Daily Archives: May 29, 2009

Aloha Friday: So Where Do I Buy FOOD Around Here?

Posted on by

It’s time for another Aloha Friday, the day that you take it easy and look forward to the weekend, in Hawaii and blog land anyway. As you should know by now, over at An Island Life, Kailani decided that on Fridays she would take it easy on posting and ask a simple question for you to answer. Nothing that requires a lengthy response.

If you’d like to participate, just post your own question on your blog and leave your link at An Island Life’s blog. Don’t forget to visit the other participants! It’s a great way to make new bloggy friends!

While a lot of the major stores that I’m used to are here in Wisconsin – like Walmart, Target, Walgreens, Home Depot, etc. – there are a few things that are just totally different. Like the lack of Dunkin Donuts. And grocery stores – all the grocery stores here are completely different than what we had in Massachusetts. I was very used to my Stop & Shop, Hannaford, Shaws, Big Y, Price Chopper variety so it’s been interesting having none of them around – and instead having these strange stores in their place – which stores are the big ones? Which have the better prices? Since we don’t know anyone in the area we pretty much have to figure that out as we go.

The main grocery stores we’ve found so far are Copps (we liked them a lot and they are the closest), Cub Foods (also nice, but a bit further away) and Woodmans (we didn’t care for them at all) – there is also an Aldi and I think a Pick’n'Save in the area. Before moving to Wisconsin the only store listed that I’d heard of is Aldi, because they own Trader Joe’s, but I’d never been to any of them – there is a Trader Joes in the area and also a Whole Foods, but they are about 30 minutes away and I haven’t been to either of the local stores yet.

So my Aloha Friday questions for this week are:

  • Have you been to any of the grocery stores I listed above? Do you like them? Any that you really dislike?
  • What is your favorite grocery store in your area? Least favorite?
  • How far do you drive to get to your main grocery store?
  • Do you drive further to go to a nicer one or settle for a less favorite because of the distance?

Moving Diary (Days 3 and 4 – May 21st & 22nd)

Posted on by

Missed the first installment? Click here!

Day Three: Good Bye Brutal Traffic, Hello Wisconsin

We left Ohio at 9am Thursday morning, planning to have a nice easy day on the road and arrive in Wisconsin nice and early. For the most part, all that happened, but we were very happy we’d left so early when we got to Chicago, IL and their brutal traffic. I have no idea if the traffic we endured was normal or if there was a special event or accident happening, but it was pretty much stand still for what at least felt like hours. Luckily we also had the switch from Eastern to Central time to save us another hour off the trip.

That morning my dad and Dan switched cars, as one car has no AC and it was getting pretty hot – so I spent Thursday traveling with MM and my dad instead of Dan and MM – it was nice being able to spend a little quality time with my dad during the trip. We drove through Ohio, Indiana and Illinois that day before arriving in Wisconsin at a little after 4pm central time (5pm eastern).

We decided to drive to the apartment and fill out our paperwork / get our keys that night, rather than waiting for the morning. We got to go and see the actual apartment for the first time that night, which was pretty cool – it has a beautiful kitchen, at least compared to our old apartment and we were pretty pleased with what we saw, except for the rather musty smelling storage units in the basement. After checking out our new home, we got pizza at a little place right across from the apartment complex, which was delicious. There is also a chinese restaurant right next door to the pizza place, which is nice – having both things so close by and in easy walking distance. I also love that the apartment is right on a little suburban street, it makes taking family walks much easier having fairly slow streets with plenty of sidewalk and lots of area to explore. Right up the street is a hub of grocery stores, more restaurants, banks, preschools and more. I love how close by everything is.

We spent the night in a hotel paid for by Dream Company before meeting the moving company at the new apartment the next morning.

Day Four: Moving In

After having leftover pizza for breakfast, we headed to the new apartment to meet the moving company.

Dan picked up milk and donuts at the local grocery store (Copps – anybody heard of them?) to snack on during the move in. There is no Dunkin Donuts in Madison which is very strange, but not necessarily a bad thing – I couldn’t find any other similar “donut places” either. But there are plenty of coffee shops nearby and the donuts from Copps were delicious so on the few rare occasions where we might want them, we will be fine. Honestly we just don’t eat donuts very often.

Moving in seemed to take just as long as moving out – the movers worked for about four hours getting everything off the truck and inside – I was amazed at how much stuff we had, yet again – and got a little worried that everything wouldn’t fit, but our new place has lots of closet storage, etc. to make up for slightly smaller rooms and in the end, things fit perfectly fine. We had lunch at the pizza place again, ordering subs this time, which were fine but nowhere near as good as their pizza. That night we raided our dry food supply in the pantry and made spaghetti with a jar of bruschetta topping to stand in for spaghetti sauce. Definitely interesting. We definitely needed to go grocery shopping.

to be continued…

*update*

Ready for the third and final installment? Click here!