Oh, believe me, I completely understand. Some neighborhoods are wickedly underserved, and it's infuriating. Fresh food should never be a luxury, not in this town. I'm actually a native of Manhattan, but I've spent the past nineteen years in the Bronx, hence my pen name.
I'm old enough to remember shopping in a dozen neighborhood stores, because each one specialized in something. There was the fish store, the butcher, the greengrocer, the Italian grocery for cheeses and canned puree or plum tomatoes, the delicatessen, the bakery for fresh made bread and rolls. Food was fresh, and good. Not only that, but all the shopkeepers knew my grandmother, and remembered my mother when she was little.
Now, it's all prepackaged, full of things I refuse to even try to pronounce, and we pay insane amounts of money for it to boot. I actually caught myself lecturing firemen the other day because they were talking about buying premade pasta sauce in a jar. Ugh! It takes no time to make a fast marinara sauce from canned puree and paste, some garlic, onions, olive oil, and a few spices. Add a bit of red wine and some browned ground beef, and you have Bolognese sauce, in under half an hour, and it's healthy and tasty. Fortunately, the firemen are all very sweet and good sports about being lectured by crazy people.