"Comida General" at Wal-Mart

I am a coupon shopper - granted not as savy as some of my friends who are just amazing at the whole coupon game - but, none the less, I am a coupon gal! So, here I am in Wal-Mart just attempting to procure some food for my little family to take in their lunch boxes; I walk down the aisle that looks as though it should have some peanut butter and jelly.... OK, found the Smucker's Jelly... good, the price was over $1.75 USD but I can deal with that. THEN, I spy the JIF (the only brand available) Peanut Butter in a small, tiny, miniscule, little jar (Seriously, it is only 340 grams) - If that information in parenthesis helped you then you are seriously one smart cookie! But, for the rest of us... trust me, it was SMALL and it cost $330.00 M.N. (Pesos) or just about $3.30 USD - FOR A TINY JAR OF PEANUT BUTTER! As I was getting it off the shelf another American walked by (from California) and he said, "Hey, if you buy that with Jelly they'll think you are really weird!" -- Oh well, I have never been one to shy away from a challenge, have I? So, I grab the PB & J, get the odd looks from the shoppers around me and spend way, way, way too much money on some sandwiches for lunch this week!

OK... so, now to the milk. I head on over to what looks to be the milk. I pass the Borden brand (normally expensive but here it is astronomical) and head over to the brands that are from Mexico. I pick up a couple of gallons and look around for the expiration date... and I read, "leche parcialmente pasteurizada". WAIT, WHAT? From what I gather this milk is only partially pasteurized... so what did they do to the other part? Has it been prepared for ingestion? Will it effect your body the same way as the water? And exactly what does pasteurization do anyway? Are my children safe with this on their cereal? Wouldn't a good friend from Saginaw, TX who is fond of natural, non-hormonal milk flip over this label? Do we women really need more hormones from our milk anyway? Yes, all these questions start rolling through my mind standing in the milk aisle! The good news is that we have ingested "la leche" and we are all still alive and functioning! In some free time I need to find out what pasteurization does anyway? But, vitamins A & D have been added!

Our little family has been following and preparing our food storage (in the U.S.A.), but I have never fully appreciated the purpose of it until coming to an area where acquiring food was so absolutely difficult! I appealed to my husband's "Hunter / Gatherer" instinct and he tried to shop one night and came home with quite the assortment of items. Some were edible... but even he had a difficult time figuring out the "Comida General". So, basically we are regulars at the local SUBWAY - too bad they don't serve breakfast!