The seduction began with shiny metal carts. When I put Jack in the buggy at the newly opened Whole Foods in Richmond, he cooed, "Oooo. Wow." Then he nodded in approval until I nodded back.
The tiered rows of fresh sunflowers in the entryway also earned an, "Ahhh. Fi fi - fowers." When we passed the stacks of hundreds of ripe plums, he insisted, "Balls! Balls!" I rubbed one clean and offered him his first taste of the fruit. After he broke through the skin and hit the soft rusty insides, he hummed. He was taken with the place.
So was I. In the days when we were DINKS - dual income and no kids - Dirk and I used to shop at "Whole Paycheck" in Boulder and indulge in everything from $5 bags of organic gourmet kettle corn to $15 wedges of cheese. We've been without the store and with kids for years so when we witnessed the "Now Open" sign plastered on the new expansive box-top store side, we decided to make a trip back.
I can't shop there without a plan and a list. If I just go in cold, I get a serious case of attention deficit disorder paired with impulse shopping. Then I end up with a $100 hodge podge of snacks and extras and no meals.
The perfection of the place is mesmerizing and disorienting. You're off track as soon as you start. There are walls with stacked produce mosaics. There are beckoning opaque plastic containers of cubed fruit in convenient bite sizes. There are pastries you didn't even realize were your all-time favorite. There's lavendar soap that evokes your past life at the Petit Trianon in France and demands that you take it home for $7 a bar.
Armed with our list as a meager defense against all the edible wall art, Jack and I went for pot roast and veggies. We scored a three-pound cut of the meat and an admirable selection from the Great Wall of Broccoli. We also ended up with organic chocolate cake mix, two dozen crimson gold apples, a bottle of herbs de provence vinaigrette, frozen Chinese vegetable dumplings, organic arugula, two cartons of raspberries and a Vermont chocolate bar with peppermint chunks. None of this was on the list.
All the other shoppers were so quiet and cool. They breeze their carts up and down the aisles like they came shopping expressly for dark chocolate with sea salt . They add hunks of fig cake with hazelnuts and Indian naan to their collections and pass me buy to hit the seafood counter.
Everyone's quiet because it's all so indulgent, irresistible and abundant. It's all there for the taking. And it's easy to spend the whole paycheck when you're seduced.
Nugget o' the Moment: "Oooo. Wow." - a seventeen-month old at the sight of Whole Foods Market.
Plain Old Pot Roast
by Eileen
3 pounds chuck roast
1 cup vegetable stock
1 cup red wine
3 carrots, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
4 celery stalks, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
5 sprigs of thyme
olive oil
salt and pepper
1. Heat olive oil at medium-high heat in a large pan. Salt and pepper all sides of chuck roast. When pan is hot, sear all sides of meat. Once seared, remove meat and add to a Dutch oven or covered baking dish.
2. Reduce pan heat to medium. Add onions, carrots, celery and garlic. Saute until soft - about eight minutes. Add stock red wine, tomato paste and thyme leaves. Stir and simmer together for 5 minutes.
3. Pour over meat in Dutch oven. Add big extra chunks of carrot and onion (even potatoes) to the pot if desired. Cook for two hours at 325 degrees.
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