![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Food-gathering
Oct. 21st, 2011 11:22 amI finally made it over to the nearby HEB this morning. It's about a half-mile away from my house, and there are other delightful businesses nearby, too, like Walgreen's, CVS, and McDonald's (sarcasm!). One of my labmates has been trying to convince me that it's a great place to shop and that it carries plenty of bulk items, but I remain unconvinced. On the other hand, there are a few last items I've wanted to track down, and I was able to find some of them there. They had both Ghirardelli and Guittard chocolate chips, for reasonable prices. When I got home, though, I discovered that both brands have downsized from 12-ounce bags; Ghirardelli now sells 10-ounce bags, and the Guittard bag is 11.5 ounces. Kind of amusing, but that helps tip the scale in favor of Guittard, for me. I could never find Guittard-brand chocolate chips in Arizona, interestingly. They are pretty much indistinguishable from Ghirardelli chips, but not as many people know about them.
They also had organic, whole-wheat pasta for under $3/bag, and Challenge-brand butter (my go-to when I cannot afford expensive Organic Valley butter). I still haven't been able to find large cans of organic tomatoes for anything even remotely resembling a reasonable price, though.
So, it looks like my grocery-shopping circuit will involve going to five different places; (1) Village Foods is one of those blended conventional/organic grocery stores, but many of their organic products are overpriced, and they practice "organic punishment" in their produce section, covering all of the organic items with extra large ORGANIC stickers, on top of the usual annoying small stickers (like my father, I hate produce stickers). (2) The Farm Patch, near my house, is okay, but not great, for organic produce and bulk mushrooms (I cannot tell you how much I hate buying mushrooms packaged in styrofoam). (3) The local farmer's market is great for cheap, local, in-season produce that's sometimes organic/all-natural, and for eggs (local will generally trump organic for my limited budget). (4) Brazos Natural Foods would be ideal for a whole lot of things, except it's expensive. I was amazed to discover that they carry Nancy's yogurt and Tillamook 2-pound cheddar loaves. Nancy's yogurt is produced in Eugene, Oregon, and I figured it would only make it as far inland as Arizona. They will also place bulk orders for me, have a nice bulk-foods section, and everything in the store is organic. And now, I will have to stop by (5) HEB for butter and chocolate chips. And probably also a few other big-bag items.
Hopefully, the garden will also start to supplement the list. I also haven't seen any good-looking lettuce anywhere, but I will be satisfied if I only eat lettuce seasonally. I'm also getting a good assortment of cooking greens going.
This is a pretty involved, elaborate grocery-shopping scheme, but isn't as bad as it could be when you consider that all of these stores are within three miles of my house. In Arizona, I would get food from four main places, the Farmer Market (down the street), the CSA, Sunflower Market, and the Phoenix Farmer's Market, plus I would stop in at Fry's or Basha's to get cheese and chocolate chips.
They also had organic, whole-wheat pasta for under $3/bag, and Challenge-brand butter (my go-to when I cannot afford expensive Organic Valley butter). I still haven't been able to find large cans of organic tomatoes for anything even remotely resembling a reasonable price, though.
So, it looks like my grocery-shopping circuit will involve going to five different places; (1) Village Foods is one of those blended conventional/organic grocery stores, but many of their organic products are overpriced, and they practice "organic punishment" in their produce section, covering all of the organic items with extra large ORGANIC stickers, on top of the usual annoying small stickers (like my father, I hate produce stickers). (2) The Farm Patch, near my house, is okay, but not great, for organic produce and bulk mushrooms (I cannot tell you how much I hate buying mushrooms packaged in styrofoam). (3) The local farmer's market is great for cheap, local, in-season produce that's sometimes organic/all-natural, and for eggs (local will generally trump organic for my limited budget). (4) Brazos Natural Foods would be ideal for a whole lot of things, except it's expensive. I was amazed to discover that they carry Nancy's yogurt and Tillamook 2-pound cheddar loaves. Nancy's yogurt is produced in Eugene, Oregon, and I figured it would only make it as far inland as Arizona. They will also place bulk orders for me, have a nice bulk-foods section, and everything in the store is organic. And now, I will have to stop by (5) HEB for butter and chocolate chips. And probably also a few other big-bag items.
Hopefully, the garden will also start to supplement the list. I also haven't seen any good-looking lettuce anywhere, but I will be satisfied if I only eat lettuce seasonally. I'm also getting a good assortment of cooking greens going.
This is a pretty involved, elaborate grocery-shopping scheme, but isn't as bad as it could be when you consider that all of these stores are within three miles of my house. In Arizona, I would get food from four main places, the Farmer Market (down the street), the CSA, Sunflower Market, and the Phoenix Farmer's Market, plus I would stop in at Fry's or Basha's to get cheese and chocolate chips.
