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I think I see part of the difference. Fresh stuff here is more expensive than it is elsewhere, and we're certainly not the most expensive area. I can pay anywhere from $2 - $3 for a single cucumber. If I can get cauliflower for $1.29/lb I'm happy. A 5 lb bag of carrots is far cheaper than pre-cut, and readily available year around.. but by part way through the winter we get absolutely sick of our choices. Within the next few weeks fresh fruit will be almost impossible aside from the usual bananas, apples and oranges. Things like fresh strawberries or blueberries won't even be in the store. By then, some of the apples are $2/lb or more. I do switch to canned/frozen in the winter but that isn't always budget friendly, either. Whole grain bread is upwards of $4/loaf. When I was at the store last week, whole wheat pasta was double the price of white pasta.
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Ah, my situation as well. Don't get me wrong, I love living in Alaska, but food is very expensive here, whether it's healthy or processed.
And we quickly get limited to apples, oranges, banana ($1/lb) as soon as summer is over. Lettuce is sold by the pound not the head! Anything perishable is expensive as it has to trucked in rather than sent on a barge. TO get to an Asian market, I have to drive 50 miles to Anchorage. There are several there as Anchorage has a large Korean population. We grow and freeze a lot of our own veggies, plus strawberries, raspberries and rhubarb. For awhile I got produce from a CSA in Washington that flew boxes in 2x a month for only $38. It was a pretty good deal, and you knew ahead of time what you were getting and could substitute to some extent. We stopped for the summer, and haven't started up again - not sure if I will or not. It's hard to eat local and have good produce here. We do have 2 chain grocery stores: Safeway and Fred Meyer (Oregon based/Kroger affiliate), and there's a Super Walmart about 15 miles away (that I seldom frequent).
As for fish/chicken, I'm very fortunate that my DH is a fisherman, and we have a freezer with lots of wild salmon. Boneless/skinless chicken is $3.99/lb regularly. I seldom buy beef so don't know the price. I can often get good prices on shrimp, and occasionally on crab (if you watch Deadliest Catch you'll know what it takes to harvest it - no wonder it's expensive). And, even though we are considered an oil state and we have several refineries in-state, the cheapest gas I can find this week is $3.28/gallon. I was visiting my relatives in New England over Labor Day and there it was ~$2.65. Very strange.
I did spend much of 2000 in Seattle while my DH underwent cancer treatments, and it was such a treat to be able to shop at Trader Joe's, and Whole FOods and any number of small ethnic markets and farmers' markets. We weren't there under the best of circumstances, but I did take advantage of things we didn't have at home!
Mindi - sounds like N Texas is about the same!
