Yay! There is a grocery store in Willow Glen in the neighborhood where I have my San Jose Nia Classes. This means I can pick up some things on the way home. I can anyway because my regular grocery store is not that far past my house, but sometimes I take the exit for my house before I remember I wanted to go to the store because I start thinking of all that I have to do. Once I am off the freeway and I actually have to pass my house to get to the store, I can easily talk myself into NOT going to the store. Ya know? So this store is pretty much right on my way home.
It is a tiny little market. The isles are so small two carts can barely fit down the same row. Just like the bigger stores they have so many extra bins and displays in the aisles (on the ends) there is no way to have two carts going down that way either. So it is kind of a place where you can actually run into your neighbors. 🙂 I was excited when I saw that there was no added trans fat and high fructose corn syrup. I had walked by the sign quickly so I had thought that all products in the store were like this. But as soon as I saw some products I am familiar with having those ingredients I realized that the sign said that Fresh and Easy products don’t have those ingredients. But they DO have Canola Oil so depending on what you believe in regards to that oil you will have to take that information with a grain of salt.
I did have a yummy sample of vanilla yogurt and granola. I was going to buy some of the granola because it tasted really good in the yogurt. Even though it didn’t have HFCS in it, or any partially hydrogenated oil, it did have canola oil in it so I didn’t buy it. Canola oil is not easy to avoid so when I don’t need the product I am not going to buy it. I am not going to buy a product new to me that has Canola oil in it.
They do have their own brand of Teryaki without HFCS. YAY! I have had teryaki in months because I’ve only seen kind with HFCS in it. It doesn’t taste very “teryaki-y”. Its first ingredient is soy sauce and that is pretty much what it tastes like. But it is not bad.
I think they have a lot of interesting looking prepared food. I didn’t look at all of them to see the ingredients, but I will check it out as I have the need. They did have water crackers about $3.00 cheaper than my regular store. I was excited to try them. The box I open is very crumbly. They are dry. They are not as good as the water Crackers at Trader Joe’s that are the same price.
One thing that will keep me from filling up my cart and doing ALL my shopping at this new little neighborhood market is self-check out. I don’t want to spend my time shopping and checking out the ingredients, looking, deciding, menu planning and thinking—-just to have to spend even MORE time checking myself out. I only had a few items and it took me what seemed like forever to just find the bar codes on the items. I understand that this is one way that a store can keep the prices down, but I did notice and I heard other people say that many items in the store were MORE expensive than other stores we frequent. I don’t have to check my own groceries at the other stores.
And I don’t need to mention how great the checkers at Trader Joe’s do I? I love the checkers at Traders Joe’s.
Anyway . . . I am excited to have a little market to stop in on my way home to pick up a few things. As I said, I won’t be doing the bulk of my shopping here but it really is a great thing that this area of Willow Glen has a grocery store.
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