Fun Monday - Grocery Shopping

Gattina came up with this challenge for this week:

I want to know how do you do your grocery shopping, every day, once a week, once a months, in different shops or in one big supermarket. A picture of your favourite store and maybe of your trolley would be nice.

Grocery shopping is one of those things that I love and loathe all at the same time. Going grocery shopping is a little challenge to me to see how well I can feed my family on how little money. I do not carry it to the extreme of running all over town to find bargains, but I stick with my one store and shop the sales there - sometimes getting extra of something priced particularly well or skipping something I normally buy because the price is too high. Just like the weather, if you wait a while, it'll change.

Since we moved to this house, Albertsons was the store of choice. It was reasonably priced, close to home and laid out well. Then all the Albertsons in town closed! The company was bought out by Publix, which unfortunately for me, had another nearly new store only two blocks away. In other cases, Publix moved (or will move) into the same space as the old store. But not mine.

Here is where the serious love/hate stuff comes in.

My Publix is ALWAYS crowded. Even when everyone else is supposed to be at work - that's when the stay-at-home moms and the elderly come out. The parking lot is a nightmare. I cannot tell you exactly why it's so horrible. It looks like a normal parking lot. But somehow, the way the cars move around and how you actually get into the store just doesn't work. And inside the store is the same way. The aisles are too narrow and the end aisles are also too narrow. There's not enough room for more than two carts, which gets messy when one person is shopping that outside aisle and another is trying to pass, while another is trying to get out of one aisle and into another. The whole store is awkward that way.

But the produce department is lovely. The displays are attractive and I could happily spend my whole trip in that section alone.

Publix has just about everything. Lots of different kinds of teas and coffee, breads, dairy products, frozen items... Wide variety. A couple of days ago, I went to Winn Dixie - a place I used to shop quite a lot when I lived out that way. It was sad to see how limited the choices were. I got a big box of English Breakfast tea, but there wasn't a single box of Roobius to be found. It wasn't always like that, but now I'm glad I don't shop there much anymore.

I guess it's a good thing I like Publix. It seems that it might be the only store chain left after a while as the others seem to be either failing or bought out... by Publix.