The Whole Foods Experience
Today I added something new to my inventory of life experiences: I went to Whole Foods.
Yes, I have now been to a grocery store that has its own parking garage.
Oh, I'd heard of Whole Foods for several years, spoken about in reverent whispers or with the excited zeal of the recently converted. Whole Foods is apparently where vegans and foodies and organic hipsters go when they die.
Of course, going to Whole Foods required that I first go to Green Hills. If you are not familiar with Nashville, Green Hills is to Nashville what Rodeo Drive is to Beverly Hills. It's where the rich people shop -- though the richest, of course, don't actually live there. They live in next-door Belle Meade, which is too expensive to give any of its real estate over to mere retail that would, inevitably, require non-rich people to trespass on their wide, tree-lined streets in order to get to work. Even the yard men in Belle Meade are Caucasian, for God's sake.
Going to Green Hills inevitably sets off a range of emotions: pleasure tinged with envy, cynicism dipped in insecurity, and an annoying sense of shame.
There is a certain guilty pleasure in shopping in Green Hills, because everything is just nicer there. The people are prettier, smarter, better dressed, more polite.... and very, very white. (Oh, there are some African Americans in Green Hills, but they are about as black as Bill Cosby or Colin Powell.)
There are no loud car radios blasting rap music, no trucks with Confederate flags in the back window, no shrieking children or teenagers acting their IQ. Children, when seen, are as well-behaved as Children of the Corn -- before they go on a rampage, of course. Four-way stops actually work in Green Hills, because everyone is well-bred enough to take turns as politely as nuns playing bridge.
I suspect there is an unwritten law that keeps rusty trucks with bad mufflers from even driving through Green Hills.
Which is why I always fear that the police are going to pull me over, because my car isn't nice enough, and I'll have to leave Green Hills like a busted party-crasher. This was especially apparent when I parked in the Whole Foods garage. My car is hardly a rust-bucket POS, but it is a 1997 Hyundai, with a dent in one panel, scratches on the fender and 100,501 miles on the odometer. It hasn't been washed since January. Of 2007.
I parked today between a Lexus and a BMW. The Lexus had a tasteful bumper sticker that said simply: "Do Justice, Love Mercy and Walk Humbly with Your God." The Lexus' fender was even more tastefully clean and void of opinions.
My bumper sticker says: "Sideshow Bennie says, Don't drink and drive nails up your nose." And it features a cartoon of Sideshow Bennie with a nail sticking out of his left nostril. Another says, "Normal People Scare Me." Another, "Sometimes I color outside the lines on purpose."
(My mom has asked me why, as an adult, I still feel the need to plaster my opinions all over the bumper of my car. I took off the "Sarah Palin just made me throw up a little" to make her feel better.)
Feelings of shame began when I realized I was the only person who did not bring their own 100% recycled organic hemp shopping bag to the store. Neither did I put on makeup or a breezy summer dress or kicky little strappy high heels. I did, at least, wear clean clothes not covered in paint.
I have been to Harris Teeter's, and World Market, and I thought I was prepared for Whole Foods. I was wrong. As I enjoyed an enormous, sweet and perfectly ripe strawberry from the first tasting tray, I thought, "Whoa, this is great!"
Then I came to the four-hundred and seventy-two varieties of granola, grains and snack mixes, and realized I was in over my head. By the time I made it past the whole fish staring at me from their beds of pristine ice, past the gelato station and olive bar, I was feeling dizzy.
But the cheeses, oh dear God, the cheeses. There must have been thousands of them, surrounding me on all sides, in all colors and shapes and sizes. Everywhere I turned, more cheese. So many that it went beyond amazing to just plain scary. We are, after all, talking about milk, bacteria and mold. And who could possibly make a decision from all those cheeses? Who could possibly NEED that many cheeses, or so much of it?
I was excited by the free cheese chunks, but the ones I tasted were rather smelly. I found myself looking about frantically for Velveeta, just to get my bearings. (And no, there is no Velveeta in Whole Foods.)
I wandered the store, disoriented and lost amid entire aisles of soy milk and gluten-free pancake mixes, nibbling nervously at all the free stuff while feeling like I should apologize for the meager contents of my basket.
The bakery nearly undid me. I almost bought a loaf of fresh-baked cranberry walnut bread, until I realized that it was the whipped honey butter served with it that made me nearly fall to my knees in rapture. You could put whipped honey butter on cardboard and I'd eat myself sick. Instead I circled the bakery six times until there was no more honey butter. I managed to refrain from licking the plastic tub.
I remembered that I was actually out of bread at home, and looked for a basic whole wheat. I looked at the sticker and nearly passed out. $6.99 for a loaf of bread? Seriously? Instead I bought what I did not need at all: a triple chocolate mini cake, two mini cupcakes, a half a loaf of apple walnut bread.... a quarter pound of the most expensive, rare and succulent roast beef I've ever tasted. (At this time I have eaten the cupcakes, and I must tell you they were a disappointment. Very pretty, but not very good. The chocolate mini cake? Divine.)
The hot bar, the salad bar, the dessert bar.... I bought a $9 meat-and-two plate: lemon olive chicken, Georgia field peas and mac-n-cheese. (Over-priced, I thought, but it was pretty good and I did get both lunch and dinner out of it.)
The chocolate counter was filled with tiny morsels of glistening luxury too perfect to even consider eating. They were just too damned pretty. It would be like chewing up a painting. I just couldn't do it.
Oh, I also got a pint of New Orleans Chicken Gumbo, which will be lunch tomorrow.
Honestly, there is just too much stuff in there for the foodie who doesn't actually cook. I wanted it all, even stuff that I was unsure of. (I mean, what the heck is in "mock chicken salad?" Do I really want to know? And vegan crab cakes? I'm not a vegan and I don't particularly like crab cakes but they looked sooooo appealing...)
I finally staggered out of there with two tiny bags -- 100% recycled paper bags, of course, the kind with rope handles -- and $48 lighter in the wallet.
On the way home, I passed an entire lane blocked by three police cars, lights flashing, attending a stalled SUV. My last accident, in Antioch, I waited an hour and a half for one disgruntled cop to show up.
Yep, life is nicer in Green Hills. Except for the traffic and price tags.
Yes, I have now been to a grocery store that has its own parking garage.
Oh, I'd heard of Whole Foods for several years, spoken about in reverent whispers or with the excited zeal of the recently converted. Whole Foods is apparently where vegans and foodies and organic hipsters go when they die.
Of course, going to Whole Foods required that I first go to Green Hills. If you are not familiar with Nashville, Green Hills is to Nashville what Rodeo Drive is to Beverly Hills. It's where the rich people shop -- though the richest, of course, don't actually live there. They live in next-door Belle Meade, which is too expensive to give any of its real estate over to mere retail that would, inevitably, require non-rich people to trespass on their wide, tree-lined streets in order to get to work. Even the yard men in Belle Meade are Caucasian, for God's sake.
Going to Green Hills inevitably sets off a range of emotions: pleasure tinged with envy, cynicism dipped in insecurity, and an annoying sense of shame.
There is a certain guilty pleasure in shopping in Green Hills, because everything is just nicer there. The people are prettier, smarter, better dressed, more polite.... and very, very white. (Oh, there are some African Americans in Green Hills, but they are about as black as Bill Cosby or Colin Powell.)
There are no loud car radios blasting rap music, no trucks with Confederate flags in the back window, no shrieking children or teenagers acting their IQ. Children, when seen, are as well-behaved as Children of the Corn -- before they go on a rampage, of course. Four-way stops actually work in Green Hills, because everyone is well-bred enough to take turns as politely as nuns playing bridge.
I suspect there is an unwritten law that keeps rusty trucks with bad mufflers from even driving through Green Hills.
Which is why I always fear that the police are going to pull me over, because my car isn't nice enough, and I'll have to leave Green Hills like a busted party-crasher. This was especially apparent when I parked in the Whole Foods garage. My car is hardly a rust-bucket POS, but it is a 1997 Hyundai, with a dent in one panel, scratches on the fender and 100,501 miles on the odometer. It hasn't been washed since January. Of 2007.
I parked today between a Lexus and a BMW. The Lexus had a tasteful bumper sticker that said simply: "Do Justice, Love Mercy and Walk Humbly with Your God." The Lexus' fender was even more tastefully clean and void of opinions.
My bumper sticker says: "Sideshow Bennie says, Don't drink and drive nails up your nose." And it features a cartoon of Sideshow Bennie with a nail sticking out of his left nostril. Another says, "Normal People Scare Me." Another, "Sometimes I color outside the lines on purpose."
(My mom has asked me why, as an adult, I still feel the need to plaster my opinions all over the bumper of my car. I took off the "Sarah Palin just made me throw up a little" to make her feel better.)
Feelings of shame began when I realized I was the only person who did not bring their own 100% recycled organic hemp shopping bag to the store. Neither did I put on makeup or a breezy summer dress or kicky little strappy high heels. I did, at least, wear clean clothes not covered in paint.
I have been to Harris Teeter's, and World Market, and I thought I was prepared for Whole Foods. I was wrong. As I enjoyed an enormous, sweet and perfectly ripe strawberry from the first tasting tray, I thought, "Whoa, this is great!"
Then I came to the four-hundred and seventy-two varieties of granola, grains and snack mixes, and realized I was in over my head. By the time I made it past the whole fish staring at me from their beds of pristine ice, past the gelato station and olive bar, I was feeling dizzy.
But the cheeses, oh dear God, the cheeses. There must have been thousands of them, surrounding me on all sides, in all colors and shapes and sizes. Everywhere I turned, more cheese. So many that it went beyond amazing to just plain scary. We are, after all, talking about milk, bacteria and mold. And who could possibly make a decision from all those cheeses? Who could possibly NEED that many cheeses, or so much of it?
I was excited by the free cheese chunks, but the ones I tasted were rather smelly. I found myself looking about frantically for Velveeta, just to get my bearings. (And no, there is no Velveeta in Whole Foods.)
I wandered the store, disoriented and lost amid entire aisles of soy milk and gluten-free pancake mixes, nibbling nervously at all the free stuff while feeling like I should apologize for the meager contents of my basket.
The bakery nearly undid me. I almost bought a loaf of fresh-baked cranberry walnut bread, until I realized that it was the whipped honey butter served with it that made me nearly fall to my knees in rapture. You could put whipped honey butter on cardboard and I'd eat myself sick. Instead I circled the bakery six times until there was no more honey butter. I managed to refrain from licking the plastic tub.
I remembered that I was actually out of bread at home, and looked for a basic whole wheat. I looked at the sticker and nearly passed out. $6.99 for a loaf of bread? Seriously? Instead I bought what I did not need at all: a triple chocolate mini cake, two mini cupcakes, a half a loaf of apple walnut bread.... a quarter pound of the most expensive, rare and succulent roast beef I've ever tasted. (At this time I have eaten the cupcakes, and I must tell you they were a disappointment. Very pretty, but not very good. The chocolate mini cake? Divine.)
The hot bar, the salad bar, the dessert bar.... I bought a $9 meat-and-two plate: lemon olive chicken, Georgia field peas and mac-n-cheese. (Over-priced, I thought, but it was pretty good and I did get both lunch and dinner out of it.)
The chocolate counter was filled with tiny morsels of glistening luxury too perfect to even consider eating. They were just too damned pretty. It would be like chewing up a painting. I just couldn't do it.
Oh, I also got a pint of New Orleans Chicken Gumbo, which will be lunch tomorrow.
Honestly, there is just too much stuff in there for the foodie who doesn't actually cook. I wanted it all, even stuff that I was unsure of. (I mean, what the heck is in "mock chicken salad?" Do I really want to know? And vegan crab cakes? I'm not a vegan and I don't particularly like crab cakes but they looked sooooo appealing...)
I finally staggered out of there with two tiny bags -- 100% recycled paper bags, of course, the kind with rope handles -- and $48 lighter in the wallet.
On the way home, I passed an entire lane blocked by three police cars, lights flashing, attending a stalled SUV. My last accident, in Antioch, I waited an hour and a half for one disgruntled cop to show up.
Yep, life is nicer in Green Hills. Except for the traffic and price tags.
