I think it's the non-car dependent folks that (good or bad) have "no option".

I far prefer shopping for two or three weeks at a time, refrigerating fruits, vegetables, and milk.

That seems backwards to me. When I lived in suburbia grocery shopping was always a "trip" 5+ min drive, find a place to park, walk through the parking lot into a large store, etc. Grabbing even one thing meant at least 15 min of overhead so you'd usually try to stock up.

Whereas now I can be inside of three convenience stores and a full service grocer within 3 minutes of walking. If I drive I pass several other full grocers on the 8min/2.5 mile trip home.

This is in Milwaukee, not a NY or Sf type of place. Most people in my neighborhood still drive everywhere, you just don't have to.

> I think it's the non-car dependent folks that (good or bad) have "no option".

In cities people typically have a grocery store within 5 to 10 minutes walk from home.

San Francisco is quite walkable by American standards but certain areas are very lacking. For example the southeast portion of the city has a dearth of hospitals and the Tenderloin and Bayview neighborhoods have a startling lack of grocery stores.

The southeast could definitely have a dearth of hospitals (I think everyone should live near a hospital within a few minutes of them, esp. with San Francisco traffic), but Tenderloin has a grocery store (with fresh veggies, eggs, milk, etc) on nearly every block, with many having TWO. I get that quite a few people refuse to shop anywhere that isn't 70+k sqft, like Costco or Whole Paycheck, but these areas are not food deserts.

No, The Tenderloin does not have grocery stores on every block. They have liquor stores (corner stores, bodegas, whatever you wanna call them) that typically have a mediocre selection of fresh produce (if any at all).

It's not about having a large floor plan, it's about access to fresh food. The Bayview sees the same thing, although as SFGate points out Fresh and Easy did try. They failed too.

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Tenderloin-struggles-t...

> In cities people typically have a grocery store within 5 to 10 minutes walk from home.

That really depends on the city, and on which part of the city one lives in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

Because I can afford to do so, I choose to live in a nice walkable neighborhood where I do have a grocery store within walking distance, but this is absolutely not the case in most poor urban neighborhoods, including many areas of my city.

The USDA's Food Desert definition is total bullshit, for example, you could drop me nearly anywhere in Tukwila, WA and I could be in a large grocery store within 10 minutes of walking. If we include smaller stores, I can be in a store buying eggs, milk, fresh veggies & fruit of higher quality than Costco or Whole Paycheck in a 6 to 7 minute walk, and pay with EBT at any of them (if I qualified).

This is exactly why attempts to tackle this supposed "food desert" problem have fallen flat on their face. These areas aren't food deserts, they just don't have a mega-store every other block, thus they are incorrectly classified as a food desert.

With some basic cleanup, the USDA could focus on areas that are actual food deserts, where there is a need and their efforts won't go to waste.

Edit: removed extra comma.

Mileage varies. In my city, the poor neighborhoods are a 30 minute bus ride from a proper grocery. It's a 10 minute drive max.

Most people there get food from a bodega type place.

Thats the thing though, a "proper" grocery in most HN readers minds is a large supermarket. Most actual groceries aren't sold by chains though, bodegas, corner delis, green grocers, and an assortment of Asian, Mexican and other small grocers sell a huge chunk of the fresh fruit and vegetables here in the US, since they have the upper hand when it comes to location, price and quality.

That being said, many are quick to dismiss them since they don't have the nicest/largest stores, or the most advanced systems. By doing so your ignoring reality, as that is how most people get their food, hence why they (generally) accept EBT.

In my state, almost everyone takes EBT. Even farmers markets. A proper grocery in my mind sells produce, dairy, a locally appropriate fresh meat selection and dry goods.

In an urban market, these type of stores are 15,000-30,000 sqft. We have a few markets like this in my city, but they are in nicer areas.

Poor folk have corner stores that are <3000 sqft. We don't have the Asian produce markets or Mexican markets that you are thinking of. They generally don't sell produce, and if they do they low quality and 2x expensive.

We had a crisis about a decade ago because 80% of these stores were temporarily shut down after the owners were arrested for accepting food stamps for heroin. They aren't nice places that anyone chooses to do business with.

Not in the US. San Francisco is one of the US's densest cities, and eastern SoMa is one of its densest neighborhoods, right next to downtown. It's about a square mile, and there are no real grocery stores in it at all (east of 4th St).

What are you talking about? East of 4th in SoMa I count 7 grocery stores, and if your unwilling to shop at anything sub-70k sqft, there are two. Most of the neighborhood east of 4th is within 1 to 2 blocks of a grocery store (with eggs, fresh fruit/veggies, and other essentials), and within 4 blocks of a megastore like Whole Paycheck or Costco if you really want their prepackaged crap.

This is just like the whole "Food Desert" scheme by the USDA, where they try to create stores in areas with local grocers already. For example, they define Tukwila, WA as a food desert [1], yet there are multiple places within the area they defined that stock fresh food and are EBT approved (Seafood City, 99 Ranch, Costco, Cash & Carry, etc).

This is why the attempts to get rid of these supposed deserts fall flat. Those that need or want to shop local already do, at places others like yourself ignore cause they feel they aren't of high enough caliber.

1 - https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-access-research-...

I've never considered that shopping habits might play a role in the whole US/EU wash-or-don't discussion.

Where I live most people go to the supermarket regularly. I go almost daily, for example. As a result, stuff doesn't need to have a very long shelf life (and refrigerators here are, to many of my American friends, hilariously small).

When I'm biking a lot I tend to make a small grocery store trio daily instead of a huge one weekly.

I'd propose as an amendment that you're on to something that its cultural, but probably much less controversial in that its merely a simple sorting system.

Does it never expire? Looseleaf tea, sugar, honey, spices, salt ... that goes in cabinet.

Does it expire/rot eventually no matter if its hours or months? Simple, all that stuff goes in fridge.

No need to ponder or remember or search two places. If its eternal its stored over there, if its not eternal, it is not.

This has obvious cultural side effect with my people have large fridge and only really use maybe two kitchen cabinets unlike recent trends in American kitchen remodeling where the average kitchen has a relatively modest (stainless steel, of course) fridge with about thirty kitchen cabinets presumably full of butter and eggs and milk or something.

There are even more cultural issues... I've met people who claim to hate the taste of walnut oil because they've been conditioned to believe the only walnut oil that exists is rancid bitter and gross so people like that who none the less for some weird reason like bitter rancid oil will naturally store their oil on the shelf to maximized its awfulness, although I store mine in the fridge and its delicious even though I have to warm it each time I cook with it (ditto butter). Perhaps there are people acclimated to rotten eggs such that they would actively dislike fresh eggs. Kinda like how beer gets skunky after a couple days exposure to sunlight in a closed bottle, there are probably people who actively like skunky beer.

Spices lose their potency fairly fast. Obviously they don't need to be refrigerated in their ground state, but they definitely expire in the sense of usability.

Bread in the fridge?

Refrigerated eggs poach fine; if they didn't, nobody in the US would have decent poached eggs. :)

They are harder to make, though. The albumins break down over time, leading to a more liquid egg white. This, in turn causes the egg to spread out more when you are poaching them. Making a perfectly round poached egg by dropping it into a pot of salted, simmering water is very difficult if the egg is less than a few days old. That's why Starfrit sells egg poachers.

BTW, I don't know about the US, but in Canada, the supply chain often delivers eggs to the store that are 2 weeks old, so it's quite likely that most people have never cooked with a fresh egg before in their life.

Just do what Kenji Alt does: crack the eggs into a strainer and swish them around to get rid of the runny whites. Works like a charm.

I mean, by all means, use super fresh eggs. But as a matter of technique: solvable problem!

Was getting ready to say just this and boom, someone else already made this comment.

Add vinegar to the water

A tiny, tiny amount though, unless you like the sensation of teeth grinding on chalk.

Better to steam.

Thanks for making me realise why I stopped liking poached eggs. I was just using old eggs.

And I have heard similar things about the supply chain in the US. However, I have had a fresh egg that was no more than 24 hours old (I think younger) and I didn't really notice a difference. Then again, I think it was scrambled, so I don't know if you can tell anyways.

Personally, I can't tell the difference in flavour between a fresh egg and an old egg. Texture is the only thing I've noticed. Though, for instance, that can be quite important in some egg dishes like tamagoyaki. For flavour, a much bigger difference can be seen from the diet of the hen. Grain fed battery hens have pretty bland eggs. I obsess about my tamagoyaki, so I'm willing to go to some extremes to get good, fresh eggs.

If you know anyone with chickens, get an egg off them. The difference between the eggs and store bought, free range, is night and day. I don't know why, but the yolk is orange for starters. It may have been due to the species of chicken I suppose?

It's to do with diet. IIRC, some farmers feed their flock flax in order to get more orange yolks. But free range hens that have access to insects tend to have a nicer flavour in my experience. Generally speaking, an egg with a hard shell and a very bright yolk will be nicer and that tends to correspond with free range hens. But, climate where you live will influence how realistic that is.

If you're lucky, your friend with chickens might have blue-green egg shells.

You can buy eggs with blue shells and bright orange yolks in UK supermarkets, I ate some yesterday.

Heston Blumenthal has some tips for poached eggs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gbgSCV9hbM#t=7m6s

Yeah, it's a lot easier to find really fresh eggs in the UK.

The supermarket supply chain seems to turn them over much faster. Poached eggs are much more popular, perhaps for that very reason!

Nobody in the cities or suburbs. Raising one's own chickens for eggs or getting eggs from friends with chickens is popular in rural areas.

I had an upstairs neighbor at my condo in Chicago raising chickens on the porch. When the association put a stop to it he moved them to the community garden next door.

That was the second chicken coop on our block.

The "no laundry on the porch" crowd didn't see that coming.

Many cities are launching urban chicken programs to allow people to keep their own coops. I figure if you're going to allow dogs in all their kid-biting, sidewalk-pooping, late-night barking glory, why not allow chickens in the city?

I didnt know about that. Thanks for telling me. Makes plenty of sense.

Dogs are trainable. Roosters not.

Urban folks keeping chickens for their eggs often don't keep roosters.

The people I know in rural areas with chickens all have roosters. Why they do it different in urban? Is it the noise they make early in the morning?

The rural folks likely have less rigid constraints on the number of chickens and more room for the chickens to roam. If you only have room for 2 chickens, choosing a male for one of the two halves your laying capacity.

Some roosters start crowing at 5:00 am, they sing non-stop for 15-20 minutes and wait for an hour. When people are sleep again they repeat the bursts. This can last from 5:00 am until 9:00 am or so. All days of the week including sundays and holidays. Is basically torturing your neighbours, specially if they are of the night owl kind.

Makes a lot of sense. Thanks.

My next door neighbor has a chicken coop.