This is really long, and probably not interesting.

The other night, when trying to put together a meal menu for the week and make my grocery list, Tom turned on the documentary "Food Inc". If you've never seen it, it's a documentary about where our food comes from (mainly meat), why it's unhealthy, and how we're all going to die. (That last part was my interpretation.) It took the things I already knew, added some very disturbing new facts, and made me feel like absolutely nothing in this country was edible. It made me curious about organic foods, which I've always just written off as "too expensive, not worth it". It also changed the way I think about the small amount of meat I do buy. I think what I came away from the movie with was a desire to "eat local", and do my whole foods thing.

So, yesterday morning, still with no menu plan, I talked with Tom about my goals for healthy eating and my frustration at finding meals that are suitable for the different dietary needs of our family. I have always been unsatisfied with the availability of natural and organic foods in the Killeen area-- the only grocery stores are Walmart, HEB, and the commissary, and none of them has a solid offering. The nearest dedicated health food store is the Whole Foods in Austin, but it's a hour away. Obviously that is not a good choice for weekly grocery shopping. I have a good husband, who always supports my latest crazy ideas, and even offers helpful suggestions. His suggestion here was to go there to buy the staples and things I can't get up here readily, like bulk grains and lentils. He also said to check out their meat, since we could freeze it. We talked about a little meat market in town that we've seen but never gone to, and how that could also be a viable option. He encouraged me to find a farmers market. I know there has to be one around here somewhere, I've just been kind of half-assed about searching it out. With all these options and ideas, I did decide to make the journey down to the Whole Foods, because of course with all these options of where food can come from, cost plays a factor and I was curious about what my newfound enthusiasm for the healthy life was going to do to my grocery bill (which is already up near $200 a week, once things like dog food, baby items, and household necessities are thrown in). I did go into the adventure knowing that the cost would be higher, but I am willing to pay more for quality. How much more? Well, I was ready to find out what my limits were.

It did take a good hour to get to the store. It's downtown-ish, which I don't care for (being a bad driver and parker), but this was an exploratory mission and I had to be brave. The store itself, as I suspected it would be, felt like "going home". Hippies abounded, it was clean, the produce was plentiful and fresh, and of course, I was surrounded by health food. I used to feel the same way about the Sun Harvest store in El Paso. However, what prohibited full enjoyment of this food Mecca was (surprise) the cost. Not all of the produce was organic, and not all of it was even strictly local. All of it was more than what I pay normally, with some of the organic foods costing well over twice as much. Although I did buy a fair amount of produce, I cringed because some of it was the same as the stuff I was getting from the commissary, but cost more. (I was trying to keep in mind that a lot of things I buy at the commissary are cheaper because it's the commissary. Also that their produce frequently sucks.) Moving out of the produce section, I noticed that I did not care for the way the store was laid out. The meat, bakery and deli counters all kind of snake around the back wall, and the aisles are short and super narrow. I hate narrow aisles when wielding a cart. There's also at least one cafe eating area, maybe more (it was hard to tell in the chaotic layout), but instead of tucking them in one end of the store, they were more right in the middle. Didn't like that either. The meat counters were amazing-- everything looked fresh and good. I think it was the lighting, because why else would beef look appetizing to me? Ew.

I was really only interested in fish and chicken, and I got to the fish counter first. I like salmon, and it's a superfood. Salmon was either $12.99 or $14.99 a pound, depending on if you wanted wild or farm raised. I pretty much almost fell over. I did end up buying a small amount, with the justification in my head being that if one doesn't eat meat at every meal, then paying a little more for the meat you do eat is ok. In retrospect, that is going to have to be some damn good salmon, because to get enough for everyone to have some (1.5 pounds is what I got) cost me $22. Moving on through dairy, I immediately vetoed the milk. My only demand of the milk is that it not come from the cows hopped up on hormones. Yes, grass fed cows would be better, but not when it was like $4 a gallon. For that price I'd rather drink Silk (and really, I don't even drink milk.It's for the kids, and cooking.) I did buy some yogurt, and I was pleased with the selection. However, the cheapest yogurt that they offered was the same price as the organic yogurt available at Walmart and the commissary. (Mental note.) After that I reached the meat counter, and I didn't look at the prices for pork or beef, but I thought that the chicken was... not unreasonable. I really do understand "the high cost of low price", and why Walmart meat is cheaper (it's subsidized, it's mass produced, it's preserved, it's a bad deal in general), but it's hard to get used to seeing and paying what good, fresh, healthy meat should cost. But again, I wasn't buying that much, so I took a deep breath and did it. I bought boneless skinless thighs, which were about $4/lb. The skinless breasts were $7/lb. I didn't spend a lot of time looking at all the prices, but I'm sure the less butchered products and whole chickens were much cheaper.

As an aside here, I found going up to the counter, telling the butcher and the fish dude "can I have two pounds of blah blah blah" to be really fun. I don't know why, and maybe I'm being geeky here. Maybe I felt fancy when they wrapped it up in the paper and it was my made-to-order package of meat. Nerd alert!

Ok, after that was the bakery, which did have a lot of fun breads. I didn't buy any specialty bread, because of my make-it-yourself goal. I did grab some sliced wheat bread, because the label said it was $1.99 a loaf. When I got home, I looked at the receipt and saw that it actually cost $3.49 a loaf, which I'm sure was my error. I grab the wrong thing after carefully looking all the time (which is why I have two bottles of conditioner in my shower and no shampoo). The bread section was also the cheese section. Holy wow! Giant wheels of cheese! They had a counter where you could have your cheese cut to order, like the meat and fish. Every kind of cheese on the planet had to be in that section. Unfortunately, that section was in the midst of the cafe area, it was poorly designed, and I didn't have any desire to linger and look at their stuff. The only things I really wanted out of this section were pita bread and paneer (an indian cheese). The bakery didn't make fresh pita. IS THERE NOWHERE IN TEXAS THAT SELLS PITA BREAD? Honestly. I couldn't believe that. Then, 8 ounces or so of paneer was $9.99. Arg! Especially since the day before I had discovered that you can make it with whole milk and lemon juice, since it's a cheese that doesn't use rennet (gotta love those Hindus). Blerg.

After that it was on to frozen and dry goods. I felt like they had good prices on the frozen organic fruits and vegetables, and I did buy a good amount of those things. The store appears to carry a generic or store brand, like major grocery stores do, and I found those prices to be fair. The variety wasn't enormous, but really I was buying corn, peas, broccoli, etc., not anything crazy. So that was satisfactory. The dry goods... again with the aisles. I just hate tiny aisles. There were a lot of chips, crackers, and snacks, which is stuff that I don't buy. I did buy some peanut butter, because it was a big jar for a good price. I buy the Skippy Natural, because it doesn't have hydrogenated oil in it but unlike a lot of natural peanut butters, it doesn't separate. However, the only sell tiny jars of it, and we're a big-jar-using kind of family. This one isn't separated now, so I'm hoping I won't be trying to stir the oil back into the peanut. The only other thing I really looked at was baking goods, where I ended up buying unbleached flour, non-organic, just like I always do, just a little more expensive. I got a large bag of unrefined cane sugar though, because that's something that I've wanted to try and is difficult to find. I don't remember how much it cost, but it was a big bag and I remember thinking it was reasonable. I looked at the canned goods, but the selection was very small and the cost was prohibitive. I mean, tomato sauce was .99 a can. No, that's not insane... until I realized that I pay like .49 a can. That's twice as much, and that's not cool. My brain was really churning by now.

Last was the bulk section, which is usually my favorite. I wasn't disappointed, exactly, but I didn't think their bean selection was anything to write home about. Their bean and grain prices were good, and their quinoa price, which is super high in grocery stores, was awesome (I think it was $2.59/lb, which meant I was getting twice as much for the grocery store price). I loaded up on that, chickpeas, brown rice (.99/lb) and a few other things I am not remembering. Tom asked me when I got home if they had bulk wheat gluten. I didn't see it, and I went through that section carefully. But I wasn't looking for it, either. That's a bummer, because buying it in the 10 oz packages is a pain in the butt.

And that was pretty much it for the experience, except to say that an hour there is also an hour back home, and the kids were crabby by this time. But the drive did give me time to think about the store, the prices, my options, and what my future grocery adventures will be.

As far as the store goes, there are the Pros: It's nice, I like the atmosphere, I like buying from the meat counter, I felt like the meat prices (not the salmon!),the frozen food prices, and the bulk prices were fair. Not awesome, but fair. The Cons: The store layout, the location/distance, the variety in the bulk section, the lack of pita bread, the price of salmon, dairy, and produce.

What have I come away with this adventure from? That is the question. Thinking about it is why I wrote an insanely long, non-comical blog about grocery shopping. I realized that I am already doing a good job with my whole foods goal-- I don't buy a lot of snack food, processed food, etc. I need to do better with Jacob's school lunches, but otherwise I'm not as far off track as I thought. This means that I don't require a lot of specialty products on a regular basis. There are things that are hard to find, or to find at good prices. Tahini, quinoa, and a few other things-- but they're not things I buy every week. I want to buy local meat, but there is the meat market right in town that may be a viable option. They do have a decent fish counter at the HEB, where salmon is only $7.99/lb. And produce... well, how much do I really want organic? I don't think it's that much. I mean, I can get a few organic things here at the grocery store if I really want them. I think the most important thing is that we're eating the fresh fruits and vegetables. They say that there's some produce that's worse than others for contamination (I think it's like apples, tomatoes, grapes, peppers, spinach... I don't know) so maybe the goal could be to get those organic where I can and not worry about the rest. And to find that farmer's market. Not that their produce is even necessarily organic, but it is local and fresh.

So I think, having spent $235 at the Whole Foods for one overflowing cart full of stuff (but not everything I needed, that took another $100 at the HEB), I would say that going there is not going to be a frequent adventure (I was trying to shop for two weeks worth of stuff, though, so I'm not freaking out about the total). I think if I was going to Austin for another reason, or if I wanted to stock up on bulk products, I'd think about it. However, there's a Sun Harvest in Austin as well, and I would probably see what that one had to offer before I revisited the Whole Foods. And it is gratifying to know that I do have more options than I thought I did, right here in Killeen. After all, instead of looking at the $3 tub of organic yogurt at the commissary and thinking, ugh, I could get this other one for $1.79, I can now think, wow! This organic yogurt is only $3, not like the one I saw that was $8! If I really want to pay more for the healthy foods, in some ways I can. And maybe I will. :)