Friday, March 25, 2011

Getting There

Arriving home from the grocery store just before 10:00 p.m. on a Friday night when I have to be at work on Saturday morning at 8:00 a.m. really just doesn't work for me. Especially when what's passed at my house prior to my departure looked something like this:

Big Brother is trying to assuage his discomfort...

So I had the wee one in tow as I perused the grand aisles of the Johns Creek Whole Foods Market. Which is usually fine - he's pretty amenable to grocery shopping. (The other one is most definitely NOT.) He did get a little hinky when I started loading him up with veggies; he tried to chew on the ginger root and he tossed my garlic cloves into a nearby bed of ice. Luckily, it was just ice and still mostly solid so the garlic was salvageable. Yay! He was amused by the plethora of carrots I amassed: purple, white AND standard orange, huzzah! And when I enrolled him in the Kids' Club, he quite happily sucked down the contents of the free juice box they offered him.

I always enter that store with a budget of about $30 in mind. (HAHAHAHAHA... Phew. THAT'S a good one!) Today I exited with a fairly standard deficit of $118. Hmm. Well, in my defense, the hulled hemp seed and chia seeds alone cost $20 (as if that argument has anything to do with anything). Does it help that those will last us for about a month or so? Maybe?

One upshot: I recently discovered Natural Foods Warehouse. They're a local, independent bunch who have some quite decent prices on natural and organic things you can buy in bulk. Think Aldi for the crunchy-granola set. If I can limit my Whole-Fooding to fresher foods, like veggies, and my packaged stuff to Natural-Fooding, maybe I can strike a balance around here somewhere. Both stores are further than my local Krogers and Publixes... Publices... Publix stores. In particular, their almond milk is only $1.88 per carton and I think the hemp milk was about $3. Not too shabby. Did some other price scouting tonight at Whole Foods and there were definitely some other staples that Natural Foods stocked for less.

So, getting there... Yes, I'm getting there. To the point. The point where I finally take these trips to the market more seriously, make them purposeful excursions instead of starry-eyed wanderings where I just throw whatever sparkly goodness catches my eye into my cart. Why? Because I still had to go through the drive-through on the way there. Yes, had to. I know that's relative - if I'd planned better or just focused a bit harder on what I was doing, I'd have been able to grab something to eat before I left the house. As it happened, I didn't. And tackling Whole Foods on an empty stomach likely would've netted me a $300 grocery bill - including a trip to one of the food bars. So perhaps that should've been my choice. But it wasn't. Chick-fil-A caught my attention as I got underway and I was a goner.

I almost started crying before I even got to the window.

Basically, I think like a natural foodie, a crunchy-granola, a tree-hugging, dirt-worshipping hippie... But I still act like an unconcious mass consumer far too often and the disconnect between what I believe and what I do is starting to really grind me down. Though I can talk a good game, I still have trouble walking the walk.


Getting There

But I'm getting there.

1 comment:

jess said...

Try not to be so hard on yourself. I know it's the hardest thing to do, but... the truth is that we live in an age of convenience food and our society had adjusted to it. Pulling out of that is harder than just losing the convenience, you're also fighting your way upstream against a strong current.

I've tried to come to peace with the fact that we eat fast food occasionally, because it preserves my sanity and the rest of the time I'm pretty conscientious about food. I figure we're still doing much better than most of the country and it accomplishes nothing to drive myself crazy with guilt, remorse, or manic frenzy trying to be perfect.

:) Closest Whole Foods to here is an hour away. I'm kinda glad. Trader Joe's is much kinder to my wallet!