Join Debbie as she raves about whole foods, rants about chemicals and generally celebrates cooking and eating with fresh, local, nutritious foods. And sometimes she might get a little feisty….
I needed a few things at the grocery store today, so I swung by Hannaford on my way home from a friend’s house. I almost never go to Hannaford, since I rarely go to a conventional supermarket and there is a Stop and Shop closer to me.
Just a little background: I’ve gone through a love-hate thing with Hannaford. When we first moved to the area, they had just renovated and it was gorgeous and the produce, much of it organic, always looked spectacular. They were also considerably cheaper than Stop and Shop, so I tended to make the trip. It always gave me the warm fuzzies that they were a certified organic market, which really holds almost no meaning, in the scheme of things.
Anyway, as time went on, their prices soared, they stopped carrying nearly all of the natural foods that we used, and their produce was less than fresh and mostly conventionally grown. Of course I started going to Stop and Shop. And that brings me back to today’s experience at Hannaford.
I really wasn’t asking for much. I was planning on making a salad nicoise tonight for dinner, so I needed potatoes and green beans. Now, you know that we buy organic and local when we can, but you may not know that green beans and potatoes are both on the “always buy organic” list, due to their high pesticide load. So you’d think a certified organic supermarket could accommodate, no? No.
There were no organic potatoes to be had. The green beans were another story. The only organic ones were pre-packaged and slimy, oh so appealing. The non-organic ones were covered with brown spots, looking less-than-fresh. So I ask again, as in my title, WTF Hannaford?
It gets worse. I like to keep frozen orange juice concentrate around to use in recipes and such, and my stash was getting low. Even Trader Joe’s, in its limited form here on the east coast, has organic frozen orange juice concentrate. Not Hannaford. Not the certified organic market.
I suppose I need to give a shout-out to Hannaford for carrying the grain-sweetened chocolate chips that we consume in vast quantities at our house, much to the disappointment of my thighs. However, they charge 70 cents more per 12-oz. package than Whole Foods does!
Am I bashing on Hannaford? You bet! If you are going to brag about being an organic supermarket, I suggest you actually carry things that are organic. It may also be in your best interest to not discontinue everything that I use, from bulk sucanat to grain-sweetened chocolate-covered almonds. It’s hard enough not living near a Whole Foods (and having Bob rub it in at every turn); I didn’t need another food disappointment.
I’m very glad our CSA Farm has started up (although we’ve only gotten strawberries, rhubarb, eggs, garlic scapes and flowers so far) and I’ll have locally grown, pesticide-free produce to my heart’s content!
Clacked by Debbie McDuffee
on Jun 25, 2009 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
