Chapter Fifty-One: The Food Co-op (~jinghan)

I don’t really know what a food co-op was formally…

wait…

“A food cooperative or food co-op is a grocery store organized as a cooperative. Food cooperatives are usually consumers’ cooperatives and are owned by their members. Food cooperatives follow the 7 Cooperative Principles and typically offer natural foods. Since decisions about how to run a cooperative are not made by outside shareholders, cooperatives often exhibit a higher degree of social responsibility than their corporate analogues” – wikipedia article on Food cooperative

ah…

Anyway I didn’t really know what a food co-op was formally, but I love Melbourne Uni’s Food Co-op. If you have never had a cake or a burger or some curry there. Do it. Now. Don’t be scared because you’re not vegetarian or vegan or gluten intolerant. The brilliant thing is, they can’t eat your food but you can eat theirs. And hey hey, don’t be so quick to judge, it’s actually decent food. Like dissolve in your mouth flourless almond and raspberry muffins om nom nom nom!

Anyway, so I decided I would check out the Davis food co-op, expecting it to be a small cafe like place run by students. Oh no no. This is a big community affair. Check it out:

And yes, there is a statue of a giant tomato. In fact it is called “Portrait of a plump tomato” or something similar.

Here is the shampoo and conditioners, you dispense it yourself into containers, presumably it is okay to bring back the container to refill it later. You pay by the ounce. (I still haven’t work out how much that is.)

Here is just part of the choices of pulses, beans, rice and grains:

And here I was thinking I wouldn’t be able to find things like pearl barley or quinoa for the recipes in my new recipe book (more on that in future posts).

Here is the herbs, spices and (yes, sorry Mary) teas.

I bought some dried mango which I haven’t tasted before, on the way out. I’ll definitely be coming back here to do my grocery shopping. Plus they have normal non-american cheese here. (I found out today that they call the orange cheese “cheddar”)