Guilty Pleasure on the Jersey Shore

We couldn't very well make travel plans to the International Pickle Day festival in New York without visiting our friend Tom. Tom recently traded his condo digs in New York City for a house in Red Bank about an hour south on the Jersey Shore. In addition to having an incredibly well-preserved main street, with more ice cream parlors and places to buy "sliders" (mini hamburgers) than you can shake a pickle at, Red Bank is close to all the other traditional attractions, such as Asbury Park and here, the charter fishing fleet.

Red Bank is also close to Atlantic Highlands and the Mount Mitchell overlook. On a clear day, you can see the Manhattan skyline. And since you can also see the spot where the Twin Towers once stood, the site has been turned into a 9/11 memorial. Our original plan was to take a high-speed ferry across the bay into Manhattan on Sunday for the pickle festival. But not so many ferries run on Sunday afternoon, so we decided to drive. You'd be surprised how many cars are trying to get in and out of the Holland Tunnel on Sunday. That part was not so fun.

Also near Red Bank is the biggest Whole Foods I'd ever seen. I would happily trade ours just for the bulk aisle. Our friend Larry and I spent an exhausting part of the afternoon shopping for dinner: curried fish fillet with fresh tomato chutney, curry-roasted cauliflower and Indian-style zucchini fritters. Oddly enough, there was a Dairy Queen (DQ to those in the know) right next door. We were forced to make a detour for an afternoon snack that had "Jersey Shore" written all over it.

"Don't tell your wife," Larry whispered.

Don't worry, Lar. I won't.

Adios, Wild Rice

Some of you may remember our last dust-up with Whole Foods over the sudden and unannounced removal of bulk spices from our local store. (They've since posted a sign apologizing "for any inconvenience.")

Well, yesterday as I was cruising the bulk section for the wild rice I needed for my "food appreciation" classes (see post below), I found there was no wild rice to be had. Since I've been buying my wild rice in bulk from this store for several years, I had a pretty good idea where it was supposed to be. There wasn't even an empty bin to indicate wild rice had ever been there.

When I inquired at the customer service desk where the wild rice had gone, two members of the "grocery team" showed up, shrugged their shoulders and said they couldn't say, because the "buyer" for the bulk department was out and wouldn't be back until this morning.

This morning, when I returned to the store to purchase more pumpkins, I found the bulk "buyer" loading a bin with yogurt-covered pretzels. We like the yogurt-covered pretzels, so I was happy to see she was on top of that. But where, I asked, had the wild rice gone?

"We don't sell wild rice in this section," she said.

"I've been buying it here for years," I replied.

"Well," she answered, "since I started working here a month-and-a-half ago, we haven't had it. But we do have it in boxes."

She started to lead me to the aisle where the packaged wild rice is on display, but I waved her off. No way am I paying those prices, nor do I need the packaging.

But I did stop by the packaged rice aisle just to see if my suspicion was accurate, that the price of packaged wild rice is about double the cost of the bulk variety. What I found was the Lundberg brand on display costing $4.68 for an 8-ounce package, or 58.6 cents per ounce. The day before, I had purchased my wild rice in bulk at the Yes! Natural Foods store for $7.50 a pound, or a good deal less than half what Whole Foods is charging for the packaged variety.

Wild rice, whole wheat couscous, Israeli couscous--all these favorite items of mine have been eliminated without notice from the bulk section at Whole Foods. When the bulk spice selection was removed, someone describing himself as "an insider" at Whole Foods commented here that we should "get over it" and find what we need elsewhere.

Whole Foods seems determined to have us shop elsewhere...

Adios, Bulk Spices

First it was the Israeli couscous, then the whole wheat couscous. Today I trekked down to Whole Foods for a small quantity of ground coriander and found the entire display of bulk spices had disappeared.

Used to be there was a shelving unit near the food supplements stocked with big jars of all kinds of commonly used spices--cinnamon, cumin, allspice, fennel seed, mustard seed. You just scooped what you needed into a small plastic bag and rang it up at the cash register.

There were distinct advantages to this system: you only took as much spice as you needed, so it didn't have to sit on a spice rack at home going stale. And you didn't waste the glass jar, plastic lid, labels and whatever other packaging normally comes with spices from the typical spice aisle.

That, at least, used to be one of the attractions of going to Whole Foods, something that set the eco-grocer apart from other purveyors. But now the bulk spices are history, replaced by health books or something. There's no indication the spices were ever there.

"People found out that if they bought less than a quarter-pound they didn't have to pay for it," said one of the clerks, meaning the spices didn't weigh hardly anything in small quantities, so they didn't register on the scale at checkout. The cashiers would panic for a minute, then simply toss the spice bag in with your other groceries, gratis.

"We were losing tons of money, and I think we're one of the last stores to get rid of it," the clerk said.

I suppose it would have been too much trouble to devise some other system so that customers could still purchase the spices they needed--and only what they needed, without the packaging--and pay for them as well. It does make a shopper feel like a bit of a nobody when these changes occur overnight, without any notice--like falling off a cliff where there used to be a road. Don't we deserve at least a bit of signage, a little crumb of info?

Call me naive for thinking there must be a better way...

Earth to Whole Foods--How do You Spell D-R-O-U-G-H-T?

The District of Columbia is experiencing a drought with a rain deficit of almost 9 inches. But you'd hardly know it if you were visiting the local Whole Foods this morning. There, a worker was out power-washing the sidewalk.

A bright red pickup carrying a huge compressor was parked in front of the store with long lengths of hose running in both directions and water flying everywhere.

Perhaps Whole Foods is just trying to give a Bronx cheer to our neighbors in Virginia, where there's a 13-inch rain deficit at Dulles Airport. The nearby town of Purcellville in Loudon County, Virginia, where mandatory water restrictions are in place, could very soon run out of water altogether. The rain deficit in Central Virginia is more like 17 inches.

And in neighboring North Carolina, almost every county in the state is experiencing what is described as "extreme" drought, or worse. The City of Atlanta, GA, is in danger of watching its main source of water completely dry up.

It's a very bad time for the Mid-Atlantic. Here in the nation's capital, we are poised to break a record, having seen 33 consecutive days without measurable rainfall. Trees all over town are dying--turning crispy brown--for lack of water. Area farmers are desperate for rain. For many, there will be no pumpkin harvest this Halloween.

Which begs the question, Is anyone at Whole Foods watching the weather?

Over on the chain's corporate website, Whole Foods declares: "We see the necessity of active environmental stewardship so that the earth continues to flourish for generations to come. We seek to balance our needs with the needs of the rest of the planet through the following actions," including:

"Reducing waste and consumption of non-renewable resources. We promote and participate in recycling programs in our communities. We are committed to re-usable packaging, reduced packaging, and water and energy conservation.

"Encouraging environmentally sound cleaning and store maintenance programs." (emphasis added)

Makes you wonder how badly that sidewalk needed to be washed.

Columbus Day Outing to Whole Foods

Weekdays off come with a bit of a sting for parents because that of course means no school, which means activities must be found for the kids who are home for the day. This is where I as parent and erstwhile role model put on my cheerleader hat, trying to interest a certain 7-year-old in getting dressed out of her pajamas, turn off the television and join me in a walk to the grocery store.


"I don't want to go to Whole Foods!" she screams, throwing herself backwards against a sofa cushion and kicking her feet into the air. "I've been there two days in a row!"


I take that as a 'No' and switch into a higher gear, explaining that the reason for the grocery outing is to purchase ingredients for muffins that I am making for a client and that we can have so much fun when we get back making muffins together.


"I don't want to make muffins!" is her less-than-enthusiastic response.


I then switch into bribing mode, holding out the possibility that there may be some kind of delectable treat waiting for her at Whole Foods, yet to be discovered but only if we start walking there sometime within the next 15 minutes.


"No!"


As a final inducement, I encourage her to think how miserable she'll be sitting in front of the television all day in her pajamas. With a heart full of love and kindness, I growl, "Turn off the television!"


A few minutes later I find that she has had a change of heart. She is indeed getting dressed and ready to go. Now my wife is at the door urging us to take the canvas shopping bags she has purchased from Whole Foods. We are doing our part to save the world from plastic shopping bags, only I keep forgetting to take the more eco-friendly bags.


By way of cementing our resolve, and assisting my memory, my wife says, "There will be no more plastic bags allowed in this house. Don't even think about coming back with a plastic bag." She hands me the canvas bags and we are off.


Our local Whole Foods is about a 20-minute walk and I figure both daughter and I can use the exercise. Daughter is less convinced.

"Why can't we take the car?"


"Don't be silly," I say. "Look what a beautiful day it is! It's a great day for a walk."


"But my legs hurt."


"You're a young kid. You've got lots of energy."


"But my legs are really going to hurt."


"Do we need to take you to the doctor?"


"No."


In fact, it is a lovely walk, although I feel a bit silly carrying two bulging packages of used plastic shopping bags in one hand. They won't be recycled if you leave them at the curb. I'm taking them back to the Whole Foods to do whatever they do with used shopping bags.

Our shopping list is fairly short: honey, eggs, egg substitute, a sweet potato, some whole wheat pastry flour, frozen blueberries and something called lecithin granules. This to make several different kinds of heart-healthy muffins that I will put in client meals over the coming months. I have a feeling there could be some surprise waiting over the lecithin granules. I have no idea what they are or why they are called for in a recipe for "coffee cake muffins."


Sure enough, the lecithin granules turn into a bit of an adventure. The man at the customer service desk gives me a blank stare. After waiting several minutes for someone from "grocery team" to arrive and show me where they are--if they exist--I walk around the corner to see if the store concierge has a clue.


I like the concierge. Like a good hotel concierge, he seems to be always primed and ready for the next challenge. He can't wait to help you with your most outrageous request. When I tell him we are looking for lecithin granules, he screws his face into an expression that says, "Never heard of 'em, but if that's what you need, I'm sure we can find some around here someplace." I like that.


The concierge disappears into his den for a moment to check for lecithin granules on his computer, then reappears saying they are most likely to be in the "Supplements Section."



Here I'd been scouring the baking aisle, looking up and down and all around for the mystery ingredient, when it turns out lecithin is some sort of vegetable concentrate providing "97% soy phosphatides," whatever those are, along with "phosphatidyl choline" and "phosphatidyl inositol." I have no idea what any of this means, or why I would need them in a muffin. But I feel I am somehow broadening my healthy muffin horizons. I take a $10 bottle of lecithin granules.


Our shopping complete, I wonder what treat I can possibly offer daughter, who has been pushing our shopping cart around the store the entire time. The stuffed animal strapped into the kid's seat is supposed to be a squirrel, except in a strange almost grotesque twist only a 7-year-old can appreciate it has the face of a child. Daughter calls her, aptly, "Squirrely."


Daughter is drawn to the steam table and the selection of soups. I hesitate. In all the years I've been coming to Whole Foods, I've never eaten the prepared foods. These days, Whole Foods turns into a veritable restaurant around lunch-time. I am convinced that every Ethiopian cab driver in the District of Columbia for some reason chooses to eat lunch at Whole Foods. At noon, the parking lot at Whole Foods looks more like the taxi stand at National Airport.


Daughter decides on a small cup of chicken noodle soup. At first I am loathe to eat anything. But I relent, making a box of lentils, couscous, chickpeas, steamed tofu.

It all looks suddenly very appetizing. We actually find an empty booth, but that is because the table is falling off its legs and wobbles dangerously whenever you touch it. Nevertheless, daughter happily thrusts a spoon into her soup. My food, though colorful and authentic looking, is rather bland. I'm not sure whether this is for the benefit of the general "I-don't-do-ethnic" public out there, or because the chef is missing some taste buds. For my taste, some seasoning would be nice.


But we have a swell lunch together, daughter and I, just the two of us. It's amazing how quickly kids can recover from a tantrum in front of the television. Persistence is a virtue, and sometimes makes parenthood grand.

Calling All Pork Butt

I was preparing to grind meat for sausages yesterday and for the second time in two weeks called my local Whole Foods for pork shoulder (aka pork butt) only to be told there wasn't any.

That's not a problem any more. We are so used to the local Whole Foods not having what we need that my wife has written into our address book the phone numbers for all three Whole Foods located here in the District of Columbia.

We're not dummies. We don't drive around looking for stuff. We use the phone. In fact, if I get to Whole Foods and can't find something, I just park myself at the "customer service" desk and ask a clerk to make the calls.

Last week when the nearest Whole Foods didn't have pork shoulder I found it at the store about three miles away. No big deal. They packed it up and had it waiting for me.

But this week, none of the Whole Foods stores had pork shoulder.

"They (meaning the local distribution center) never delivered any," said the meat clerk who answered the phone at one of the stores. "This has been happening for years. It doesn't matter if we order something. If they don't have it, they just don't bring it. They don't tell us they're not bringing it and they never give an explanation. It's just a mystery and it's very frustrating."

Frustrating for the meat clerk. I, meanwhile, am pulling my hair out. I can't make sausages without pork shoulder. I had to call the local Safeway, where the butcher (I'm being generous with the term) not only had pork shoulder, but trimmed it off the bone for me and put it aside under my name.

Sometimes I forget how friendly the people can be at our poor, old, run-down neighborhood Safeway.

My disappointment is that the pork at Safeway is the kind raised in a dim, stinky corporate factory, "the other white meat" bred to contain as little fat as possible and consequently missing what I am ultimately looking for: the flavor of pork.

Whole Foods, meanwhile, carries the Niman Ranch brand of pork, a beast that has been raised by independent farmers to be fat and happy in a more outdoor setting. Just by virtue of not having the fat bred out of it, and being allowed to live its life more like a pig and less like a hamster, the Niman Ranch pork has more flavor.

Which raises the question: Why in the world would the meat department at Whole Foods be out of pork shoulder in the first place? Other than perhaps the cheeks or the shanks, cuts you rarely see for sale to the public outside restaurants and specialty butcher shops, the shoulder is the most flavorful part of the pig. It's a standard item--or at least it used to be.

Yet a stroll along the typical meat counter these days reveals that America's taste for meats runs more in the direction of style than flavor. The modern, tricked-out meat case, all chrome and glass and awash in soothing fluorescence, has more in common with a Paris fashion runway than with a true butcher's display.

Pork tenderloin marinated two different ways. Fancy shish kabobs with multi-colored vegetables you know won't be cooked when the meat is well past done. Filet mignon at $25 a pound. Miniaturized lamb loin chops. Chicken sausages a dozen different ways. Giant pork chops stuffed like Thanksgiving turkeys. To gaze upon this stylized cornucopia of protein as like standing in front of a diorama at the natural history museum: so lifelike, yet no real life there, all soul drained away.

The selection looks like something dreamed up in an editorial meeting at Bon Appetit magazine, all glitz and glam with one important component missing: the flavor.

I'm yearning for squishy livers, glistening kidneys, funky trotters. I want to see slabs of smoked bacon, gnarly hocks, fresh pork bellies.

It's the absence of these products, the backbone of our meat tradition, that tells the tale of our modern appetite. Meat these days has mostly become just another delivery vehicle for the latest magazine sauce or fruit salsa. Our concept of carnivorous has been conceptualized to the point that we don't recognize any more where the flavor comes from if not from the tropical, out-of-season marinade foisted upon us in the latest installment of Food Network.

Our meat has been mango-ized.

Again, it is those busy chefs and food writers and editors, all the stylists and studio visualists, trying to justify their salaries and cook up another trend. The consumer in his hapless disconnect from tradition, his disassociation from collective memory, his alienation from any sense of season and place, follows along, cruising for his next recipe fix.

And that brings me to the ultimate paradox: I thought the fatty flavorful cuts were the trend. I thought Fergus Henderson had made it clear--finally and for for all time--that it is the shoulder and the cheeks and the shanks we should be eating. I thought Nose to Tail Eating was the breakthrough that had finally led us home again to where the flavor is.

Could I have been mistaken? Because again I must ask: How can Whole Foods be out of pork shoulder two weeks running?

Shhh. Whole Foods May Be Listening

Some of you may remember my little dust-up with a clerk in the bulk section at Whole Foods over steel cut oats. What it boiled down to was, the label on the bin said "steel cut oat groats," but what was inside the bin was actually whole oats. Since whole oats was not what I wanted to make my oatmeal out of, and since the clerk was not budging on my request to either put the steel cut oats where they belong or change the label on the bin, I had to find a manager to intervene. (This after the clerk accused me of spitting on him. Is this what happens when you approach AARP age?)

Well, everything turned out all right in the end. I returned a few days later to find steel cut oats back on display. The clerk and I kissed and made up (it was a dry kiss, I assure you.) The only hitch was, the label on the steel cut oats now said, simply, "oat groats." No big deal, right? I could live with that.

I thought the whole thing was amusing enough to pass along to Whole Foods HQ (and maybe pick up some new readers). They have a handy feature for leaving messages on the corporate website. It even allows you to specify the store in question by selecting from a long pop-up list. Well, I never thought anything would come of it. I never heard back from Whole Foods. But guess what? I was strolling through the bulk section the other day looking for my favorite brown basmati rice and what did I see? Someone had taken a big black marker, struck through where it said "oat groats" and written in "steel cut oats."

I swear, I have never seen anything like that done before in the bulk section. And all I have to say is, More power to the blog!

Oh, and thanks, Whole Foods, for getting that straight. Now, will you ever be bringing back the whole wheat couscous?

Someone From Grocery Team to Customer Service, Please!

I am not afraid to use the Customer Service desk at Whole Foods. In fact, I've spent a good deal of time at the Customer Service desk. So if you are at Whole Foods and hear over the loudspeaker, "Someone from the grocery team to Customer Service to assist a customer," that's probably because I need something and I can't find it. When I can't find something, I don't waste time looking for it anymore. I don't even pretend to keep up with the way things move around at Whole Foods. Intead, I go straight to the Customer Service desk and wait for a "team member" to show up. Isn't that what Customer Service is for?

But 99 times out of 100--and not necessarily at Whole Foods; it could be anywhere--after you explain to the grocery "team member" that you are having trouble locating, say, the dried porcini mushrooms, that they're always hanging on a little rack at the end of the aisle with the olive oil and capers, but today they don't seem to be there, the first thing the "team member" does is lead you right back to that exact spot next to the olive oil and capers and look for the porcini mushrooms exactly where you already said they weren't. Then the "team member" will start looking around at other shelves--the canned vegetables, the beans, the marinated artichoke hearts, the hearts of palm--and you realize that this "team member" has not a clue where the dried porcini mushrooms are any more than you do, and that when you went to the Customer Service desk you should have asked for the store psychic.

I don't know why we go into a grocery store thinking the employees know where everything is (perhaps because we see them stocking the shelves?), because it just isn't so. They usually don't know diddly.

But, really, I don't mind. This has happened so often, I know the drill by heart. It's kind of like Groundhog Day. You're Bill Murray and each morning you wake up and you're back at Whole Foods following a "team member" around looking for some missing item. After the "team member" scans a number of aisles where your missing item cannot possibly be, you get 20 Questions, starting with, "Did you check our bulk section?" And after you explain that, yes, you did go through the bulk section, and mostly what you saw were raisins and granola and wasabi peas and such, but no dried porcini mushrooms, the "team member" will usually scratch his head and say something like, "Well, we just reconfigured the whole store and that's probably one of the items we discontinued." You mean, like when you got rid of the whole wheat couscous?

At this point you turn away to continue your shopping and hear the "team member" asking another "team member," Hey Frank, have you seen the dried porcini mushroom? And 99 time out of 100, the "team member" will track you down in the cheese section fives minutes later and hand you a package of dried porcini mushrooms. The "team member" has such a triumphant look on his face, you don't even bother asking where he found them. I much prefer to do my shopping this way, where you just plant an idea in the brain of a "team member" and let him scour the store for it. This is a great time saver.

Sometimes--on rare occasions--you do get unpleasant pushback from employees. Recently, for instance, I was in the Whole Foods looking for steel cut oats. For oatmeal, I much prefer the chewier, healthier steel cut oats to conventional rolled oats, and I always buy them in the bulk section. On this particular morning, I headed for the steel cut oats and what I found was the usual bin marked "Steel Cut Oat Groats." What was in the bin, however, was not the usual steel cut oats but a grain that looked a little like brown rice. I realized that these must be whole oat groats--not cut up at all, and not suitable for oatmeal--and I thought this was a great find, since I'd never seen whole oat groats in the bulk section before. Except they weren't the steel cut oats I was looking for.

Just then, a "team member" appeared on the scene and I explained that whole oats apparently had found their way into the steel cut oats bin by mistake. What followed was one of those surreal, "Who's on First?" conversations wherein the "team member" tried to convince me that what was in the bin I was looking at were in fact "oat groats," and I kept pointing to the words "steel cut," and he then said the "steel cut" oats must be "out of stock," and I replied, Then what is this stuff in the bin marked "steel cut"? Whereupon he tried to one-up me by claiming he was the "buyer" for the bulk section (and therefore knew everything) and I had to try and one-up him by claiming (truthfully) that I had been visiting that bulk section on an almost daily basis since the store opened three years ago and had everything in it practically memorized. When he couldn't find a good response to that, he tried to claim victory and walk away, saying, "Sir, please don't spit on me."

Well, I had no choice but to march up to Customer Service and find a manager to settle the dispute over the oat groats. And the manager proceded to explain that the "buyer" for the bulk section was really pretty new (as I had suspected all along). Then we marched back to the bulk section and all three of us had a little huddle over the bin marked "steel cut oat groats," wherein the manager explained to the "buyer" that what was in the bin were indeed oat groats, but not the "steel cut" variety (Exactly!). The manager told the "buyer" to change the label on the bin to accurately reflect its contents. Then the manager walked me around the corner to another dry goods aisle and introduced me to a box of steel cut oats that solved the problem temporarily, at a cost probably three times what I would have paid for steel cut oats in the bulk section.

But, as I said, I really don't mind all this. I know there is a lot of turnover in the ranks of the "team members." They can't be expected to know everything. Where the bulk section is concerned, I see my role as a kind of volunteer ombudsman, a concerned friend of Whole Foods who will take the time to make sure the oat groats are accurately labeled and the rest of the section properly organized. In fact, one time when I was looking in bulk for brown basmati rice I found that the bin marked "brown basmati rice" was filled instead with a completely different variety of short grain brown rice. Further inspection revealed that the same short grain brown rice had insinuated intself into a total of three different bins, all with different labels. Of course, I was kind enough to point this out to the nearest "team member."

This particular story has a happy ending, though. About a week after the oat groats incident, I returned to the bulk section for some quinoa or something and bumped into the "buyer" and he was smiling from ear to ear. He practically threw his arms around me like a long lost friend, saying, "Did you see?" And he directed me to one of the cereal grain bins and there was a bin brimming with steel cut oats. As instructed, he had changed the label. It now read, simply, "Oat Groats." Still, the steel cut oats had been restored. The "buyer" and I had bonded like war veterans. And all was right with the world.