Ask Dr. Gourmet

Many foods in your recipes are not available near me. Suggestions?

I just set up a plan at the website. Here's the trouble for me: I live in a very small town in Appalachia with the nearest city with food selection is 50+ miles away. Ideas? A lot of the menu items aren't available locally.

Dr. Gourmet Says...

I can certainly sympathize. Before I moved to New Orleans I lived in Northern Virginia, just outside of a little town of 20,000 and about an hour away from Washington, D.C.. The closest quality grocery store was over 60 miles away. It really forced me to plan my meals: once a week I would make the drive to the grocery, along with an ice chest, and I would purchase everything I needed that I couldn't get in my local grocery stores. That included buying fresh fish (here's an Ask Dr. Gourmet question about the best way to store fish), but frozen fish can also work well.

The Dr. Gourmet Meal Planner can help you with that planning. Once you have your meal plan the way you want it, print out the weekly grocery list(s) and head to the store. Alternatively, we have created a version of the menu plans that serves up only comfort food recipes, and those ingredients will be more readily available for you. When you create your profiles, check the box labeled "Choose Comfort Food Recipes Only." The resulting menus will have meals that you should be able to shop for at your local grocery store.

Thanks for writing,

Timothy S. Harlan, MD, FACP, CCMS
Dr. Gourmet