decided to immediately switch grocery stores. So I started shopping at Bloom which was a heck of a lot further away, but had attractive vegetable displays, those cute little half-carts, and a hearty supply of my favorite cheeses.

This worked very well for several months.

Last Saturday, however, I went to Bloom for my weekly shopping. And when I got to the dairy case I looked, and I looked, and I LOOKED. But even though they had specialty cheeses such as goat, Muenster, and even HAVARTI, there was NO PARMESAN! Oh sure there was mozarella in 5 lb bags all ready for the fatification of America, but no, no parmesan could be had for love nor money.

How can this be, I ask you? Is it just me? Am I the only one in the world that is buying parmesan cheese – thus making stocking it impractical? It seems unreasonable to me that there should not be any parmesan cheese at any of my local grocery stores. But perhaps I am just unreasonable. (I'm not.)

Just so you know, I have a history of my favorite foods being removed from the grocery store supply chain and it's getting old. First it was my favorite salad dressing: Parmesan Peppercorn, followed by my favorite flavor of Barilla pasta sauce (Green & Black Olive), culminating in the removal of the entire Barilla pasta sauce line. Sigh ...

My needs are few, grocery store people. In fact, here is my weekly grocery list so you can make sure to have everything I need stocked. I'm sure if we work together we can make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen anymore.

• Chicken Nuggets (or other frozen treat like pizza or tater tots)
  
• Apples/Pears (or some other seasonal fruit), 5 pieces
• Roma tomatoes, 3 pieces
• Romaine lettuce, 1 bunch
• Parmesan cheese
• 3 pkgs Deli Meat
• 1 pkg Sliced cheese, Colby-Jack , Muenster or Provolone
• Frosted Mini-Wheats
• ½ Gallon Skim milk

That’s it. (Generally speaking of course, sometimes I get all crazy and throw a can of chili in). Could you please try not to remove any more of these items from your stock? I'm not sure how much more paring down this grocery list can take.