Food 24 Jul 2005 04:31 am
Produce!!!!
I’m pretty unexperienced when it comes to catastrophic moves like the one we’ve made. So this whole transition is very new to me and I don’t have much past experience to really draw from. I didn’t go away to college and we moved from MI when I was a kid. One of my biggest jobs to tackle here is to find a food buying system we can afford and also hopefully enjoy.
My first foray into it this week was at a local place called Horn of Plenty. What a great name ‘eh?! It was a fun experience: beautiful plants for sale outside, local canned foods inside, lots of fresh produce. It was kind of seeing what I’d wanted my favorite fruit store in Jax to grow into. Really neat! Their veggies were a little high priced but we got some wonderful rhubarb jam, June apples (new variety for us!) and local peaches.
Next was Kroger a few days later. Typical imported produce with a few local favorites. Great selection of cheeses and specialty items that I’m releived to be able to find when I’m trying new recipes. Their organic section was the biggest I’ve found and it was nice to find my brands of babyfood. Too pricey though to be my usual haunt.
Today we tried Food City. Hmmmm…how to describe it? For those of you in Jacksonville, if I say, “Albertsons or Food Lion on the Westside” oughta do it. Heee heee….it was clean. It was “down home”. Our nearly toothless and yellow fingernailed but very, very kind check-out girl sort of embodied the whole experience for us. Simple, not very nutritious, but not unfriendly. I will NOT pay 4 bucks for milk though! As much as Walmart will suck a person’s soul, Food City did nothing to feed it, so this probably won’t be my usual spot either.
Maybe I ask too much of a grocery store. You think?
In looking for Amburn’s, another produce store, we found Dough Wilson’s. Very neat and clean with a good selection of what was currently being harvested. The owner himself works the shop is very helpful. We bought our usual items and asked him about eggs. Both he and Horn of Plenty had local milk and butter but the eggs come from Indiana! And in no store yet have I found my combination of organic eggs AND free roamers. I want my eggs to come from Happy Chickens thankyouverymuch! He directed us to a guy who keeps chickens down the road, but with no sign saying he wanted to sell his eggs, we decided to skip it.
We weren’t prepared for what we’d bought. Just innocent Floridians, loading thier kids in the car on a hot summer day. With NO. IDEA. OF WHAT WE HAD IN STORE.
Dun, dun duuuuuuun.
The kids were hungry so I took out one of the white peaches we’d bought. Locally grown and fresh from the tree, yada yada yada. I’d heard that before. They did look good, with a pretty blush and no bruises. I’d grown accustomed to peaches being either a little fermented and overripe tasting or a little on the fiberous/fuzzy within side. I washed it off with some warm bottled water that was in the car and raised it to my lips.
Oh. My.
Can words describe it? The fragrance was pure and summer. Totally impossible to duplicate. The flesh was soft and JUICY. It exploded down my chin. It was cool inside and sweet but not overly so. The words on a bottle of Pinot Grigio that sometimes say, “with peach undertones” came to mind. This is what that meant. This peach was the kind that you get hints of in a good white wine. The kind of peach that haunts your memory with its perfection and leads to most every other peach purchase to come to fall seriously short.
And then we had these blackberries. HUGE. Pop one in your mouth and the totally balanced sweet/tart ratio infiltrates every corner of your mouth. Warm from summer sunshine and obviously picked that morning. Bush ripened. They stained fingers, cheeks, and shirts and it was okay. It was a little Norman Rockwell moment.
On Sunday morning we had the last of the peaches and berries sprinkled with a little sugar, granola, and splashed with milk. Sad to see them go, because even if I go out and buy more, nothing will taste as good as those first, surprised, bites.
on 10 May 2007 at 10:26 am 1.Renate said …
Renate…
I do think you right on the spot with this post, i could use a lot a struff for my new study thank you very much.
Greets …