… and it hurts worse than we expected. After returning home from a great visit with our family in Pittsburgh, PA we were too tired and lazy to visit our usual Co-op but we desperately needed to stock our fridge for the coming week. We hopped (or rather slid) into our car and headed to our old victual haunting ground, Roche Brothers in West Roxbury. As we walked in through the automatic doors we were greeted with a sign reading that the supermarket now carries 78 varieties of organic products. My spirits were somewhat lifted. The first item on the list, “salad stuff”, turned out to be the hardest item on the list. While browsing the glistening and colorful vegetable displays, I was squinting and moving labels to find the organics. At first, I failed. Now this failure wasn’t entirely Roche Brothers fault, I can take some blame. Actually I can take a lot of the blame. You see, as I’ve mentioned before, I have grown to hate shopping at supermarkets. And not for the reasons you might think. Unless of course you think that its because I get flustered, lost, and most of all, stressed out by all the shoppers jockeying for a place to leave their cart while they graze the aisles. So, having resigned myself to failure I picked out some great looking conventional vegetables and headed back to the cart (it bears mentioning here that Katie is actually masterful at navigating a supermarket… I think it comes from being a native Boston driver). It just so happens that she had serendipitously left our cart right next to the “organic vegetable” section. Of course! They would have those in their own section… how silly of me. Back went the conventionals and in went the pre-washed, pre-mixed, plastic bin of organic salad greens and boston lettuce.
The rest of the trip was rather uneventful. We managed to find a number of useful organic products (not all 78 I guess) and check out in decent time.
The point of this post is not to speak poorly of Roche Brothers. In fact, as far as supermarkets go, I think its one of the best. The point of this post is that its just not for us anymore. The realization hit home right about when we did. Unloading the groceries, I mentioned that I was surprised at how guilty I felt. Something similar to eating too much pizza but not as enjoyable, or not exercising for a week or more. As happens more often as the years go on, Katie claimed that she just had the exact same thought (except with ice cream instead of pizza!)
So now what? Luckily the answer to this question is easy. Its back on the wagon and hopefully with a renewed effort. I’m sure we’ll be back in supermarkets many times in the future, and probably this year, but at least we know that our trips there are going to be the exception and not the rule.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Sara Simons // Apr 13, 2007 at 7:45 pm
I wanted to add an interesting article that was published in my Women’s Health magazine. There was an entire section about “Going Green.” One of the articles was about how to contribute to the environment by fixing what you put on your table. I attached the link…it includes several links as well as a “100 Mile Diet Plan” to help people find ways to eat food within 100 miles of their home.
copy and paste link below:
http://www.womenshealthmag.com/article/0,6176,s1-3-72-1545-1,00.html
2 Darla // Apr 18, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Bill, You should read ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved,’ by Sandor Katz. It strikes me as quite applicable to your current interests.
Darla
3 Katie // Apr 18, 2007 at 4:58 pm
I have to say that this was the biggest learning experience for me so far in this process. Unlike Bill, I used to look forward to my time in the grocery store each week, looking at new items, finding new ingredients to add to old recipes, and yes, I even found myself humming along to those piped in tunes.. ( they tend to be late 80’s early 90’s tunes therefor I am in heaven!)
Anyway the way I felt while navigating my favorites spots, was different this time. Instead of just grabbing a bunch of bananas I looked to see where they were from (Guatamala) and if there were organic (no). Not that all organic and local produce is the answer or even feasible - I find myself still pondering the question of local vs. organic. But these past few months have really opened my eyes to a new way of helping my local community, the environment and my own health.
So I am starting a new love affair with our Co-op and other local grocery stores. In fact, this process has helped me to realize even more, why I love living in a small neighborhood, in a city that seems to value the concept of local living and eating.
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