Sunday, August 13, 2006

Food Lion

I feel like I've hit the healthy food jackpot. Food Lion. Can you believe it? Back in Fairfax the Food Lions were a little scary. They looked old and unswept and wilted. Gangs were hanging out in front of the one we normally went to, and motorcycles raced by outside.

We moved out here and were told that the best place to shop is Martin's (a spin-off of Giant). Apparently it's popular because it... has an olive bar? because it... *thinks* um, has a lot of kid push/truck carts? Probably because it serves coffee? I don't know. I hate it. It's always totally crowded on weekends, and all of the organic foods are mixed in with everything else, so I have to shop the whole store to get what I want.

Did I mention we've switched to organic? All organic dairy products (cheese can be hard to find), humane raised meat for the most part, and organic fruits/vegetables unless they have thick skin that you discard like oranges and bananas. It's more expensive, but we eat less of it. Like I don't just dump cheese on things because I know it cost like triple what regular cheese cost. We also eat out a lot too, and then all bets are off.

Anyway, so 2 weekends ago I went to Food Lion to find something Martin's didn't have (distilled water) and voila! What is this? A whole section of organic items! Including cleaning and beauty products, and even the freezer and refrigerator items! Wait, it gets better - so I went back this week and found free range, organic chicken breasts in the meat department! *faints*

I just haven't been able to bring myself to buy chicken since I found out about the animal cruelty, so we've just been avoiding chicken (much to the dismay of DH). I was going to buy local chicken, but dealing with a whole, bone-in, skin-on chicken was too daunting, plus I'd have to go out to a farm an hour away to pick it up.

I couldn't be happier about the Food Lion here. The store is clean and uncrowded, the organic section actually has a little wood floor, the produce looks crisp, and the international section was huge too, and I can get everything I need for dinner for a week in a half hour.

4 comments:

Lahdeedah said...

GAH

Amazing.

You've just reminded me to try the organic food delivery out here.

Where do you find free-range beef and chicken? I still don't know how to find it! Clearly, not at Safeway.

Anonymous said...

Did you know Food Lion is being converted to Bloom (kinda like Wegmans)?

Jorsonata

Lahdeedah said...

one sometimes wonders if one will ever update one's blog.

RainyPM said...

I don't have time to update my blog because with the maid gone I have to spend all my blogging time on cleaning. :-p