Shopping for day One

On day one I headed off to the grocery store, so innocent, no naive! I live in a very small town in a rural area of Florida. But we have two fairly large grocery stores so I was confident that I would be able to find everything. In the vegetable department they had a pretty good variety and just about everything I needed, but forget trying to buy organic....the organic section was about 4ft square and everything looked pitiful and wilted. Same with the health food section where I was hoping to find some of the ingredients. This area was shoved into a corner and had little variety. Substituting milk was going to be another big hurdle for me.  Next to butter, I loved milk.  So I bought a carton of Soy milk and decided to start with that flavor first.  I have since used Almond, Rice, and Hemp.....and I also discoved that you can buy these in the non-dairy section and store them on the pantry. I was also able to find some agave nectar, and a few other mystery items.  Armed with my recycling bags and all this healthy food I felt like one of the club now.

The next day after work, I headed for the local health food store.  It was dusty, lighting wasn't  very good, and the people were border line polite. I got a few things that I needed otherwise I wouldn't have bothered.  I have not gone back there since.

But several weeks later I was in Orlando on business and scheduled in a visit to Whole Foods Market.  Well!....now I know how kids feel when they enter the gates of Disney World!!  I spent two hours there and never wanted to go home.  I wanted to sleep there.  I wanted to live there. 

Shopping has continued to be a challenge, and I can't make a two hour round trip to Orlando when I need things, but I am discovering more and more options locally now that I am more educated.  The stores here sell  pre-packaged vegetables, in quantites that are way too much for just Jim and I, unless that is all we eat for 3-4 days.  I wish they had open bins of loose vegetables like they do up north. But I started to rip open their packaging and putting what we need in plastic bags, or asking the vegetable employee to repackage a smaller quantity for me.....he even cut a head of cabbage in half for me. I found some Rubbermaid storage containers specially designed to keep vegetables fresher longer and that has helped.  http://www.rubbermaid.com/Category/Pages/ProductDetail.aspx?Prod_ID=RP091261&CatName=FoodStorage