This little piggy went to market

I made a joke a week or two ago about dedicating a blog post to my favorite local grocery store, Piggly Wiggly in Batesville, MS, but that joke has turned real.  I really wanted to write this post to make the point that you really can live in the middle of nowhere and still create good, fresh, healthy food.  There's a lot of times when I'm reading Martha or cooking blogs that I love that are based out of New York or other large cities, and they'll make these recipes with ingredients I've never heard of and it can be kind of a let down.  It hurts to say Martha has ever let me down, by the way.  Hurts.  "Let down" isn't the phrase, but I am disappointed to not have access to certain things.  But then I think that's just a minor hurdle.  If I don't have a very specific type of pear, I can use the pears I can find here and make them work.  And I've discovered that with a little time and energy applied to really looking, you'll be surprised at what you'll find in chain grocery stores in small towns.  With food allergies becoming a major issue, most stores in most towns, big or small, are finding it necessary to carry glueten and dairy free products.  There are soy options as well as a lot of unprocessed foods.  I really encourage any readers that live in a smaller area to get to know their local stores really well. 

But this is about MY Piggly Wiggly.  "The Pig" as we affectionately refer to it, has been in Batesville all my life, I think.  It's old location was pretty old and run down, but even then it always carried the best produce of the 3 grocery store options in town.  It's also the most cost efficient of all the stores.  About 2 years ago, the Pig relocated and opened a much larger, much snazzier store.  And with this move came a produce section that constantly blows my mind.  It's opened a lot of doors for me in the kitchen.  Lemon grass, Yuca, Plantains, Kumquats, farm fresh produce from local farms, and the largest variety of peppers I've ever seen.  The store really caters to it's ethnic customers and you can find a lot of otherwise hard to find items for Asian, Mexican, or Italian cuisene. 

I took some pictures of the produce section just so you could see for yourself.  Why I thought this would interest anyone is something I'm still not sure of, but just humor me. 

By the way, taking pictures with a big ol' camera in the middle of the produce section is weird and anything but inconspicuous.

Ok.  It's just a store.  I need to cool my jets.  But it's exciting to me to have access to this kind of food.  It's just a store...but it's kind of inspiring...