Grocery snobbing

[mollyringle]

Foods I'm a snob about:

Salsa. It has to be the kind you buy in the refrigerated section, not a glass jar on the dry-goods shelves with "Pace" or a similar name on it. Seriously, the difference is like that between homemade soup and canned.

Chocolate chips. I've fallen totally in love with the 60% cacao bittersweet Ghirardelli ones. Every other type, even other grades of Ghirardelli chips, now disappoint me.

Honey. Must be raw. Ideally from around here, or at least this continent, but I've made exceptions. Raw is not only far tastier, but healthier. And don't you dare microwave it to warm it up, as this destroys the good enzymes.

In my best ethical moods, I also choose food with labels like "organic" and "no antibiotics," but the items listed above are more about food snobbery--or love of what I eat, if you will.

What are yours?

Comments

[girlspell.livejournal.com]

Forget what I want....it has to be what my husband wants. Nothing fancy. Only Heinz Ketchup instead of other Ketchup. Only Scotties bathroom tissue. No other tissue will do for his bum. Only Bounty paper towels. Only Perdue chicken (not the other tycoon, Tyson) Only Kleenex kleenex. The list goes on and on.

This is from a guy that eats lobster, Escargot, and raw oysters, instead of potato chips and pretzls.

[mollyringle.livejournal.com]

Hee! Oh dear, that could get expensive. Funny how people have these insistent points, isn't it? I have my Ghirardelli fix, but I smirk when people get up in arms at Coke vs. Pepsi. Hypocritical of me, really.

[new-iconoclast.livejournal.com]

Smirk away, babycakes; Pepsi tastes like dishwater. When I was a kid we'd go to my grandma's and she'd give us Pepsi. It always tasted funny, and I thought it was the soap she used in her automatic dishwasher. It wasn't. It was the Pepsi. ;)

[mollyringle.livejournal.com]

Heheh. Well, to someone who doesn't like soda much at all, it's all the same. But it sounds similar to how I feel when people try to claim Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chips are good chocolate. Eck, no, it's hardly even chocolate at all! It's like cheap candy! So I sympathize, I suppose. :)

[polygonia.livejournal.com]

I do like raw, organic crystallized honey. It's so delicious. The TEXTURE. MMMMM

I love ghiradel;li chocolate chips, but I don't mind the semi sweet kind.
I only buy Uncle Ben's rice or something like jasmine rice or something. NO CHEAP RICE.
i don't like oreos, I only like Newman-Os. The double chocolate kind or original.
I only use Ghiradelli cocoa for my hot chocolate, but the cheaper stuff is better for making frosting I'm observed.

[mollyringle.livejournal.com]

The honey doesn't have to be crystallized for me, but it often ends up that way, and I agree, it's somehow more of a treat that way! (Though a bit harder to get out of the jar.)

Newman-O's are awesome, as are the other Newman's Own cookies. Those little chocolate chip ones that come in mint and orange and double chocolate--mmm.

I haven't tried the Ghirardelli cocoa! I'll look for it next time. Hershey works okay for me as a baking cocoa, though their solid chocolate isn't my favorite.

[polygonia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, cocoa made from Ghirardelli cocoa powder and sugar is just the BEST With dark chocolate school boy biscuits.
And whipped cream mmmmmm.

[pokeystar.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on the salsa - totally. Santa Barbara Salsa Co. Roasted garlic. Yellow lid. Yum.

I'm becoming a pasta snob - only Barilla will do.

My husband will refuse to eat oats that are not Quaker.

I'm a Yoplait light girl. Fage makes a great sour cream substitute.

And I may murder someone if Bernstein's stops making their nonfat Cheese and Garlic Italian dressing.

[mollyringle.livejournal.com]

Ah, yogurt, I forgot that one! I adore both Wallaby and Brown Cow yogurts, and really like Cascade Fresh too. But I will eat other kinds, so it's not quite a snobbery issue to the degree of my chocolate chip needs.

I think we get Santa Barbara Salsa here among the refrigerated options. They're all so fresh and good!

Barilla is good stuff. Have you tried some of the bagged organic pastas? I forget the brand name, but we tried one lately in a light blue plastic bag, and it was awesome. Again, I won't quite become a snob over it, though. Yet. :)

[baranduin.livejournal.com]

Salad dressing. No bottled dressing allowed. Good olive oil with good balsamic vinegar, a little salt and pepper, then toss.

[mollyringle.livejournal.com]

I'm not above bottled, but I agree that the best is homemade and fresh! I have a ginger-and-sesame-oil I really love.

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

I buy my honey -- yes, raw -- from the local Wiccans, on the grounds that they do sell raw honey, and also good herbs.

Chocolate, these day, has to be 70% or better.

My new life is very food-particular. There's so little that I'm allowed to eat anymore, it's all organic or locally grown/raised/whatall. The hospital's cancer nutritionist is all about the vegan, too. (I'm not a vegan, no, but I'm getting closer every day at this point.

Spices come from the health food store. Pepper must be ground by me. The pre-ground stuff has no cancer-fighting ninjas. They all escape.

[mollyringle.livejournal.com]

Wiccan honey and herbs--even better! :) I'm encouraged that the nutritionist is getting you such good foods, and enlisting yummy stuff in the fight. And I'm also encouraged that fresh-ground pepper is so much healthier, since that's what I always use. I suppose fresh-ground cloves and ginger and cinnamon and everything else is ideal too, so someday I'll upgrade.

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

Yup. Anything you can grind yourself, rather than buying pre-ground, totally dried, herbs and spices. I do the garlic, the ginger -- not the cinnamon so much, because I haven't used it since this all started. Ditto for the cloves, just haven't needed them. Much of this information comes from Dr. Sergin-Schreiber's book, "Cancer Free." (And yes, that's really his name. Since he was born in France, I doubt his parents had any idea how confusing that last name would be...

[kali-kali.livejournal.com]

I used to buy a lot of things like Jos Louis and similar snack cakes. However, I've been working at an Italian pastry shop for the past five months, and now, well, I can't eat factorymade snacks as much anymore. Sure, one pastry from the pastry shop I work at costs the same as a whole box of Twinkies, but they're SO much better.

[mollyringle.livejournal.com]

Italian pastry shop--yum! How droolworthy. I hear you on the Hostess treats...even without having worked at an Italian pastry shop, I must have raised my standards with all this dark chocolate, because I tried a Hostess cupcake recently, thinking it would be a special treat. It wasn't. It tasted artificial and uninteresting. Not at all what I remembered, but no great loss.

[bluesound.livejournal.com]

Can I just say, I've never heard of anyone microwaving honey ever, I'm taking this as a good thing.

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

I had not heard of it, either, and I am not sure my mind is better for hearing it.

[mollyringle.livejournal.com]

Sometimes it crystallizes into a near-solid, and you need to melt it, and the microwave is a tempting option. But it tends to be a bad idea--and I admit I've done it in the past, unwittingly.

Microwaved Honey

[thomas-a-kempis.livejournal.com]

I admit to having committed this heinous act. I was desperate for honey for some tea one night; the only honey in the house had crystallized. I microwaved it. It liquefied, along with the plastic container. Just deserts, it appears.

Re: Microwaved Honey

[mollyringle.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've done it too, for the same reason...and same results, at least once or twice. I have since done my honey research and learned the horrible error of my ways. :)

[new-iconoclast.livejournal.com]

Extra virgin olive oil, preferably from Italy. From Greece if necessary. No Spanish oil need apply.

[mollyringle.livejournal.com]

I may have to get snobby about extra virgin olive oil too, since I recently read it often gets labeled "extra virgin" when it isn't really. Apparently you need to look for some other certification too, but I can't remember what it is.

[naill-renfro.livejournal.com]

I'd love to say something funny about the term "extra virgin," but I'd like it to be original, too, and there's no room left for originality with that one.

[archersangel.livejournal.com]

not too many things i'm picky about.

preggo pasta sauce
sargento shredded cheese
charmin ultra TP
coke, not pepsi
aquafina bottled water
natcho cheese doritos

[naill-renfro.livejournal.com]

I think Prego, not preggo - unless that's something I haven't heard of before... ;-)

[archersangel.livejournal.com]

stupid typo <_<

[gavinworld.livejournal.com]

I much prefer Green Mountain Tortilla Strips to any other brand of nachos.

[mollyringle.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I'm not sure we have those here, but I'll look next time!

[naill-renfro.livejournal.com]

Mmm, better stay out of this one - too much danger that three decades of vegetarianism and health food stores has left me completely insufferable on the subject.

But everything you said.

[mollyringle.livejournal.com]

Well, the ethical considerations of food shopping are a different topic. This one's just about taste preferences/snobbery. :) But if I were still allowed dairy and eggs, I could probably be happy with the vegetarian life the majority of the time.