You might find that Whole Foods has good bread from local bakeries and decent eggs and some nice cheese. It has some organic produce and some local produce in summer. They have inexpensive (365 is the generic name) olive oil from Spain, Greece and Italy. I finally found champagne vinegar there only to find it is as good as ordinary white vinegar.
The New York City WFs are good. The suburban ones, in my opinion, depend on how rich and food-educated the neighborhood is.
Trader Joe’s is very inexpensive and has some good deals. Very bad produce, though. For a long time it had kosher chicken which I like (Empire) but that seems to have disappeared.
Returning now from my roadtrip to the deep south, I have picked up a sack of White Lily Flour, pure cane syrup, sorghum syrup (impossible to find except at a Tennessee market high in the Appalachians), apple butter and apple jelly from an Alabama farmer’s market. I may have bought other things but they are locked in my suitcase.
So, you’re going to be a Southern Lady?
Every summer I spend weeks w/ my mom outside of Asheville. There’s a little Farmer’s market 3 minutes from her house. He has a sorghum/molasses blend in a quart jar that I bought for making BBQ sauces. It’s really good. And at Christmas I found really good pure dark molasses at Dollar Tree, we are down south!!!!!
If you want some mailed, PM me, be glad to do it. Offer stands in perpetuity ; )
Either the TJ’s here in Jew-ville still has empire or it’s another brand of kosher chicken they carry.