It’s embarassing to admit that I have lived in Durham for ten months now and had never visited the one store that could have put a quick stop to my grousing about food prices in the Triangle. No, Kroger cannot replace our beloved DeKalb Farmers Market in Atlanta. Nor does it offer a particularly strong meat and fish selection. But in terms of price and selection, the Kroger on Hillsborough Road is the best we’ve found so far for our needs. Among the items we found today at reasonable prices were:

Cento Hot Cherry Pepper Spread
La Croix fizzy water
Wine
Wild caught perch (ok, it was in plastic wrap, but it looked quite good and was only $5.99 a pound)
Muir Glen organic low-salt tomato sauce
DEET tick repellent (I have failed to describe our recent tick incidents on this blog, but suffice it to say that we have two decapitated tick bodies in our freezer, where they will remain until we are entirely certain that neither of us has Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, STARI, ehrlichiosis, or another tick-borne illness I did not encounter on the CDC web site)
Cherries
Dust-free cat litter
Low-salt tomato juice
Organic yogurt
Coffee at under $10 a pound
Organic cottage cheese
Deli meats
Anchovies
Cheap Parmesan cheese (I am not above this)

And yet, in all fairness to my dear nemesis, Whole Foods: Their organic, free-range chicken is a better deal. But I can’t buy DEET tick repellent there.