Grocery shoppin’
Tomorrow morning I plan to create another batch of my crock-pot chicken chili blanco, whose fire is legendary. The recipe’s no secret—it’s actually one that came with the crock pot—but I always make a substitution of fresh peppers for the canned chilies recommended by the little white book, and I believe this is one of the secrets to deliciousness. There is some bit of masochist in me that loves that special heat from the fresh peppers, and it’s going to be awesome. I shopped today for my missing ingredients, mainly the beans and the peppers, at Whole Foods, and I have a couple of things to say about that experience.
Firstly, I don’t think that anyone actually knows the PLU for habanero peppers. I’m not even sure that there is one. This punchy little pepper carries what seems like a pretty hefty price tag compared to other vegetables, usually around $6/lb, but, when you consider that most of that weight is from the plastic bag, they don’t cost very much. Still, I’ve yet to see them actually rung up as what they are. I even had one cashier at Publix, a Mexican lady, comment that I was crazy for buying them while she rang them up as something else. The cashier at Whole Foods rang up my two or three peppers as .04 pounds of jalapeño, even after correctly registering the actual jalapeños I also bought. I think I may have inadvertently cheated Whole Foods out of a dime or so.
Secondly, I’m just not sure that I can agree with the Whole Foods philosophy on groceries. I shop there once in a while mostly because they’re nearby, but their attitude towards living might be more than I can take. Their stance on food is clear enough simply from the name—the current popular agricultural model is broken and can be remedied by an avoidance of artificial chemical treatments to crops and livestock—but I’ve mostly only viewed it as a place where people who like spending more money than usual on food are given that opportunity. They have a few mighty fine items there, and I suppose that not abusing antibiotics and growth hormones in beef and dairy cows is probably a good idea, so whatever. They’re a specialty food store with an underlying agenda that I can comfortably ignore. That agenda came out for me today, however, when I visited that other section of the store, the one with the hardwood floor and rows of various supplements and tonics.
I needed some more deodorant, and the only deodorant I’ve found to adequately overcome the powerful stink I create while on the bike is the long-lasting variety of Tom’s of Maine. I don’t care to drown myself in Aqua Velva or anything like that, so I’m fine with this solution. Tom’s of Maine is kind of a hippie brand, so I figured Whole Foods would probably carry it (which they do), but on the way to the deodorant aisle I noticed a sign for one of the categories nestled among the vitamins and natural shampoos that I found offensive enough to make me reconsider my Whole Foods patronage: homeopathics.
In most cases, I consider the use of “natural” or “organic” products to be a symptom of a righteous pretension with which I often disagree, but I’m ok with it. If you want your wheat and soy beans fertilized strictly with horse manure and seaweed and your shampoo made only from spring wather and plant squeezings, that’s alright; it’s not hurting anyone. If it tastes or works better, I’m all for it, too. I’m unable, however, to consider homeopathy on the same plane, since this is phony medicine and it really does hurt people if they expect it to cure anything outside of the healing powers of the placebo affect. Whole Foods’ sale of sugar pills and water under the label of medicine is something that I find deeply troubling. I don’t know if they do it out of greed (sugar pills and water are pretty cheap to produce, whether there’s some mystical dance attached to them or not) or a genuine belief in their validity, perhaps through the postmodern rejection of scientific evidence that has made them popular, but I don’t know that I can handle the knowledge that my organic onions are supporting a store that so openly espouses the validity of these fallacious remedies.