Sunday Story: The Giant Whole Foods

When i was in Chicago visiting my friends Stu and Ronnie last weekend, they took us to this giant Whole Foods.  I mean, it had its own parking structure, first of all.  This is a shot from inside the structure.

I did some minor googling, and apparently this is the third largest Whole Foods EVER.  It was huge.  I think we spent a good hour and a half there, most of the time just gawking at the beautiful collection of foods I can't afford.

When you get in, you can choose which level to go to.  There is even a separate escalator for your shopping cart.  WHAT. 

The little signs on the cart escalator indicate No Men on the left, and No Cart With Baby on the right.  Hilarious. 

So here we are on the human escalator, going down into the depths of amazing food.

Here we are!  This is just one part of the produce section.

The seafood area.

I was just so overwhelmed.  So incredibly overwhelmed.  It's like IKEA.  No, it's like Disney World.

The wine bar.  Wow.

So, the real reason we were here is to get food for our grub plate meal for that night while we played our nerdy games, like Pandemic and Settlers of Catan.  So it was more than essential to hit the olive bar.  We ended up getting two full containers of olives and other olive bar goodies.

And a grub plate meal is never complete without....OH HELLO. 

Okay, since this is a Sunday story and not recipe day, let me just take a moment to make this comment.  I wonder how many of these words are loanwords.  For instance, the word for cheese in Korean is written as "chee-ze" in Korean orthography.  I mean, just upon first glance, almost all the words either have the [k] + [s/z/x] formation (e.g. keso, kaas, kees, queixo) or the [fr] + [m] + [dʒ] pattern going on (e.g. fromatge, formaggio, fromaja).  Almost makes you want to write a spontaneous term paper.

SNAP OUT OF IT!

Okay, I'm back.

Sorry 'bout it.  But for suffering through that paragraph, here's a funny picture for you.  What is wrong with this tag?

That's right!  You get a savings of -2 cents.  That means you, the lucky customer, get to pay an additional 2 cents today.  Sale!

After buying $90 worth of groceries, we went home and had a delightful meal of amazing cheeses...

Olives...

Spinach artichoke hummus...

Along with delicious sourdough bread, apples, grapes, and copious amounts of wine.  It was an incredible dinner, and I am so happy to have friends that enjoy the same sort of dining experience that i do. 

And I'd like to close with the following fact that might tickle a few of you: one of the cheeses we got was a sheep's milk cheese called Ewephoria.  Gimble nerds unite!

Have a wonderful day, SSUR readers!