Food, again

I went out this morning for groceries so I could spend the day filling our fridge for the week. First I went to a local produce stand (not really a stand, exactly-- it's a market of about 20 long tables) for pineapples & mangoes. I just wanted to jot down my thoughts for the day so I don't forget them.

There's a small Italian section at the grocery store. I realized one thing I haven't seen here at all is artichoke hearts. And I haven't seen any kalamata olives, although they might have those at the fancier store. I did see some made-in-Thailand feta cheese though, which was amusing! I'll be able to get sort of a Mediterranean fix here & there. I also realized that there are no tortilla chips (aside from small bags of heavily seasoned stuff), so to all of you Texans reading this, know that you wouldn't last long. I wonder where I'll be when I miss fish sauce and nori chips!

Rubbernecking in the store's seafood section again, it occurred to me that I can make cioppino. I used to make a lot more saffron-based dishes, some Spanish things and bouillabaisse, but there's no Trader Joe's here for affordable saffron. But cioppino! I can make that! Tomatoes are complete crap here (think of February tomatoes in the US-- hard, underripe), but they were selling big bags of decently red ones for pretty cheap at Makro, the local version of Costco, so I could cook those down into something respectable.

Just as I posted yesterday about the bananas, I saw huge bunches of them at the grocery store today! Still on the stem, not all that cheap, probably local, and innnnncredible. Gawd.

I made a big fruit salad with the pineapple, mango, some kiwi, and Japanese honeydew. I've learned to look at brown spots on fruit very closely, as it could be moving... I've found worms in bananas and a small neighborhood of ants in a piece of pineapple. This really isn't the place for the squeamish. Every mango I've tasted here has had a different flavor from the one before it, and some of them smell like flowers. I need to start buying more apples, since most of them come from New Zealand and it's their winter there right now, so they're in season.

I also made a batch of granola bars. Those were staples for us in the US, and I haven't found the kind we like here, so I make my own. Very easy. Now if could only figure out how to make goldfish, which was the other food we used to live on! I tried a recipe once when Sascha was a baby, and they were pretty awful.

I made about five pounds of tuna (bought a foodservice-sized can at Makro), and now I'm making some fiesta salad, which you'll know if you've spent any time with me in the past five years. Beans aren't common; had to buy dried and cook them. Peppers are rare too, but the green one I bought had a very rich garden-y smell when I cut it. We'll see how it turns out!