Grocery Spelunking

Mrs. Fussy has left the state. Don’t worry, she’ll be back in a couple of days. But that means I’m left to my own devices. So be forewarned, today’s post may be a little rough around the edges.

For the FLB neophytes, I’ll give a brief description of her role in this enterprise.

Every night I stay up late and vent my spleen into some diatribe about food. And every morning Mrs. Fussy wakes up and reads the words. She takes out a lot of my commas, fixes lapses in parallel structure, and leaves me little notes in the places where she think’s I’ve flown off the rails. In those cases, I’ll usually make some minor revisions, because she’s usually right. Although sometimes I’ll decide to let it ride and just deal with whatever fallout may result.

There is no vitriol in my post today. No bitter disappointment. No dispair at the state of food. Instead it’s a joyful look at grocery stores after yesterday’s visit to the brand new Healthy Living Market and Cafe in Wilton.

Late last night I filed a 900-word story with All Over Albany with just about as many photographs of the new place. With any luck, you can see it over there later today. But my feelings on the market are mixed, so it’s possible I may need to do a bit of rewriting before it goes live.

Working with Mrs. Fussy is great, but working with a professional editor is even better.

One of the things that stood out from my visit to this new store was how many products I encountered that I haven’t seen anywhere else in the Capital Region. But the amazing thing about food in America is just how many products are available to us.

Eli Lesser-Goldsmith, one of the owners of Healthy Living was explaining peanut butter at the press conference yesterday. Including small regional producers there are hundreds of brands of peanut butter available. Only a few dozen are good enough to be sold at his store. But out of those, the buyer has to make the hard choice of which set to carry. There isn’t room on the shelves for all of them. Some shoppers will be delighted they chose the local Peanut Principle line of nut butters, others will long for something different.

Given all the choices available to retailers, invariably most every store will have at least a few items that you can get there and almost no place else.

Mr. Dave has an uncanny gift for spotting the unusual in a sea of sameness. His posts on The Ridiculous Food Society of Upstate New York about P-Chops are brilliant and mind-bending. I have visited the same locations and never noticed the gems he finds on the shelves until he pointed them out. He does the same thing at Stewart’s. This man has the gift of divine sight.

Far too often it’s the new markets that get all of the attention. It’s understandable, we like shiny things, and grocery stores that still have that brand new smell to them.

But recently, as I was searching for New Mt. Pleasant’s amazing challah, I found myself wandering the aisles of the Niskayuna Co-op.

It’s more like a regular grocery store than the Honest Weight Food Co-op. They have a deli counter that slices conventionally raised, processed meats and cheeses. But they do have their fair share of organic, natural, local and specialty items.

Schenectady’s Casa Visco was well represented, and I’ve never seen as many of their products anywhere. I don’t really buy jarred tomato sauce since it’s so easy to make it at home. But there was a large jar of hot cherry peppers from the brand that looked tempting.

Among the wall of yogurts, many of which are slickly designed and packaged, I saw one row of simple glass jars with fruit on the bottom and yogurt on top. They were unlabeled except for a sign on the shelf saying they came from Argyle and were cream top yogurts. Man, they looked good.

I also found whole bean fair-trade organic coffee from Tierra Farm, Adirondack Bill’s refrigerated pickles, Delancey babka from Brooklyn, apple pies from Mourningkill Bake Shop in Balston Spa, and something called Lord Nut Levington’s Thai Dyed Peanuts. The last seemed to be trying just a wee bit too hard to be quirky. But still, Thai flavored peanuts is one of the products I loved from Trader Joe’s before the market ditched it for the decidedly more expensive (and not significantly better) Thai flavored mixed nuts.

Without a doubt you should visit the Healthy Living Market and Cafe when you get a chance to make it up to Wilton. But what I’m trying to suggest is that hidden in plain sight, in markets large and small, there are products that will surprise and delight you. So get to Fin, go visit The Cheese Traveler, head over to the Niskayuna Co-op, pop into Dean’s Natural Foods, be daring and check out an African market, introduce yourself to Glen at Rolf’s Pork Store.

There is good and interesting food all around us.