Friday, June 11, 2010
Questioning the shelf hole.
By Tuesday morning, you might expect supermarkets to have restocked after the weekend sales. And, at least in the case of Whole Foods and King's, you would be wrong. Both stores had shelves filled with holes where products should be. Fortunately, they were not out of the things I wanted to buy. And one reason is that I have given up trying to buy certain products these stores used to carry, and now go elsewhere for them. At Whole Foods, I used to buy Boursin Light in the cheese case, but one day, months ago it just disappeared, never to return. I once asked if it could be ordered and was told it would be restocked, but it never was. At King's I used to get a brand of oatmeal bread that I like. Then it disappeared. But it turned up at …
Friday, June 4, 2010
It’s not always easy.
A report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association last month finds that about 30 percent of Americans believe they are allergic to some foods, but only 5 percent of adults and 8 percent of children actually have reactions to food. Some of those reactions, however, can be life threatening—especially for victims of peanut and shellfish allergies. So can the complications from diabetes and celiac disease, both of which require special diets. For families who live with these problems, grocery shopping requires more diligence—and money—than it does for everyone else. I used to have a relative with diabetes, and when she was visiting, I would scour the grocery store aisles looking for products made with sugar substitutes. …
Friday, May 28, 2010
Getting some ingredients is a challenge.
Cooks who can handle recipes from around the world are praiseworthy. They not only offer their families and friends an actual taste of other nations, their children develop more sophisticated palates. Sadly, I'm not one of those cooks. Yes, I do know what do to with a box of taco shells from the supermarket, and I can make decent guacamole—but that's about it for Mexican cuisine. As for the Mideast, my homemade hummus is terrible—though my husband and I used to do a lot of pretty good kebabs when our grill was new, and we wanted to use it every night. And because he loves to buy kitchen gadgets, we also have a version of a Moroccan tagine, a cooking pan with a conical lid to capture steam and let the moisture drip back into the pan. (They …
Friday, May 21, 2010
Just how much work does it take?
Travel and food writer Mark Schatzker has a new book coming out called Steak: One Man's Search for the World's Tastiest Piece of Meat. Providing a preview of the book in the Wall Street Journal, Schatzker complained, "All anyone seems to know about steak today is this: It doesn't have much flavor. The great American steak is great in name only." To get a great steak, Schatzker says, you have to know three things: With the peak-grilling season about to get underway, I decided to take Mr. Schatzker's questions to the butchers in our local supermarkets. I had an idea they might laugh, and they did. "The company takes care of all that," the butcher on duty at the Stop & Shop on Franklin Avenue said, smiling and confessing he had no idea how …
Friday, May 14, 2010
Where do you leave your cart?
Not many of us remember a time without shopping carts at the supermarket. They were introduced in 1937, the brainchild of an Oklahoma City mechanic named Sylvan Goldman. The folding chair inspired him and the first carts were called folding basket carriers. The telescoping kind we know today came along in 1946, courtesy of a Kansas City inventor named Orla Watson. And little did either of them know how dependent we would all become on these carts, so dependent you'll find them abandoned along sidewalks far from the stores where they belong. Those aren't my problem, though I don't imagine the stores are happy about their carts being carted off. But the ones I find smack dab in the middle of a parking space I want to use are. So are the …
Friday, May 7, 2010
Be wary of supermarket offerings.
It looks like the vegetable planting season has arrived early this year. Pansies have given way to tomato plants and marigolds outside Stop & Shop, and shoppers can also look over sidewalk plant displays outside King's and Whole Foods. Occasionally, you'll find inside clerks doing outside duty with hoses, sprinkling these plants. But whether the plants are getting enough water, often enough is questionable. If you hit the supermarket shortly after the plants arrive, you can get some good deals, though prices will vary a good deal from store to store. In late April, Stop & Shop was offering two hardy azaleas in gallon containers for $12, and I was tempted by the price—though I really don't need any more azaleas in my yard. The store also …
Friday, April 30, 2010
Some experts advise doing your own washing.
One of the problems today's families face is getting dinner on the table at the end of a workday. Whether you've spent that day in an office or chauffeuring kids from school to activity after activity, time is short. And those pre-washed greens are an easy way to put a salad on the table in a hurry. I love the bagged arugula, and, before I started researching the safety issue, we often just ripped the bag open fresh from Whole Foods or Stop & Shop and put it on sandwiches at lunch time. Then, I carefully transferred the rest to another bag lined with paper towels to keep it fresh for the week. The question is was the bag free of contamination in the first place? Back in 2005, WCCO in Minneapolis, in one of those "exposes" so beloved by …
Friday, April 23, 2010
Tips for making it easier.
During last weekend's shopping rounds, I watched a little boy have a meltdown in Whole Foods, and a young teenager in Stop & Shop beg for yogurt that wasn't on mom's shopping list. The best advice for shopping with children is to leave them at home, but that sometimes isn't possible for moms, dads or grandparents. And because so many of us view a child's behavior as a reflection of our parenting or grandparenting skills, conflicts can develop into emotional showdowns. The biggest worry with very young children is that they'll wander off unless they're confined to the cart, which is possible if there is only one of them. With two, it's a battle over who rides, and with three, it is usually only an option for the youngest—unless there is …
Friday, April 16, 2010
Putting a crimp in the barbecuing season.
The price of hamburgers, steaks, chops and all the other cuts of meat are headed for the stratosphere, according to reporters covering the industry. "Sticker shock is arriving at a supermarket meat case near you, as cattle, hog and poultry prices soar in speculator-influenced commodity markets," writes Greg Burns in the Chicago Tribune. The big wave of price increases may be on its way to Ridgewood, but it is not here yet. While Stop & Shop prices are up, Kings and Whole Foods meat prices are about the same as they were last December. Back then you could buy 85 percent lean hamburger meat at Stop & Shop for $1.29. This week it was "on sale" for $3.49, down from $4.49, unless you buy in bulk, then it was $2.99. And we're not talking about …
Friday, April 9, 2010
It depends on what you’re going to do with them.
Since tomatoes are just about my favorite food, I'm very picky when it comes to buying them. Years ago, I simply didn't buy tomatoes in the winter or spring because they tasted like cardboard. They were grown in California or Florida, picked green and "ripened" with a dose of ethylene gas. Now a tomato will, when it is ready to ripen, produce its own ethylene, but a green tomato that is artificially "ripened to a red color" still tastes like a green tomato. A mature green tomato will ripen on its own, provided the temperature is between 65 and 80 degrees. Light doesn't matter and may hinder the process, so lining up green or partially ripened tomatoes on a windowsill is not a good practice—even though many, many people do it. If you buy …
Marthe Ludwig
10:04 am on Saturday, June 12, 2010
It's true...S&S is expensive, but has GREAT weekly specials (example: 99cents LB. seedless grapes). Maybe they think they're reasonable in comparison to Kings's RIDICULOUS prices. I've found that I save about $30. per week by going to Food Basics in Glen Rock on Lincoln Ave. There is a lot they don't carry, have some sub-standard items, and there isn't a deli...BUT...if I do my homework via the … more ›