"The SCGS's I did go to were usually not very pretty in the back." [Keith]
HA!
Last year I had a new favorite SCGS here. They had lots of great dry goods, hot sauces, canned oddities, herbs, spices, and a small offering of fresh produce from which I got some interesting hot peppers and roots to plant in the garden.
THEN ...
Last fall they began to sell fresh meat and fish. YIKES!
One Saturday afternoon about 4:30, I opened their front door and like to passed out from the stench. Being curious and too stupid to pass up the opportunity, I poked around to find out exactly what it was that could provide such a sensory overload.
I found a cardboard box of dead blue crabs on the floor with a large zip lock baggie of water that apparently used to be ice several hours prior.
Over in the "meat case," which consisted of an old open top refrigerator display that no longer operated, were several items of unidentifiable (in spite of several years in the food business and quite a lot of exposure to "ethic" meat byproducts) offerings of flesh, innards, fish, fowl, and shellfish. None of it had been on ice for at least several hours. Some of it was dry to the touch and room temperature.
Well, needless to say, that was my last visit to that SCGS. My suspicion is that they froze all the unsold "fresh" stuff because their freezer displays were full of obviously hand wrapped odds and ends with oriental lettering on hand written labels that surely didn't come from a wholesale distributor.
PV
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