Grocery Shopping

A few days before Thanksgiving I did my annual trek to the "regular" grocery store to buy Eggnog. Of course I don't go only once a year to normal grocery stores, sometimes in the summer I go there to get ice-cream when it's one sale (two containers for the price of one or less). This past summer I was busy dissertating though, and didn't go at all, so it had been a while since I had been to this particular store. We only like store-brand Eggnog from the Giant or Stop & Shop supermarkets (S&S in New England, Giant here).

I have been grocery shopping at discount stores (Price Rite, Aldi, and, once in a while, Save-a-lot) for several years now, since when we started living on a tighter budget back in '03-04, I think. In the beginning I had to go elsewhere for our soymilk, for the brand of orange juice with calcium that I liked, and a few other things, and grocery shopping was very time consuming, but now these stores sell those things as well. Sometimes I can even find Boca Burgers or GardenBurgers there and last night I even found organic cow's milk! I only go once a month or so to my dream store (Whole Foods) for Quorn veggie meats and organic dairy and eggs (particularly since I reviewed the organic pregnancy book). I also love Trader Joe's, for its good prices and foods from all over the world, as well as organic and green products, but I'm sure I have already written about WF and TJ before, haven't I? Our families have always had "frugal" lifestyles, and even when we shopped at regular grocery stores, we bought a small amount of processed foods. So I didn't miss much, if anything, when we switched.

When I entered the store two weeks ago, though, I was really struck, amazed even, at the sheer number of brands and variety of products that one finds at a large grocery store. I felt quite overwhelmed then, and kind of thankful for the limited variety of the discount chains. The way I felt was very similar with my first encounter with American Supermarkets back in 1993, I was simply fascinated. In the following year (94) I read Don DeLillo's White Noise and can you guess the topic of my paper? The image of the supermarket in that book -- in it, as long as the supermarket is still there, things are OK. It's a source of comfort to the main character. Even after we moved here in 96, for several years, every trip to the supermarket was a " cultural experience" and I loved to stroll leisurely, enjoying the "sightseeing." One of the things that struck me in this visit is how the organic and natural food section grew in the past year alone. Now the store offers most kinds organic foods in its own brand at reasonable prices!

Lately, I have been thinking about the importance of organic foods (particularly produce), but I have realized that it would be very hard for us to go fully organic now. If we can't even afford shopping at a the "regular" stores (not that I would really want to now that I know I can buy cheaper food of the same quality elsewhere), how could we afford the price of organic produce?
In the case of dairy and eggs, the reasons for going organic are much stronger, given the use of antibiotics and hormone in the feed of the animals, and I buying organic now. Ideally, I know, we should be vegan, but I truly don't have the energy and the time that it takes to plan and execute a vegan diet (sigh...).

Well, I have probably bored you to death with this discussion, but I wanted to write about this, before I forget it and these impressions get lost. There's a great discussion about doing a Ph.D. with children that I want to join in!