WalMart!?!

I don't know if everyone feels this way, but I Love to Hate our local WalMart. I would suspect that WalMart conjures up similar feelings in many people. And if you live in a rural area like we do, your dependence on WalMart is a little greater than if you lived in the city where you'd have access to, oh, such jewels as Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Target, and, um, I forget, it's been almost six years since I lived in a city.

Anyway, so every time I go to WalMart I usually end up saying disgustedly as I walk out the door, "I hate WalMart!"

There are a multitude of reasons why I love to hate our local WalMart that are too numerous to mention, and besides, they are irrelevant to this blog post.

I am grudgingly rather excited about this reason to actually LIKE WalMart, and that is that they have a section--it's about two feet wide but it's a WHOLE SECTION--of gluten-free and allergen-free food products from such good labels as Enjoy Life, Pamela's Products, and Tinkyada.

I was already pleasantly surprised that in their regular pasta section WalMart carried DeBole's rice penne, which we buy on a regular basis since rice noodles are one of Chloe's food groups.

But a WHOLE SECTION of products, including a rather respectable allergen-free bread!

It made me want to put pressure on our local City Market to have a similar section. I'd much rather do grocery shopping at City Market, because they don't have a yarn section or a fabric section, and my circuit through WalMart usually includes these areas, and I have a whole room full of fabric and yarn at home. I don't need any more. (Daniel's circuit includes the garden area and the hardware.) Plus, City Market has really good produce and the staff is really nice and the kids can get stickers. But I digress.

So I carefully selected two things that I had been wishing for for Chloe: a loaf of bread and a box of snack bars from Enjoy Life foods. The snack bars will go into my gigantic mommy bag/purse to use for emergency snacks for Chloe, if we're out somewhere or at a restaurant and there's nothing she can eat. The tapioca loaf I broke out right away. Andrew loves to eat jelly sandwiches, and he could eat one for every meal and be perfectly happy and see nothing wrong with a diet consisting of exclusively bread and jam. So I was thrilled to be able to make one for Chloe, also, and she loved it. I will add some sunbutter (which we still cannot get locally) to her sandwich next time.

Next time I buy some things and they turn out to be crappy, or I have to wait so long for a fabric cutter or a paint-mixer that my hair has grown an inch, or something on sale turns out to be not, I'll hate WalMart again.

But for the moment, my gauge of feeling toward our local WalMart is on the high end. Now, I have to go make Chloe a jelly sandwich.