RSS LJ

March 24, 2009

Something it's taken me way too long to figure out ()

by fluffy at 9:57 PM
So, since I take BART home every day now, I end up walking past quite a few Mexican grocers, who all have a bunch of fine, low-cost produce bins on the sidewalk. I never really paid them any mind because the Mexican grocer across the street from me (Azteca produce) is generally pretty crap, but lately I've been looking at them rather a lot and noticing how good most of their produce looks, and of course the prices are pretty phenomenal.

For the past few days I've just been picking up a few items at different ones on the way home, and it's actually really good stuff, and incredibly cheap compared to what I'm used to. Today I got a whole bunch of onions and jalapeños and dried black beans for $2.50, and yesterday at a different stand I got some very nice tomatoes and tomatillos and corn and a big bag of garlic bulbs and a jar of capers and a few other things for about $6. And it's good quality stuff!

There are still definitely reasons to go to Safeway (there's a lot of things I buy which these small grocers don't carry, for example, and some things are actually cheaper at Safeway, like Jarritos), but now I feel silly for being so disgusted with the produce I was paying 3-5x as much for at Safeway.

Comments

#11867 03/24/2009 11:15 pm
My main gripe with supermarket produce is how quickly it tends to spoil, and it was a long time before I realized that supermarket produce is like buying produce at a stand where they've left it out in the rain all day. Some supermarkets sell produce already bagged, in which case they're not in a position to spritz water over it every 15 minutes, and it can be OK.
#11872 03/25/2009 02:51 am
Haha yeah I was distrustful of those places for the first few weeks I was here. Their stuff is cheeeeeeeap but it's perfectly fine.

I assume part of the cheapness is cost of labor. Another part is that they are less superficial and processing intensive, so there's more stuff that's cosmetically blemished or slightly wilted. Some of the little markets look fairly dirty and the trucks that haul the produce are too, so washing is important, but veggies come from dirt anyways. I heard some rumor that produce rejected by the expensive supermarkets goes to the little ones real cheap- apples that aren't quite spherical and 5" in diameter or whatever.

Supermarket stuff that costs 3x as much is sorted for cosmetic look, polished, waxed, sprayed, gassed for color, flown in from argentina, etc. It's not better it's just superficially pretty to make it sell more. Good chance the processing takes more field-to-table time than the less pretty stuff so it's actually less fresh. Much more fossil fuel intensive. It's possible to work out how many gallons of gas it takes to make a bushel of certain produce.

Michael Pollan writes super interesting books about this stuff.

Weekend farmer's markets are a great place to shop.

I have a crazy week, and friday- I have to be in San Jo for a study at ebay, then meet up with brother down there, then make Ben's GF's birthday party- looks like I prob. can't make yours- Sad sorry!