it is true...

i cannot help it. i have been spoiled and i cannot convert back to any other grocery store. my heart belongs to publix. jay and i drove down to traveller's rest, sc (which actually is only about a 35 minute drive) and with cooler in tow, did some shopping at publix on sunday. it was worth every penny, too. we also discovered (and were not shocked) that the gas prices in sc are much lower than here. compare theirs at $1.95/gal to our $2.18/gal. so, we have decided that a couple of times a month, i will be driving to traveller's rest to visit my beloved publix and fill up with some cheap gas.

so what is wrong with our grocery stores here? we have ingle's. ingle's is sort of like kroger, but with fewer selections. i would much rather shop at kroger than ingle's. and they are everywhere. (they are based here.) we have a few bi-lo's scattered around (worse than ingle's). we have one harris teeter (too expensive with not nice employees) and some earthfare's and one greenlife. (both with many organic choices and some very "natural" customers. it is great if you have a cold and cannot breathe well when you go there. ok, it isn't that bad all the time. but it can be.) if you have ever been to a publix, or you currently shop there now, then you know what i am talking about. we weren't in publix 5 minutes, and an employee, who was seemingly in a huge hurry with lots of boxes, still slowed down long enought to ask us how we were and were we finding everything we needed. to me, that makes a huge difference. it is what i miss.

and now, we have a solution.