A grocery shopping adventure

Posted by Dana McMahan on February 24, 2008

If you live in a decent-sized town you may have a treasure trove of unique food shopping options nearby. When groups of people move from other countries, businesses often spring up to provide them with their native foods. This is great news for foodies in search of authentic, unusual, or inexpensive ingredients. Luckily for me my city has a diverse population with any number of interesting grocery stores to serve our residents' needs.

A small store about five minutes from my house provides a fascinating array of exotic foodstuffs. It’s called (oddly enough) Oriental Supermarket, and a trip down its few aisles turns up some of most intriguing, and I’ll admit it, bizarre to my tastes food items I’ve ever seen. Dried cuttlefish, huge packs of dried seaweed, boxes of produce I can't identify -- I love it. I can’t travel out of the country as often as I’d like, but a trip to an ethnic food store gives me much the same feeling as wandering a store overseas – listening to a lot of people speaking a language I don’t know as I try to decipher food labels. I can’t think of many more fun ways to spend a cold and dreary February afternoon.

We went in search of Pad Thai ingredients today and brought home everything we need for less than $10. That includes “super” sesame oil, tofu, limes, green onions, cilantro, cashews (we like cashews instead of peanuts on ours), rice noodles and Pad Thai sauce (yes, I'm cheating. I could have bought the tamarind and fish sauce to make my own but the $1.99 jar with nothing but natural ingredients -- no corn syrup here! -- was just too tempting). We also bought some gyoza and "special" ginger candy, bringing our total to $13.07. The always friendly cashier gave me $7 change for my $20, saying I owe her 7 cents next time. They don’t do that at the suburban Kroger!

If you haven’t explored some of the ethnic grocery stores near you, take time to check them out. You may end up with a new favorite place to shop!

TAGS: Ethnic, Grocery Shopping, Grocery Store
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