In Petaluma, there's no comparison between Whole Foods, Safeway, etc. Our Safeway, where much Wonder Bread is purveyed and purchased, has horrible produce and no good bread. They used to feature a small organic section, but they've since dismantled it, presumably for lack of interest.

We do have a mini-chain called G & G Market. It's a pretty good store and has many of the same higher quality packaged items we find at Whole Foods and a better section of international ingredients. Again, however, produce and bread are sadly lacking; the small organic section just looks stepped on.

I still haven't figured out our local Trader Joe's. It's smaller than the one we used to go to in Long Beach. I'm no longer in the hunt for liquor and pate bargains. I'm also afraid that if I stay there too long, some clerk will wrap me in heavy plastic and throw me in the freezer case.

Touche. I tend to forget about Wegman's since I've only been twice, once to shop, once to buy a cup of coffee. They are the best.

We bypass all of this and purchase most of our food straight from the farmers. We know our farmers and speak to them every week. When we aren't able to get there, we shop at Whole Foods.

And why do we shop at the market and Whole Foods? I'm a vegetarian, and more importantly, Tom has PKU. When you aren't able to eat much more than veggies and fruit, you want your veggies and fruit to be the best possible quality. Produce quality at chain markets is poor and without taste.

It also allows us to bypass things like the recent E. coli spinach scare.

I have to disagree with this. TJ's stuff just tastes better, I wouldn't call it a health food store, but they do have items you won't find all in one stop elsewhere. Whole foods has a huge variety of organic foods, plus vegetarian and vegan convenience foods that are hard to find elsewhere, plus organic grass fed meat (best tasting steak ever). It is expensive (which is why I shop at Sunflower, which has less of a selection of organic foods, but much better prices), but it isn't anywhere near the same as an Albertsons.

I have a very hard time shopping at regular stores. They just don't sell what I eat at competitive prices. And if you are buying organic, locally grown produce, you are making the world a better place.

Starting in November we're joining a farm co-op. A local organic farmer sells shares of veggies and you get them weekly throughout the growing season. I'm psyched. Local organic produce at low low prices.

We belonged to one for a while in San Francisco. We'd go to a central dropoff to pick up our box. We stopped because it was heavy on watermelon and corn smut. (A delicacy? No thanks.) There are a couple of trucks around here that work for similar operations, so I'm thinking of exploring their offerings. I'll be interested in hearing how yours works out.

I can't argue with this, though I think "organic" has been overly fetishized, local is definitely better.

That said, when you buy produce at Whole Foods, you generally aren't buying local nor small, though they work hard to give that impression.

That's true. But I find that their produce quality is generally much better than your basic Ralph's.

(Still, we'd rather shop at the farmer's market than Whole Foods.)

I'm wondering how Wonder bread scarred you so badly :D Plenty of people buy Wonder bread, though we're not among them.

As a kid I was dying to have Wonder bread. Being kosher meant all we could buy was Oroweat, and my mom frequented the Oroweat/Entenmenns outlet store. Not only was the bread not good, it was also frequently out of date. Kind of fitting how a Jewish girl just longed for white bread.

Growing up on the east coast, for years my blood ran thick with pineapple crunch loaf, Louisiana crunk cake, banana cake and the like.

(For white bread, we ate Pepperidge Farm, which had a fairly firm texture.)

:) I still get the odd craving for the weird chocolate covered donuts they make.