Comfort Food with Mariano’s Fresh Market

This week, I set out to make a comfort food recipe and shop for my items at the new Mariano’s Fresh Market that just opened in Frankfort.  I decided to make my mother-in-law’s “best ever meatloaf” recipe along with some crockpot cheesy potatoes.  This is my first time making these recipes and they are both true comfort foods.  Mariano’s Fresh Market is not your typical grocery store so I was excited to see what they had to offer.  My experience was nothing short of the best grocery shopping trip I can remember! #cbias #MyMarianos

Right at the entrance of Mariano’s I was greeted with an amazing fresh produce section and samples of fresh squeezed orange juice!  I then headed for the potatoes and have never seen so many varieties before, all ready to be hand-picked and bagged by me.  I chose 3 lbs. of red potatoes for this recipe.

The gorgeous wall of fresh herbs was a favorite of mine and something I never see at typical grocery stores.  Fresh chives will be great for my potatoes.  Mariano’s also offers a fresh salad and fruit bar and a bakery filled with any treat you can imagine!  We sampled fresh bread and could not stop browsing the unique pastries and specialty donuts.  I was most impressed that the prices were still very reasonable on such wonderful bakery items.

One of my favorite encounters at Mariano’s is what I call the “cheese room”.  It is a huge section of cheeses from all around the world, everything you can imagine.  There was a very helpful employee on duty and we chatted about cheese for a bit.  Very enjoyable!  Mariano’s also had the most beautiful display of wine spanning an entire wall, looking nothing like you would see in most stores.

I quite literally could have spent a good hour browsing all the unique foods (and wine) but tried not to get too distracted from the task at hand.  After choosing my meat, potatoes, fresh chives, and cheeses I headed to find the rest of my ingredients.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Mariano’s store brand, Roundy’s had consistently lower priced items that were on my list!  I enjoyed savings galore by choosing the Roundy’s brand when buying many of my ingredients.  I signed up for the Mariano’s Rewards Card and have earned points towards future savings.

Our last stop after checkout was the Italian coffee and gelato bar right inside the store.  Yes, this is the best addition to a grocery store since shopping carts!

It was tough for my little Ruby to decide which of the amazing flavors to choose but she settled on strawberry.  A mini gelato was just $1.oo!  I chose my coffee treat and the two of us sat at the table and enjoyed our treats for a while.  It was truly the perfect ending to the perfect shopping trip.

Our Mariano’s ingredients came together to make a wonderful comfort food recipe of “best ever meatloaf” (thanks Mom!) and cheesy crockpot potatoes.   Both dishes were a major success and I can’t wait to make them again.  I enjoyed shopping at Mariano’s so very much and Ruby has asked me every day when we are going back!  I think that says it all :).  There are several locations in Chicago and suburbs but I sure hope they plan on expanding even more!  See all of the photos from our shop in my Google+ album.  Keep up with Mariano’s on Twitter and Facebook.

I am a member of the Collective Bias®  Social Fabric® Community.  This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias®  and Mariano’s #cbias #SocialFabric.  All opinions are my own.