HIGH GROCERY PRICES? *Lousy Fruits & Veggies?*

In SC, I haven't had a good cantaloupe yet this year. Home grown will be ready soon ... guess I'll wait and buy local.

They are delicious !

LOL...I was at a Walmart today and browsed a stand with blueberries. Fruit flies swarmed out of the containers when I'd pick one up. Wasn't looking to eat writhing fruit fly maggots, so I passed. You know those fruit flies were laying eggs and maggots were in all the rest of the fruits as well.

I was in Minneapolis last week and shopped at a Byerly's, a very high end store. I was not impressed with the produce at all. It was pretty rough and overpriced.

I am spoiled though as the produce out here on the northwest coast is much better and cheaper, which makes sense, as it is so much closer to the production areas than Minnesota.

I think it depends on the store too, and who they have for a produce manager. Grocery stores don't make much money on produce, if any. The margins are very slim and they throw out so much. You need a good facility and a good team to do it properly.

My local Fred Meyer here has a brand new produce area and in the middle of it is a work area for the employees, with cutting counters and sinks, etc. Very nice to keep everything clean and fresh and keep the employees in touch with what's coming in, what's moving, what's going off.

In Minnesota when they have the odd bit of locally grown produce, they have these stickers they put on it:

3,000 miles fresher

I should add, one consequence of high real estate prices is that some kinds of businesses and use of land become untenable. I used to own a garden center and the building we were renting came up for sale, it was worth a half a million bucks. We had a business broker come in who had brokered garden centers before. The way he put it was

"You can't pull those kinds of numbers out of a garden center"

I think that applies to a lot of businesses and certainly to a truck farm. I'm sure when land values get to a certain point (and they have) a guy would tell you "You can't pull those kinds of numbers out of a truck farm"

Here in California the fruit and veggies, at least at my local store, are reasonable and great.

Sorry to hear about the lousy groceries where you are.
Whole Foods (near Chicago) has outstanding produce. The last cantaloupe I bought was huge and delicious. All their fruits and veggies are top notch.

I live in a little town in northern Ontario that is laterally in the bush and our veggies and fruits are average but a little pricey. Not a bad selection though and next month the blue berries will be ripening and I plan on pickin' tons to juice and make blue berry wine.

As a former "farmer" I suggest it is high time you "consumers" go back to the "source" if you want high quality food. Fuck, you've been brainwashed into believing that "fresh" meat (raw) is MUCH better than frozen. That's a bunch of horse shit !! As a "producer" I'll tell you what we do! I need meat in my freezer. We shoot an animal in a most humane way. I'll omit the next few steps because there are far too many people who are removed from this type of scene. When we've done all the necessary things, we bring it to our local meat cutter. He does the other necessary things and then he hangs it in his cooler for a period of anywhere from 10 to 14 to 21 days. Then he cuts the meat into the "cuts" we specified. Then it goes into the quick freeze. Your fuckin "fresh" meat has gone through the very same steps, except, instead of putting it into the freezer, they dsplay it in the display counter as "fresh." And here you come, a week later, pick up that "fresh" piece of meat, cook it and feel a little sick. Wonder why???

It's time for every home owner to replace that worthless lawn with a productive garden. Radishes only take 32 days to mature. Sunflowers are fun the day you harvest the seeds. So many vegetables grow without much attention, like peas and pumpkins. Give your kids something to do besides shoplifting and taking drugs.

groceries are going up in price because the Federal Reserve is massively inflating the supply of fraudulent Notes

but you're too ignorant to comprehend this, so you complain in total ignorance

get a brain

the best solution is to buy your produce from locally grown farmer's markets

Can you tell me why meat has to be aged? Do they do this with lamb, pork, etc too? I am not keen on meat pre-digested by bacteria. Also what do they use to dye beef that bright red? It looks so fresh, but then you look at the bone and it's all gray and green and yellow.

Here in NYC we can get primo quality produce. All organic stuff, grown by small farmers upstate. Costs a FORTUNE to buy it however. We spend about 400 every two weeks for our home grocery budget. We also eat out probably 1 meal a day average.

And I do NOT buy pre-packaged or pre-prepared shit. I spend that much money of fruits, vegs, eggs, milk, butter, bread, meats, etc. For the "household" supplies I go to Costco and stock up on their absurd sized offerings. (Usually have enough Persil (german laundry detergent) to last a year on my shelves.)

There are a fairly new bunch of cleaners, detergents, etc. called METHOD, and they're organic, non-chemically laced, and they work wonderfully! But again, pricey and rarely available outside speciality shops.

When we lived in Europe, the "normal' grocery store stuff was what we call "organic" and their primo stuff at the gourmet shops was about what I find at Dean and Delucca stores here in NYC. (Here they have real grocery stores, but they're the land of five dollar a piece cupcakes! And it gets worse from there!)

But the produce at D&D is beyond belief. Like I said - every two weeks, it's about $400 or sometimes $500 and that's not including booze, household cleaners, mops, brooms, etc. Just food.

My daughter is in Phoenix and cannot get the primo stuff there for love or money. The climate does not bode well for growing much except citrus and cotton and lettuce (which has a zero nutritional value anyway.) so the rest of the stuff she needs we have shipped to her. But with the hormones in dairy products, the preservatives in everything, and the antibiotics and hormones in most commercially prepared meat, we don't eat that garbage at home and I won't have my daughter eating it either.

One day I made a simple fruit salad - two batches. One organic produce and the best that money can buy here. The other was just the "regular" produce off the shelf at a high end grocery store.

Same kinds of berries, same oranges, same bananas, grapes,and apples went into each batch. One tasted 'okay' and the organic one was absolutely GREAT! You really can taste the difference in a major way. The 'non-organic' batch I ended up giving to our doorman and concierge staff in the building. Our family wouldn't eat the "ordinary" one. Pity it takes spending so much to get decent food today.