Let me start out by saying that I am definitely not a foodie. Ranch Dressing is spicy food to me and cilantro is the devil’s weed. I once choked on Wasabi nuts because I thought they were pistachios. Growing up, my mother had to leave out the mayonnaise in my tuna sandwich because I thought it made the tuna taste like mayonnaise. There’s not enough lemon or seasoning in a restaurant to get me to swallow a piece of salmon. My chicken breasts must be cooked until the breast resembles a shriveled up ball of wax. The same goes for pork and fish. Sushi? Don’t make me laugh. I am an anti-foodie. There is one food group, however, that I have always loved – vegetables. 

Even as a child I went for the salad and green bean side dishes before I ate the main course. Now, I’m not a vegetarian, a vegan or gluten free. I know there are some people who won’t eat anything that has eyes. As long as the eyes have been discarded before the food hits my plate, I’m good. I didn’t grow up on a farm so I never had any special relationships with lambs, cows, chickens, or pigs. We had a dog and a couple of cats and, living in America, there was never any danger that my mother was going to serve up either one of them. I can’t say the same for the Vietnamese restaurant in Detroit.

Which brings me to my tangent. Growing up in the midwest, precisely Michigan, we always had an abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables. You haven’t tasted cherries until to you’ve had cherries from Traverse City. Farm grown fruits and vegetables were staples in our home. In the summer, on his way home from work, my dad would often stop at an outdoor market called “Zekes” and bring home watermelon, corn on the cob, green beans and my mother’s favorite, peaches. In the fall we would go out to “Big Red Apple Orchard” and hand pick bushels of apples that would last well into the winter. Since I’ve been living in Arizona for the past couple of years, I have to say that the only fresh food you’ll find here is if you accidentally run over a coyote or bobcat. I’m often reminded of the late comedian, Sam Kinison, who had an entire act about starving people in the world. His sage advice was, “Move out of the desert! Nothing grows in sand!” How right he was. 

I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve melted down in the fruit and vegetable aisle in local grocery stores just trying to find a decent head of Romain lettuce. By the time the lettuce gets to the store (I think via the space shuttle) it ends up being a soft, thin, brownish green hunk of limp leaves. Broccoli is just as bad. I don’t think broccoli is supposed to be spongy. If you hold up the stalk, the poor squishy blooms just fall over like a flaccid little green penis. And, I’m not sure, but I think zucchini is supposed to be longer and fuller than string beans. Scurvy must be the number one illness in this state. And please don’t tell me I should be buying organics. Organic fruits and vegetables mold on the way home from the store! I want food that has been sprayed with chemicals the way God intended. I want that water to bead up on my green peppers. I want the wax on my Honey Crisp apples to double as a birthday candle, and I want those green beans to stay green for at least a month. For crying out loud, my mother used to spray me with “OFF Now With More DDT” mosquito spray in the summer. The 1960s knew a thing or two about preservation. 

Unfortunately, today preservation gets confused with preservatives and apparently that’s become a bad thing. I just remember that the Wonder Bread and packaged baloney sandwiches I ate in elementary school always tasted good. But I digress. Recently, I was out shopping with a friend and I started bemoaning the sad state of the vegetable drawer in my refrigerator. This was when she suggested I try Whole Foods or Sprouts. I figured I didn’t have anything to lose so I checked out both of them. Let me just say that I was underwhelmed and unimpressed. First of all, there were way too many thin and pale shoppers wearing Birkenstock sandals (with socks) and carrying their own canvas grocery bags. Yeah, lets keep reusing the same bags that hold both raw chicken and strawberries. I will only use plastic bags that comes with a plastic twist ties and a warning that it can also be used to suffocate children. Anyway, once I got into Sprouts I found out that by the time you pass aisle after aisle of vegan shampoo, gluten free hair ties, and soap-free, biodegradable, unscented, recycled household products, they had very little healthy looking food. They were the same wilted, sad, puny veggies that the mainstream stores carry. Needless to say, even though I was slightly tempted to try the soapless soap that was on special, I left empty handed. I won’t even bore you with my trip to Whole Foods. 

Let me just end by saying that all is not lost out here in the desert. In my never ending search for the best grocery stores, I recently found out that Costco has some pretty good produce. In very large quantities. I don’t know where they get it from, but if I ever need 45 packaged peppers or a 25 pound bag of potatoes, I’m in!! 

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