At New Whole Foods, How Much Fits in a $7.99 Prepared Food Box? The Challenge Begins.

Here's the real news about the opening of the new Whole Foods in Friendship Heights / Chevy Chase: the prepared foods area has a new all-you-can-stuff-into-this-box-for-$7.99 deal.

Scott Crawford, the store's prepared foods coordinator, said at the blogger preview Monday that while some other WF stores may have run some kind of unlimited specials as limited time promos, this was the first time a store had done it for good (let's hope it doesn't go away). Crawford mentioned something about fitting a good two pounds of food, and I took that as a challenge for today's lunch.



You can still buy your food by weight if you want ($7.99/lb). Or you can take one of these containers and see what you can fit. They're not super huge, but they're respectable. The rule is that you have to be able to close the lid.

My first layer was pretty heavy on the meats. I put pulled pork and brisket over mashed potatoes and collards. I put one kind of tofu and two kinds of chicken in the sides, then added some greenery with the asparagus, peas, and bok choy. The pulled pork and brisket didn't look that great at first, but after I put two of the barbecue sauces over them they ended up pretty darn good. Oh, and you can't see it, but there are ribs under there, too. I almost forgot; I haven't eaten down that far yet. Maybe tomorrow.



I moved to the cold section for a while, hitting the obligatory tomato/basil/mozzarella, a giant chunk of tofu (quite good), rice, thai beef salad, and more.



I squeezed some lentils down one side, threw some greens on the top and a third kind of tomato, and then it was time to wind down.



Everything fit. Barely.



But how much would it weigh? The man behind the register kindly took a picture:



That's 3.01 pounds, thank you.

I had tried to stuff in as much as I could, though I hadn't gone to the point of picking just heavy (liquidy) foods and skipping lighter foods that I wanted to eat.

The food is pretty good. Maybe it won't look as good when I eat the leftovers, but I'm not complaining.

Alright bloggers. That's your benchmark, 3.01 pounds. Who's going to top it?!

Previously: New Whole Foods in Friendship Heights Is Nice. Will Rodman's Be Okay?