Yesterday evening, after spending the day cleaning the condo and catching up on some work, I decided I needed to get out. And I knew I had some grocery shopping I needed to get done. So I took my bike — grocery bag panniers and all — to the local Trader Joe’s.

Celery. Check.
Butter. Check.
Bread. Everything expires tomorrow or the day after. Skip.
Sugar. Check.
Flour. Check.
Ok. They have flour. Where’s the yeast? Not next to the flour.

But they do have gelato! Yum! The package says I should wait ten minutes after taking it out of the freezer before eating. Once I grab it from the freezer section, it will take me ten minutes to get through the register and take my tasty treat home.

But back to the yeast. I searched high and low all over the store.

There is no yeast.

I grabbed the gelato and headed for the register. The cashier asks me if I found everything I was looking for. I hesitated a little, “Eh… Just about.” He asks me if there was anything he could help me find. I told him that I couldn’t find any yeast. Clearly, there was flour, but there was no yeast.

The guy wasn’t sure if Trader Joe’s sells yeast. He asks the guy at the next register. The guy at the next register says, “Yes, but only seasonally.”

I’m dumbfounded. There’s just nothing to say to that but to chuckle laugh out loud. My cashier says, “Ha! I didn’t know there was a yeast season!”

The two of us are laughing together at this concept. Maybe yeast grows best at certain times of the year? Maybe it just sells better at certain times of the year. Like there’s some particular Christian holiday associated with making bread, and that’s the only time Trader Joe’s sells yeast?

Ah, well. There’s no use in pondering. At that point, I paid for the groceries, went home, and noshed on some delicious gelato.

The end.