Bill Keaggy's Collection of Found Grocery Lists

Though it was published a few years ago, a reference to Bill Keaggy's book Milk Eggs Vodka: Grocery Lists Lost & Found popped up in my Google Reader recently. St. Louis-based Keaggy began collecting found grocery lists in 1997, and he's scanned about 2,000 of them, which are viewable on his web site: http://www.grocerylists.org/

He appeared earlier this week on Jimmy Kimmel:





Keaggy is also one of three curators featured in The Museum of Online Museums' documentary The Curators:

(Roughly the first minute is an introduction to the documentary; the part with Keaggy starts at 1:11.)



Before learning about Keaggy's project, I'm sure I'd spotted a grocery list on the ground or in a shopping cart at least a few times in my life, without paying much attention. Today, however, I thought of Keaggy right away when I found this list in a cart at Target:



It's not a very interesting one though very holiday-appropriate. The left side of the page appears to be a menu and the right side the grocery list. Maybe most noteworthy from the latter are the lines where specific brands are mentioned, "helmman's mayo" and "dawn dish detergent." Everything else is generic.

Is anyone else intrigued by found, handwritten grocery lists (and/or menus)? Encounter any particularly memorable ones?

I remember reading or hearing about this (maybe on This American Life?) some years ago. My favorite of the grocery list entries on which he reported:

"If you buy any more rice I will hit you!"

Katie wrote:My favorite of the grocery list entries on which he reported:

"If you buy any more rice I will hit you!"

I like that one, too, and, in general, am more interested in the lists written by one person for another. As cultural artifacts, I am intrigued more broadly by seemingly intimate (and however aggression-fraught) correspondence related to cooking, food, kitchens, etc. I'm pretty sure I developed this rather obtuse interest about 10 years ago after encountering this photograph by LA-based artist Catherine Opie, still one of the funniest kitchen notes I've ever read:



This image is reproduced in Catherine Opie: American Photographer (Guggenheim Museum, 2008), but thank you to the artist for helping me recall its particulars.

HI,

My grocery lists are often written by two different people. I can read my handwriting well enough, though I often cannot read the other.

If I have a pen, there are lines crossed as a find what I need. If I don't, there are little tears along the edges to affirm it is picked up. Years ago, I had initials (D-Dominicks, J-Jewel, S-Sunset) with sale prices next to them.

On a holiday, there is often the menu on the left and ingredients needed on the right. Despite this effort, I always forget something. I have stopped driving back for whatever it is to improvise instead. It is worth spending a few minutes thinking, then the time wasted to pick up a solitary ingredient.

If I find a discarded or misplaced list, I read through it to learn how the other half lives. If someone collects these, I will save them. I already keep enough ephemera to choke a horse, I don't need to start something new presently.

Regards,

I hope this thread becomes a repository for found shopping lists.