It's Not the Oven's Fault

So, I discovered something last night when I went to cook my new, all natural, organic chicken breasts from Trader Joe's that J got for me.

They were so pink and uniformly shaped, so perfect in their organic-ness.

I cooked 5 of them in one pan; I am not sure what to do with the one that was left that didn't fit in the pan. I figured cooking more at once was better since I absolutely hate to cook and since the oven still smells awful (although at this point, whether it's the new oven smell, something that may have got caught in the oven, or the fact that I cooked eggs on the stove at the same time, I'm not sure), so I put the remaining chicken breast in the freezer until I can ask someone if it is safe to cook at a later date or not.

When they were done, I cut into them, and surprise! No unsightly pink blotches; no toughness; no disfigurement; just five white, well formed, juicy bubbling pieces of chicken.

Gee, I always thought the oven wasn't cooking the Tyson chicken well enough and that's why they looked so pink and weird even after I had cooked 'em for an hour. Now I think it's just low quality chicken. God, do I hate low quality chicken.

So. I will have to endure low quality chicken when I run out of TJ's since it is the only thing I can get, but it doesn't mean I have to like it.

You never know, do you, how good you have it until you move into the middle of the boonies and they don't know what "decent grocery" means? I mean, I just think it's kind of funny, reflecting on it. I never thought there was anything special about Hannaford, or Shaw's, the two main grocery stores in Maine; or Rosauers in Montana, or Safeway or Albertson's; I just thought, you know, they're normal grocery stores, all grocery stores are like this. All grocery stores have a third of the store devoted to organic food; all grocery stores have a pharmacy in them; all of them have high quality food presented in a pleasing manner. Hannaford, which I believe has actually won several national awards but I can't remember exactly what, just seemed normal.

I did have a vague awareness that Rosauer's in Montana had higher quality food than Safeway; I have only been in a Safeway a few times in my life and remember thinking it seemed less organized, more run down, the deli counter didn't have as high quality of meats; but mostly the same.

Well, so, I get here and they have a Shop Rite and a Great American. Shop Rite is apparently a small Mid-Atlantic chain, and I'm sure that in some areas, it's actually probably quite big and good. I know from their website that in some area (can we say big cities with lots of population, most of which are in New Jersey), they actually deliver, and most of them have pharmacies in them. Which just means they're bigger and probably carry more stuff.

And I haven't actually been in either store here, due, of course to my MCS; my landlord has been nice enough to do grocery shopping for me, which I very much appreciate.

But from the things he is getting from there, I can see that it is a little lacking in the class department. From the brands and the lack of availability of some previously common items, and also from the fact that almost everything he has gotten, I just recently discovered, has been expired at the time he got it. That kind of annoyed me when I realized. For example, I went to check the expiration date of the salad dressing I'd had a month to see if I needed to get more or if I could use the stuff I had. It said November 3. I got here on November 1. He went shopping when I got here. Therefore, it was just about expired when he got it. Good thing I didn't know that then.

When I was a kid and my mom would buy Tropicana orange juice, which I still drink, she would buy several containers at once since we went through so much. The expiration dates would always be several months away, and I remember looking at the dates and thinking stuff along the lines of, "Huh, wonder what I'll be doing then?" or if the expiration date was someone's birthday, which seemed to happen more often than you'd think, it would make me think about the person every time I drank the orange juice.

Well, no wondering needed this time! The orange juice he got last week expires December 1! Uh, that's today. I really hate thinking how long that OJ must have been sitting there to be expired a week after he got it. What, does no one SHOP in this town?? Does no one eat?? Is that why this merchandise just sits on the shelves??

Apparently, eating expired things must not kill you, as I haven't experienced any ill effects yet, but I really don't like it. It just seems wrong, and makes me nervous. And I really, really think that a store should not make a practice of selling expired food to its customers. Yes, I know, you can most likely reach behind the expired stuff to get the stuff in the back; but that is hard when you are not shopping for yourself, and besides, they just shouldn't keep expired stuff on the shelves anyway.

So, the other day, J told me that he was going to try to make arrangements with the small, locally owned grocery store near our house, Great American, to fax in my grocery list and have them put it together for me, and then meet me at the door so I wouldn't have to go in. Fine, and that's really nice of him to try to do and nicer still of the owner to do, and probably one of the few perks of living in such a small town, but I still shudder at the idea. The conversation went something like this:

J: "I asked Gary if he could put an order of groceries together for you if we faxed it in. It's not as fancy as Shop Rite, but it would help a lot."

Me: ( not really grasping concept of increased independence by being able to get groceries msyelf, stuck on the "Shop Rite" and "fancy" part) "Um, that's great, yea, that would be good, but, um, Shop Rite is not fancy"

He kept saying that. How fancy Shop Rite was. That was like someone saying the sky was red. You know, " I just love looking at the nice red sky...." It seemed so *wrong.*

So, as I said to him, because I can be somewhat blunt at times, "Fine, that's great and I'll give it a try, but Shop Rite is not fancy, and I'm really not sure what one step below "not fancy" would be...."

Yea, so I'm a little nervous about that. I've never been into an independent, locally owned grocery store in my life. Usually locally owned is good; but when you're going for something like groceries? You want selection, quality, quantity; and that's something usually only attained by big chains. So I am glad for the opportunity to gain more independence (although I wonder how I'm supposed to carry groceries up a very steep hill especially when steep hill is iced over), but I am kind of scared about what kind of food will or will not be available at this joint. Shop Rite is bad enough.

Anyone have any experience with small, locally owned grocery stores that they would like to share with me?

J was like "They won't have Odwalla."
Me: "Shop Rite doesn't either."
Him: "Yes, they do."
Me: "It was expired and the wrong kind."

Well, if not having Odwalla is the extent of their difference, fine. But we shall see.

And, yes, I can be a food snob, but I have grown up with high quality food, and I feel that having at least medium-quality food is a very essential part of life. Eating is a major component of human life, especially human homebound life, and has a very big impact on one's health and well being.

At this point, I don't need fancy, but I do need edible. For example: Trader Joe's chicken, very good. Tyson chicken, edible. Perdue chicken: not edible. See? There's a line. There's always a line.

So that concludes my examination of the relative merits of grocery stores.

That was, of course, excluding natural food stores, which obviously have high quality foods (when they are big enough to have enough employees who remember to order food); I don't expect those, although I would certainly love one.