#7: Regrettable Culinary Coastal Disparities

Here are the four things I miss most about the West Coast, in no particular order:

Mexican food;

In 'n' Out;

See's Candy;

Sourdough bread.

Why are they all food?

I do intend to make sourdough, actually. But you have to have sourdough starter, which means you have to have it at 75-85 degrees for a week, which means I will be waiting until May or June. And also - crap! - I will be gone for seven weeks over the summer (Long Lake Camp extended my stay), which means I will have to have someone feed it while I am gone. Blech. But it will make delicious bread!!! Yay.

Here is another stupid thing about the East Coast: The produce is all packaged. This means I have to get six bananas at a time and they are all at the same stage of ripeness, and because I can't eat six bananas in three days, this means that two to three bananas always get too overripe to eat. Some of them inevitably end up in the trash, because how much banana bread can one person make?

It also means that if I want to make something with mushrooms, I have to buy a whole pound. I don't need a whole pound of mushrooms. I never use a whole pound of mushrooms. I probably could, actually, if I committed to it, but so far, both times I bought mushrooms, I have made what I intended to make and then the rest of the mushrooms slipped my mind (the first time I just forgot about them even though they were in front of my nose; the second time I put them in the produce drawer to make them last longer, but that was even worse, because the produce drawer is not transparent so I forgot about them even more thoroughly) and I ended up throwing them out when they got moldy.

Anyway, the point is, packaged produce means more plastic is produced, means you can't choose individual fruits and vegetables to your own satisfaction, makes it easier to be wasteful, and costs more! I am against it.

Tom says that Whole Foods has individual produce, but who wants to go all the way to Union Square and pay twice as much every time they go grocery shopping? Well, actually, Tom does. But Tom is, of course, a chef. It is enough of an effort for me to go to Union Square to Trader Joe's once a month, and brave the epic lines (why is there still only one TJ's in NY? They would clearly make an enormous profit on a second one), and that is because many things there are cheaper and all of them significantly more delicious than the things at FoodTown, not to mention the wonderful variety, and also I have a gift card (thank you, Ruthy!). But Whole Foods every week for my produce? I don't think so.