A Missive from the Fortress of Illitude (<-- not, in fact, a G thing)

Shee-it.  I must be sick.  I mean, I've known I was sick thanks to the dizziness last night, the runny nose for the past 24 hours, and the general crap feeling, but I just lost track of the day.  I seriously thought today (the 20th) was Saturday, which it just isn't.  Ugh.  On the other hand, I feel quite productive, more productive than I really deserve to feel, actually, considering what little I did.  Wrote up a one page self-evaluation for the past semester (our department has us do this, I know not why), cleaned my room, and vacuumed it.  That's it.  I also vacuumed the hall and the living room, but that doesn't really count as more stuff, since I already had the vacuum cleaner out anyway. Admittedly, the room was approaching Superfund levels, to the extent that when I wanted to just throw something down haphazardly I was beginning to encroach on the narrow walkway I had left next to the bed and the desk, but still it was mostly a matter of breaking down piles into "books", "school papers", "other important papers", "recyclable papers", and "trash".  Now that my room is clean I'm reminded of how it's actually a pleasant place to be in when it's not cluttered like nobody's business.

Mandi and Erin managed to convince me to leave my Fortress of Illitude to go with them and Katie to grab a bit of food (Phil's Oyster Bar, Home of the World-Famous Phil's Bread Pudding and the Less Famous but Still Ubiquitous Servers of Questionable Humor) and have some drinks at Erin's.  Plus watch some Buffy.  So that was good, really.  Now I'm kind of tired and not tired at the same time, but it's just too late to start a movie, so I guess I'll go to bed.

Oh, wait, one last thing.  Is it so hard to find juice that's made of juice?  Seriously.  I mean, from concentrate is acceptable I guess (albeit undesirable), but what gives with the high-fructose corn syrup?  Oh, and the inescapable add-ins of grape and/or apple juice.  Looza actually makes juice that's comprised of juice, but I haven't seen that brand around here.  POM also does, but they have tee-niney little bottles for too high of a price, not to mention a selection that's based exclusively around the juice of the pomegranate.  Blah.

My visit to Whole Foods

I have been avoiding Whole Foods for a while now.  I know, I know, why.  Basically I had become convinced that the whole store was an excuse to get the trend-conscious pseudo-healthy consumer to buy OMG!Certified!Organic!LOL foods at jacked-up prices with no commensurate increase in quality: that is to say, I thought it was yuppie heaven.  However, spurred on by my need to get juice that wasn't practically sugar-water (well, high fructose corn syrup-water, but who's counting?), I finally ventured out to Whole Foods.  I was already pre-disposed toward being a little more favorable toward it, thanks to the Alpharetta, GA location's frequent appearances on Alton Brown's Good Eats (yes, I am a sheep), but I was still unprepared.

...Y'all.

I was on good behavior, so I managed to suppress it, but all I really wanted to do walking around that store was squee loudly.  Was there some of the sort of behavior I feared?  Sure, but it wasn't all that.  They had bins upon bins of various apple varieties.  They had lotus root.  They had quite a number of dried and fresh pepper varieties.  They galangal root.  They had fuckin' sunchokes for god's sake!  I have NEVER in my life seen a Jerusalem artichoke in the flesh, yet there they were, three to a bag, right next to the zucchini.  And shall we not praise the aisle o' grains, with their bulk containers of various flours, sea salt, beans after beans after beans (even uncommon ones like mung and adzuki), multiple lentils, and various pre-mixed granolas and bean soup mixes.  Their cheese counter was sublime.  Their fish counter was the first one I've ever encountered that didn't smell vaguely fishy.  They had heaps of store-prepared sausages.  Their chicken and beef?  Not pre-packaged.  They had heaps of separated chickens and cows, ready for you to say that you'd like, say, 3 pounds of the boneless skinless chicken thighs and 2 pounds of the beef short ribs.

And then we finally come to the teas and juices aisle.  In addition to Sweet Leaf tea, which I've never seen outside central Texas, and a broad variety of loose-leaf teas at multiple price points, they had a ginormous wall of juices, of which I think not a one had seen the barest hint of any maize-based sweetener.  I ended up getting some Knudsen brand black cherry juice, which is made of -- get this -- black cherries.  And that's all.  Just the juice of black cherries.  It only cost three and half bucks, and considering that I drink it half-and-half with water, it'll last a reasonable amount of time.

This is dangerous.  Very dangerous indeed... I have to be careful, because while some of the goods at Whole Foods are equal or lower in cost to the more mainstream chain stores, some are higher... I could throw my budget all out of wack.  But the tuna steaks did look delicious, and I've got some sunchoke recipes (from my American Indian cookbook) that I've been wanting to try.

Oh, and did I mention that they had pecan oil in with the other oils?  I'm familiar with walnut oil, but pecan oil's a new one on me.  I wonder if it's similar to walnut oil in fat/smokepoint/taste/etc.