"Dave Smith" > wrote in message
...
> I really like cereal with fruit, especially strawberries. It is now
> possible to get strawberries that have been shipped 1000 miles or more,
> and cheaper than the local berries. I am willing to pay more for the local
> berries because they taste so much better.

Strawberries bug the crud out of me. Sometimes they'll smell sooo good!
And yet they are either flavorless or just plain sour. Once in a while I
will happen upon some good ones. So I'll go right back to that same store,
buy more of the same and then they're not good.

>> Bakeries in supermarkets are just mass producers or sweet mediocrity.
>> Having grown up in a city where I could walk to a few good bakeries,
>> they made top quality cakes, buns, and pastries because it was
>> expected. We did not eat Twinkies, we had fresh backed Crumb Cakes
>> and cinnamon buns. Cakes had good texture and flavor and buttercream
>> icing, not the equivalent of sugar and Crisco.\
>
> I lived in a small town. We did not have a lot of bakeries, but my mother
> baked. Some of my friends' mothers also baked, but not as well as my
> mother. For me, goods from a bakery are actually a step down from what I
> had had home. Mass produced baked goods are a very poor substitute for
> the real thing.

We had a really good little bakery in the city where I grew up, although we
didn't go there very often. My mom didn't do a lot of baking aside from
cornbread, biscuits, quick breads and cookies. And although she baked from
scratch in my early years, she soon went to only mixes. My dad was very
fond of those Rhodes frozen bread dough loaves which aren't bad if you want
that poofy white bread stuff.

I tend to be a bread snob. Because I started baking at age 8 and there
wasn't much I didn't try to bake, I know what really good bread tastes like.
Yes, I have eaten that poofy white bread countless times but only because it
is cheap and readily available. Can't say that I liked it much though. I
love the bread that I buy now. Not too many stores carry it. Honey Whole
Wheat. Has that coarse, grainy texture to it. And it doesn't keep for long
but it is soooo good!