Health knowledge made personal
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Wow. I just traveled across the city of London to get to Whole Foods. It was quite a journey and I'm quite exhausted. This bag in my arms is heavier than it looks and I had to change tubes while carrying my sack of groceries... I didn't even make it to Hyde Park- the snow is kind of slushy and gross by now anyway.  Back to the beginning of the story... Around 11 I headed out to go from the St. Paul's tube station to High Street Kensington, where the 3-story Whole Foods is located. I first went here with my mom when we visited London in November of 2010. We ate here twice in one weekend. It's pretty much amazing, but paying makes me cringe. Always. It is so expensive! Well, it actually doesn't have to be...   This sample was wasabi peanuts; they were wonderful! I had 4. After all the work I put in to get to Whole Foods, I figured they owed me as many samples as I wanted!  The salad bars are the best ones I've ever seen. Gwenyth Paltrow shops here though, so of course they're fancy. I spent a long time wandering the store, picking out some small things to take back to my side of town. It got to be about 12:30 and I wanted lunch, so I filled a box about halfway with things like roasted spicy cauliflower (love this stuff so much), garlic broccoli, plain grilled tofu, grilled onion, etc.  THEN I saw the sign saying that they no longer charge by weight if you use a box. If you want your salad bar food charged by weight, you have to use a special kind of box. I had used the flat fee kind of box, so after a little thinking, I decided I might as well fill it up as much as humanly possible with expensive ingredients and eat it for the next several meals- I'm pretty sure I can easily get three meals out of that box.The box I thought I had said it was 11 pounds, but when I got to the cash register, turns out, I had the size of box that was 15 pounds. 15 POUNDS. Whole Foods, I love you, but that's just crazy. I've got to get 4 meals out of that dang box of food. At least the other four things I bought were dirt cheap comparatively. So yeah, I threw in some seared ahi tuna, fresh mozzarella, tons of broccoli and roasted cauliflower, etc. The girl had to put two rubber bands on my box to keep it closed! If I'd been really strategic, I would've filled in all the cracks with celery or pumpkin seeds or feta cheese. At that point though, I was so aggravated that I just paid and left. Never again, Whole Foods. I'm up to your sneaky expensive ways now. However, everything that happened didn't change my mind about where I want to live. If I move back to London for work, I definitely want to live in Kensington so I can walk to Whole Foods and run in Hyde Park. I'll take a tiny one-room apartment, but I just don't want to have to take the Tube to Whole Foods. Yet even as difficult as this mission today was, I'm sure I'll be heading back in a few weeks (once I've gotten my paycheck). They had so many different types of non-dairy milk. Quinoa, tons of different almond milks, hazelnut, oat milk, etc.  So what did I buy besides the most expensive salad ever? Some 1 pound peppermint tea that I'm sipping right now. I got some cheap hot sauce for my eggs- I miss Sriracha!  Here's the cause of today's distress. That cauliflower is good stuff!  I got some sunflower seeds from the bulk bins along with some almond flour (ground up almonds), because it's so good in yogurt or smoothies.  Thankfully these two little nut butters were cheap, which made me feel slightly better. I got hazelnut butter and organic sunflower seed butter! Can't wait to try them.  See? The 54 oz salad TUB. I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it a tub- more like a large box.  So for another humorous story... last night my Chinese roommate wanted to do dishes, but we don't have any dish soap. I held up our dishwashing liquid soap and asked her why she didn't use that? She started going on and on about how smart I am and how I'm the level of a "Japanese housewife," which is apparently even better than a Chinese housewife. I kind of backed out a little after she got so excited and I said "Maybe you can't use that stuff... I just assumed you could... Maybe you should ask Kat (our other roommate)." I came back in an hour later and saw this. OOPS. I felt so bad! I had no idea that would happen and our dishes STILL aren't clean.  And finally... here I am in my pajamas in the snow last night. Thanks to the new insert in my coat, I was perfectly warm out there.  I'm gonna rest for a few hours before I go meet my friend for the parade and dinner if that's still on! Not sure about how the snow is going to change plans. |
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