Today I Bought a Pork Shoulder From Walmart, Planning to Grind It for a Recipe

Today started out simple enough: I headed to Walmart with one goal in mind—to pick up a good, solid pork shoulder so I could grind it fresh for a recipe I’d been excited to try. Nothing fancy, nothing dramatic. Just a straightforward grocery trip… or so I thought.

Anyone who cooks often knows the feeling: you picture the dish in your mind, you can almost smell it, and buying the ingredients becomes its own kind of joy. The pork shoulder was the star of the recipe I had planned, so I grabbed a nicely marbled one, brought it home, and got ready to turn it into the perfect freshly ground meat.

But the moment I opened the package, the day took an unexpected turn.