Shopping for Florida

After my arrival in Florida last winter, one of my first orders of business was to stock up on groceries.

Although the selection of coffees was less than I expected and the variety of powdered iced tea mixes considerably more than I wanted, what truly horrified me was the absence and/or prices of some basic commodities I thought I could find anywhere in the U.S.... even in Florida.

After several days of shopping the limited number of food stores, I ended up calling my sister-in-law in Anchorage and told her to buy some essentials at the local Fred Meyer store and mail them to me.

This year, I took no chances and before I left the Pacific Northwest, I stocked up on items I knew I could never likely find in the "sunshine" state:

Let's start with the rice.

I never knew that some places in the country only knew rice is white.

Personally, I never saw white rice until we moved into Anchorage from rural Alaska in the 60's.

Here in Florida, that's all they know.

Still.

... ergo: I brought along a 25-pound of long grain brown rice.

I hope it lasts me until December.

Wine.

I don't drink much wine, so whatever's left in a 750 ml bottle usually goes bad before I can finish it. Therefore, I like wine in those 5-liter collapsible bags located inside hideous boxes.

You can't find 5 liter boxed wine in Florida.

Oh... you can find littel boxes prices higher than the 5-liter varieties sold out west... but they're rip-offs.

I guess all the Florida retirees don't drink boxed wine much.

Beer.

I honestly didn't expect to find any Alaskan brands in Florida and I didn't.

I even asked around at some of the distributors and they'd never even heard of Alaskan Amber, for instance.

Mind you, it's the most award-winning brew of all time... but that makes no difference here.

Here, they sell Bud and some gawd-awful thing called Yuengling, which is like Bud only worse.

Vinegar.

Now, I found several places that sell seasoned vinegar but none, I tell you, NONE were as good as the Safeway house-brand variety.

Trouble is: Florida has no Safeway stores.

There is Walmart, of course, and some lame outfit called Publix (yes, that's their name) and the rare Albertson's... but no Kroger and no Safeway and no Fred Meyer, of course.

This place sucks.

Popcorn salt:

This one blew me away. You can find finely-pulverized white-as-the-driven-snow salt they call popcorn salt here, but ask for buttery-flavored popcorn salt and you'll either get a blank stare or get shown some cheesy-pasty-salty concoction that I wouldn't put on over-cooked broccoli, for god's sake.

Now, Johnny's makes a really good popcorn salt, and Flavacol makes a good instutitional version (both which I bought) but Jolly Times makes the best... and it really tastes buttery without loading up your popcorn (which I eat regularly, btw) with all that nasty and indigestible fat and crap.

Wright's smoked seasoning.

There's a brand of smoke seasoning they sell here that tastes bitter and awful.

Don't buy it.

Only Wrights makes a smoke seasoning that really compliments food (it's especially good on fish) and of course they've never heard of that here. I almost forgot to get this but fortunately, I found it at a Safeway store in Payson Arizona before I got too far east.

Cheese.

Cheese snobs can be worse than wine snobs, and I'm neither.

I'm a cheap bastard who likes a good product priced well.

In Florida when it comes to cheese, they have neither.

In the Pacific Northwest you can buy cheese in 2-pound blocks that is fresh and made well (nearly always by the dairies in Tillamook, Oregon) and this treat typically costs a mere $4.99 or less.

The cheap, tasteless varieties here cost four times that for a 16-ounce block.

Yeesh.

Even getting good cheese is a task around here.

I loaded up with cheddar and monterrey jack and mozarella and provolo . . . well, you get the idea.

Ulus

I use an ulu to cut and dice and slice just about everything, from onions and leeks to 16" pizzas.

How mankind can live without an ulu escapes me. I brought my own, although this commercially-made thing (intended for tourists visiting Alaska, I'm sure) is way too small.

That said, it'll do.

Hot things

I did find sriracha sauce in Florida, which surprised me since it's made in Southern California... but other good hot sauces, like a Habanero ketchup or Mesquite Jalapeno barbecue were impossible to find here.

I brought my own, of course.

Spuds.

Even a 10-pound bad of quality russet potatoes which, in Alaska sells for $3.29, is a rare find here. Mostly, potatoes are sold in 5-pound bags, they're small and scarred and nearly inedible and they cost $3.99 -- more than twice the price of our good stuff.

Ugh.

There's more stuff I haven't mentioned, but this is pretty representative of what I'm up against.

Southern cuisine, I've decided, involves few potatoes, infrequent use of cheese and no popcorn but lots of, what?, okra and collards and black-eyed peas?

Oh dear god.

Take me home.