Sample GDR Post #1

Last night for dinner I ate:

• A piece of all natural chicken breast baked in Sticky Fingers BBQ sauce (this is the only brand I could find without high fructose corn syrup!)
  
• Steamed green beans (fresh, not frozen) from Kroger—maybe these come from Mexico? I'm not sure
  
• This crazy mac & cheese concoction devised by my 15 (tomorrow 16!) year old son
  

We moved to Rome from Decatur, Georgia, about 12 years ago. Decatur hosts one of the best shopping resources in the entire world for foodies—Your Dekalb Farmer's Market. If I could afford a field trip for all of us this term, we would go here. It's this crazy mix of cultures, languages, food you've never heard of, hard to find ingredients, and everything is fresh fresh fresh. The first time I strolled into the old Rome Kroger, with its cracked laminate floors and buzzing florescent lights, I started mentally adjusting to this new world of very limited options. Holding on to Anderson's hand (then three) and trying to find anything that looked remotely fresh, or at least relatively perky, I asked the lanky kid in the produce section if they offered anything organic. He said, "You mean, like tofu?"

Kroger in Rome has come a long way, but one area where they still struggle is in the meat department. I'm never quite sure about the shrink-wrapped slivers of pink flesh, and I'm not sure what goes on in that cold white room behind the counter. Honestly, I don't want to know. But I do know that when a local businessman opened an old-fashioned butcher shop near our house, serving high-quality, locally sourced proteins, I could gladly say goodbye to the Kroger meat section.

The inconvenience of having to stop by daily when you want to buy meat is trivial compared to the satisfaction of knowing you can trust the source and the provider. Because all of their meat is very fresh, and because they do not carry very much of any one item, we usually make three or four trips to Magnolia Market every week. This creates three constant reminders in my weekly routine: 1) this is how people used to shop, and 2) teenagers eat a lot, and 3) good meat is expensive.

Grocery stores are brilliant concepts, and one could certainly argue that without the one-stop shopping convenience of mega marts like Kroger and WalMart families would have a lot less time together. We'd be spending all of our time shuffling between the meat market, the produce stand, the bakery, the druggist, etc. etc. etc. How much Husband and I spend on meat every week for these two growing boys also helps keep me humble; it helps me think and be thankful for all that we have access to and all that we can afford. And maybe, as Mark Bittman says, eating thoughtfully is the first step.

(487 words)