Zak or Plastiek

or in other words...paper or plastic? The U.S. is finally "catching up" with Europe. Over 10 years ago, we had an extended stay in the Netherlands...where we discovered that grocery shopping was very different from the local Albertson's here in the States. You had to deposit a guilder (50 cents in those days) to use a shopping cart (it was returned to you when you put the cart back in it's stall) and buying fruits and vegetables was terrific...choose your vegetable, put it on the scale, push the button that looks like the vegetable and out prints a UPC code to put on the plastic bag. But the biggest difference was no "paper or plastic". The grocery stores in the Netherlands did not have plastic bags to shove your groceries in (and to later on, get stuck in the tops of the trees outside). You either brought your bag from home or purchased one there. The green and blue one is from an Albert Heijn store outside Nijmegen.(check out the website...do a Google search and get the translated version. Mmmmm...smeerboter, Fanta, mayo in a tube!) The bag is HUGE and can carry almost a week's worth of food. So now that the U.S. is going "green" I'm using the AH bag plus the red one I bought at IKEA (which has lots of reusable grocery bags) every week for groceries. The two main problems are remembering to take them and trying to figure out how to buy vegetables without using the little plastic bags...any ideas? Veel geluk!