Easily Amused: Health Food Store Edition

One of the joys of living in Post-College Yuppieville is that there are lots of natural food stores. At least two large ones and a smaller produce store that calls itself a farmer's market within three blocks or so.

But the reason I like these places so much is not so much because of the healthy food, although that helps. It's because I spent the last four-and-a-half years grocery shopping at Wal-Mart, and even after six months I find actual variety to be utterly amazing, and thus if I'm not careful grocery shopping turns into recreational food shopping. Today I went to one of these stores looking for a bottle of vanilla extract and I came out with a $2.60-on-sale box of organic macaroni and cheese (Annie's, though. totally worth it) and a jar of marinara-and-zinfandel spaghetti sauce (which actually tastes like wine). Oh, and the vanilla was a) organic, b) fair-trade and c) cheaper than the bottle of pure vanilla extract I bought at Wal-Mart, used a teaspoon of and left in Eau Claire.

The best, though, is Trader Joe's. There's only one around and it's in union square, but it's totally worth the trip every now and then because most of it is random stuff that you can't find anywhere else. Also, it's relatively cheap.

While I'm usually lazy when it comes to cooking, I am in the process of baking cookies. From scratch. From a recipe in the Times that came with this article. I say "in the process" because the article says you should let the dough sit for awhile (upto 36 hours if you have the time. I'm settling with overnight.) So tomorrow I'll see if the wisdom of The New York Times makes for a better cookie or if I should have stuck with prepackaged refrigerator dough.