Groceries

Yesterday I went out of the house (gasp!) early in the morning to scope out a couple of locations, like the dog park, and I also went to the local grocery store.  It's a nice store, part of the Safeway chain, called Tom Thumb.  Everyone in this grocery store is incredibly friendly, everyone you encounter asks how you are, if you are finding everything, how's your day going. Nice folks.

But there is very little local produce or protein and almost no organic produce.  There are a few plastic containers of salad mix and herbs, but that's really about it.  There was one area that had organic produce but it was very small and very expensive and very limited, choice-wise.

I wanted to buy a piece of fish for fish tacos (more on those below) and my choices of simple white fish were two, one from Vietnam and one from China, both of which had been previously frozen.  Even the salmon was previously frozen, and although it did indicate "wild" it was also from a foreign country, and I don't mean Alaska.  There is no organic meat, no organic poultry.  Even in a red state like Texas, I  know there are organic farmers, but their products do not appear in this market.  There is a large, very upscale market in Dallas, the Central Market, that I have visited a few months ago with Jennifer, and they definitely have organic and local everything but it is very expensive.  There is also a Whole Foods market that I may visit today, but I doubt that Tom Thumb and Safeway shoppers go there.  In fact, there is probably a three-tier shopping pyramid here.  One tier does the bulk of its shopping at Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, Target.  The second shops at Safeway, Tom Thumb and Alberston.  The third, and the smallest by far, frequents the high end spots such as Whole Foods and Central Market. Nothing unusual in this, it's typical of most urban and suburban areas.  It's just that the difference between what is available at each place is so great.

There is a Super Target near here and I stopped there to see what they had regarding organic stuff.  They had one shelf of several varieties of apples and some pears, all organic, and one kiosk of organic celery, green onions, romaine, broccoli and cauliflower.  That was it. All their meat had a notation on the packaging that some sort of solution ("not  exceeding 12%") had been added for flavor.  There was some chicken that didn't say organic but did say it had no hormones, came from a family farm, etc.  Who knows.

Now, I am not a person who buys all organic food, that's for certain. But it is nice to have that option.  Here in Texas that option is rather limited.  I am now quite curious what sort of prices I will find at the Whole Foods market.  The organic celery in Target was $2.29 a bunch, the green onions were $2.99 for a package of about two dozen, the cauliflower and broccoli were around $2.69 a head.  A lot more than the non-organic, obviously.

Regarding my tacos (changing the subject a bit here) they were delicious and pretty much fat-free.  I heated the tortillas in a hot cast-iron skillet, then sprayed it with non-stick spray and plopped the tilapia in and sauteed that for a couple of minutes til done.  Chopped that into a couple of chunks, put it onto the tortillas, added some fresh pico de gallo (but any salsa would do), some cilantro leaves, a little chopped tomato and a squeeze of lime (essential.)  Rolled them up and ate them and they were very good.  No added fat, no sour cream, just good eats.

That's all for this day.