The boxes are always a dead giveaway. The farm store people here are employees, not owners of the farms. Some is from those farms, some is not. One farm store here is about 99% good local stuff, even the meats, baked goods and cheeses. A lot of people at the farmer's markets never grew anything either - they buy stuff at the big produce auction in the next county which might be local or might be from who knows where. I'm a longtime gardener so I'm pretty good at scoping out the real stuff.
A lot of farm stores and farmer's markets here buy shipped in stuff from out of state - your classic no flavor, no texture mass produced garbage. One local grocery store here sells heirloom tomatoes. They really are heirloom varieties, from Mexico. They're obviously picked green (no flavor) and refrigerated (no flavor, mealy texture) and not anywhere near worth the almost $5 a pound they charge for them. I found the same heirlooms at the local farm store. Just as mealy and tasteless.
I worked all through high school too at the grill at a People's Drug Store (now CVS.) I didn't buy beer but I was able to buy my own clothes rather than my mother's (bless her heart) idea of what cool teenagers would wear.
Target may have gotten rid of or moved their children's pride displays but I still see more man buns with noodle arms and technicolor hair there per capita than anywhere. I only go there for the spices and their frozen vegetables, which are excellent.
I no longer eat at Five Guys because their prices are so high but one of their two local stores has one non-hispanic worker. The McDonalds in another nearby town now has no one who speaks enough English to take an order or understand a question. I could go on and on with this. My point is I'm looking forward to the day when all these restaurants have good old American teenagers back at work. Upshot of this is expect soon to have ordering kiosks replace all the these people and then robot assembly lines replacing the cooks?
I completely understand. It's pretty close to that here. People who live in urban and suburban areas have no idea what it's like to drive 50-100 miles to grocery shop. That's why I'm pushing to boycott on June 14 only, the day of Trump's big US Army parade.
You can actually control the amount of fat by buying lower fat hamburger. You can get it as low as 7%. It's a bit more expensive and actually 20% is supposed to be ideal for flavor. The watery stuff is either blood or they could be adding water. I don't buy any hamburger from any store that does this. Do you have an Aldi nearby? You might want to try them. When I can, I get hamburger from a local farm that's really excellent and not that much more expensive. Just about the best is wagyu hamburger from Heartbrand Beef. It's around $10 a pound if you buy the 12 pound package. It's a LOT better than the little squares of wagyu hamburger at any of the grocery stores. I also like the grassfed hamburger at Aldi. Grassfed is much better for you.
Absolutely right. I said there are four groceries in my area. It's a bit over 20 miles one way to Food Lion, About 25 miles to Walmart and Aldi, another 10 miles up the road to Martins. I could easily drive close to 100 miles to go to all four. Time and gas wise, it's a lot easier to go to Walmart and Aldi, they're in the same shopping center.
Not always. I'm penny pinching so much now I have apps for Aldi, Walmart, Food Lion and Martins, all of the grocery stores within about a 40 mile radius. I make a list before shopping and check all four to see who's cheapest that week. Walmart is often more expensive but not always. Aldi has announced it's dropping prices on 400 items and that's pretty brilliant when the knuckleheads at Walmart are announcing price hikes for non-existent tariffs. I suspect it's their fancy store remodels that's paying for, not tariffs. Food Lion often beats both Walmart and Aldi but then other items are more expensive. Martins has good sales but ridiculously more expensive on others and I'm not paying a dollar or more for something just to shop there. Martins was the first store around here to cheat on hamburger by adding gobs of blood so that when you opened a pack you looked like you'd murdered somebody.
"Capucine De Wulf Villandry Mixed Stone Frog On Flower Ring in 18K Gold Plated
From the Villandry collection 18K gold-plated; aventurine; amethyst; mop; cz Size 7 Almost all gemstones and blue and black diamonds have been treated to enhance their beauty and require special care Photo may have been enlarged and/or enhanced. Made in India"
There's a link to one with a white rabbit on the same page. MOP is mother of pearl. Not very pricy stones and it's only gold plated so I'd say the price is ridiculous.
They keep lowering the standards for BP levels too. (Same with glucose levels so we'll soon all be diabetic.) Eventually the level for normal BP will be based on dead people with no heartbeat at all. I found an ayurvedic herbal on Amazon called Carditone that appears to work better for my BP than the prescriptions. Not medical advice because I'm certainly no doctor, just sharing an experience.
That debt is horrible! The ones I'm talking about paid virtually nothing. Two were teachers and had insurance most of us only dream of. Another was a federal employee, you can imagine his insurance. I was very lucky to have an outstanding therapist my last round who not only helped with the arthritis in my back but also my hip and, in his spare time, called my doctor and chewed her out for giving me statins that were causing horrible muscle cramps. If I stay on top of doing my exercises he showed me, I'm not pain free but getting there.
I'm so sorry you had to go through this. In this family, it was like a greed thing. Insurance paid tens of thousands so it was like their attitude was, "Wow, free joints! I'll take six!" I've been lucky. I'm pretty much head to toe with arthritis but physical therapy a few times has helped a lot for most things. The other amazing thing to me is all of them were pretty obese, yet I've been told doctors are supposed to get patients to lose weight before doing these surgeries. Otherwise they are bound to get blown out quickly. Not one of them was given that advice.
I strongly suspect someday soon MAHA or someone similar will reveal that all these joint surgeries are a big money grubbing scam. We had a family member who had both knees done and ended up barely able to walk. I begged her not to have the hip replacement. That was it, she never walked another step without grasping a walker for dear life and eventually, a wheelchair. One of her siblings lost a leg after falling and the metal inside his knee tore his knee beyond repair. Another sibling fell and spent six months in a nursing home recovering from the damage to their knee and has very little ability to walk. I would crawl before I'd have one of those surgeries and, yes, hang onto my joint pain thank you.
This really makes me sick. The customs dog training center is right here in the Shenandoah Valley. I once adopted one of their dogs - they adopt them out if they don't make it through training. He was very sweet but bullheaded, so I know why he washed out. LOL I wish you all could see them, they really are amazing. When they sniff something that's contraband, they sit to let the handler know they found something. Wonderful, wonderful dogs. I'd like to kick that Egyptian where it really hurts. grrrr