Ground Fennel, and Other Delights.......

I was a little nervous when I first went into Natural Harvest Food Co-op in Virgina.  After all, I’m pretty mainstream. I mean, I eat meat…a lot of it. I hate tofu.  I enjoy Fritos…sometimes too many.  But I needed to buy rennet to make cheese and so gingerly I entered the store. I tried to be unobtrusive. I tried to look like the kind of person who would never eat a Dorito. But you know what? No one cared what I eat. All the folks there are very live and let live. What a jewel of a store.  So clean, brightly lit and welcoming. The workers are friendly and knowledgeable – and most importantly not judgmental. No one tried to evangelize or brainwash me into becoming a tofu-toting vegetarian.   The stock is not just organic stuff and granola. There is a wonderful supply of hard to find ethnic items and a full line of wine, pop and beer making supplies. There are potato chips and pop along with hard to find health food items.  There is local milk, different kinds of fun cheeses, and unusual frozen convenience foods. 

My favorite spot is on the back wall. There are shelves full of jars of bulk spices. At the Wycoffs, we eat out very seldom. I make big suppers nearly every night. Even my kids love to cook, and we use a lot of spices.  Natural Harvest sells a lot of items you can’t get at a super market – like ground fennel (which I use in my Italian sausage recipe) and dried red and green bell peppers.  All you do is choose the jar, grab a clean scoop from the clearly labeled “clean scoop” basket, take a plastic bag, fill with as little or as much as you want, place the dirty scoop in the clearly labeled “dirty scoop” basket, write the PLU number from the jar on your twistie tie and that’s it! You aren’t paying for a jar and you aren’t making garbage – except for the baggie. Best of all, you can buy just a couple tablespoons of something. I am slowing replacing all my old spices with items from there.  The curry powder they sell, along with the dried mixed vegetables, is yummy in rice.

My personal policy has become to buy something I’ve never tried before each time I go.  Maybe it’s a trail mix with carob in it (turns out it’s surprisingly good!), or quinoa –  a grain that I served cold with some chopped celery, tomatoes, green onions, and a simple vinaigrette dressing on top. It was good for us - and really, really tasty and easy to make. It went really well with hamburgers. The really great thing is you just hold something up to an employee and say, “what do I do with this?” and they are happy to help.

It’s not just diehard organic and natural foodies who shop there. Some people with food allergies can only find the items they need at that store, and there are soaps and shampoos for people with chemical allergies. But most of the customers I saw are just trying to eat a diet without so many chemicals and hormones and other scary stuff.  And maybe they want their diet to reflect some of their personal morals, and they want to feel good about what they eat. Sure there are a lot of people who do all their shopping at Natural Harvest – it is after all, a complete market. But a lot of customers are just like me – making changes in our diet here and there.