D. Gonzalez

Show No Fear: The Pantry

​Most great dishes start in the same place: the pantry. Pantry staples like oils, spices and grains are essentials in most recipes. Yet far too often, our pantries turn into places where ingredients get lost rather than used.

Unlike those already forgotten New Year's resolutions, getting a pantry back into shape is not as daunting as it would seem. Keep it small, think different and don't be afraid to go to the experts for ideas. So turn the page for our top 5 items to get your pantry in order and where to get them.

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​Chances are if you're a Whole Foods shopper, you have at least some level of commitment to eco causes. Be it a concern for your overall carbon footprint or simply wanting lots of organic options. For that, we applaud you. Then again, maybe you just like their ice cream selection. That's cool, too.

But what about that pesky fossil fuel burning trip to and from the store? Fresh Food Bike can help with that part of the equation (should your used vegetable oil powered Mercedes be in the shop) by bringing you all your perishables via their stylin' IZip Store eBikes.

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jgarbee

Fresh & Easy Shopping Bag

​Fresh & Easy is closing seven Southern California stores citing sluggish sales, reports the Los Angeles Times. Not that it's much of a dent in the El Segundo-based company's 184 retail grocery outlets in California, Arizona and Nevada, as the company is reportedly rolling out two dozen more stores in the coming months throughout L.A. and Orange County.

What's more interesting is that retail food consultant Jim Hertel attributes part of the struggles to American versus British produce culture clashes (Fresh & Easy is a subsidiary of Tesco, a British retail company). At Fresh & Easy, the produce is all wrapped in cellophane, reportedly to preserve freshness. Hertel says that Americans consider plastic-wrapped food less fresh (though Trader Joe's seems to have somehow surmounted their suffocating produce issues). And perhaps more culturally significant, we prefer to squeeze our tomatoes before buying them.

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T. Nguyen

Stone crabs at Hawaii Supermarket

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"Let's go the aquarium!" my uncle said to me once, when I was 6. Off we went, into an amazing display of enormous crabs, colorful fish, and slimy eels. We bought a crab, which they were nice enough to steam for us before we left. As it turned out, this was 99 Ranch, not the aquarium, but I was impressed nonetheless. Kids these days, though, require considerably more to be awed. Take the new generation, then, to Hawaii Supermarket, the Monterey Bay Aquarium to 99 Ranch's Aquarium of the Pacific.

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paulswansen

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Not wanting to deprive the rest of the world from exorbitant prices for locally grown goods, Whole Foods will open a store in Scotland this week, the first of its chain to open in the area. The store will open in Giffnock, a city near Glasgow. Londonites seem to love themselves some natural, organic Whole Foods products, so maybe the brand will catch on in Scotland too. According to Daily Finance, though, Whole Foods is anti-union, which may not bode well in the eyes of the Scottish.

At least 400 items sold in the Giffnock store will be from Scottish farms and vendors, something the multi-billion dollar company prides itself on. Residents also told Daily Finance that they're excited for the new job opportunities in the less-than-thriving area.

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L.A. County Federation of Labor

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Update:9/26, 10 a.m. On Sunday night, workers voted and approved a new contract, ending an eight-month dispute with Ralphs, Vons, Pavilions and Albertsons. According to insiders, workers will pay $7 a week for health insurance, or $15 per week for a family. The health insurance clause had been the most debated item in the contract.

Union leaders and three major Southern California grocery stores have reached a deal to avoid a potential employee walkout. Union members need to vote on the deal first, though, before the agreement becomes official.

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Rachael Narins

jam and toast

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Tonight, July 28th, the Atwater Village Farm Market will be open for a sneak preview as part of the very charming Atwater Village's Summer Nights on the Boulevard from 5 to 10 p.m. at 3224 Glendale Boulevard. If you haven't been to one of these exceptionally well-organized evenings, go. It's like a trip to idyllic small town America, but with better food and more tattoos.

The Village Farm Market's event -- sweetly billed as "Toast and Jam" -- will feature a selection of locally made foods including bread from Secret Goldfish Baking Co., jams by SQIRL, Lemon Bird Jam and more, whose products will be on the shelves, soon. A portion of sales will go towards the ongoing efforts to raise funds to make the community market a permanent fixture.

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DSL in Jaz/flickr

We hardly knew you.

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Our favorite convenience foods are like friendly co-workers holed up in the next cubicle over. We meet them, like them, grow accustomed to their presence in our lives, and then, just as soon as we realize we can't quite imagine life without them, they disappear, frequently for reasons we're never permitted to know -- even when they're prime-time pals like Steve Carell. We're left whimpering in the aisles of Whole Foods, chasing phantom flavors. Where have they gone? Why, we wonder, were they yanked? Poor sales? Dwindling markets? Safety concerns? So we took a quick poll of a few Squid Ink writers...

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J. Ritz

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Close your eyes and breathe. Deeply. Smell those bulk whole grains commingling with the aromas of spirulina, alternative pastas, sprouts of all types, and freshly juiced wheatgrass? Now take a look around. See the earnest hand-painted signs promoting health tips? Notice the knotty pine and exposed wood surfaces that were installed in the days before "reclaimed" wood became all the rage?

So, where are you? In an old school health food store, of course. We're not talking about these newfangled, traded on Wall Street, passing-for-enlightened mega grocery stores. We mean ones that were byproducts of communes, 1960s counterculture, and actual places that could have inspired Woody Allen to come up with a few well-targeted anti-Los Angeles digs. When Whole Foods is based in Texas and is OK with Monsanto tinkering with plant genetics, those wacky California stereotypes hardly apply. But good to know we have some independent markets that are still going strong while promoting "natural" lifestyles. Must be all the wheatgrass. Turn the page for our favorite Top 5 Old School Indie L.A. Health Food Stores.

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J. Ritz

Marta Teegen and Robert Stelzner get the day started at Cookbook.

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Cookbook, the greengrocer on Echo Park Avenue that just opened Tuesday, harbors big ambitions in its 500 square-foot space. To find it, don't look for any LCD displays or flashing lights. Instead, mint plants hang from I-beams in each of the storefront windows. And eventually, when Cookbook's owners, Marta Teegen and Robert Stelzner, install window awnings, the reclaimed Douglas fir produce boxes will displayed out on the sidewalk just as you'd expect from any friendly greengrocer. "I've wanted to do some variety of this, and from living in the neighborhood we knew there was a need," Teegen explains. "With this space, a greengrocer was absolutely possible." The store is open daily from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m.

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