More Grocery Adventures

I'm pretty decent at food shopping these days, though a trip to the vegetable stand and Nakumatt still holds its challenges. I know and plan for it to be a multi-hour commitment, between driving there, greeting the stand owner, finding out whether she has what I need and if not if she knows anyone who does, then driving over the the shopping center, experiencing the world of Nakumatt, bringing the groceries home, then cleaning/soaking/deboning/repackaging the appropriate parts. The store is constantly being reorganized- today I saw beer next to Tom Yum sauce- so there's not much predictability in product location. Add that to the mental gymnastics of planning a week's worth of meals from scratch, translating that into quantities of staple ingredients (how much flour do I need to make tortillas, ginger cookies, that one chicken dish, dinner rolls, and banana bread this week?), and then being familiar enough with the recipes that I can adjust/substitute/recover when one or more ingredients is inevitably AWOL... On the plus side, I don't find myself haggling over prices anymore; I know what's reasonable to pay, I have a relationship with the people I regularly purchase from, and they quote me the real price right off.

But today I had a new mission: bread crumbs. I decided to bravely try to make Chicken Parmigiana from scratch for supper tonight, on the hope that it would turn out well and be a meal I can predictably serve to guests. I wanted some these pre-packaged bread crumbs that are great for coating chicken. I know they exist. I have some in my freezer. How they got there I couldn't tell you, but they are good and useful. The packaging looks cheap enough that I suspect they came from Nakumatt and are actually produced in the store, increasing my chances of finding them. But I had never bought them nor seen them on the shelves. Despite these obstacles, I decided to venture forth with hope and not despair: I put bread crumbs on my list.

I arrived at Nakumatt this morning during Stocking Time. Now, when I told my friend Beth this story, she heard it as Stalking Time and giggled. I responded that yes, I was stalking my prey of bread crumbs; she informed me that she meant the kind of stalking that creepy men do, and thought it was funny that there was a specific time set aside for that. Hm. Well, I might have been stalked while at Nakumatt, and I was indeed stalking the breadcrumbs like a lioness, and fortunately someone was also stocking the bread crumbs while I stalked. I procured the new ingredient without the usual 14-times-round-the-store search! 'Twas a miracle.

As it turned out, the Chicken Parmigiana was guest-worthy, so I have more good food to add to my repertoire. Stalking/stocking/stalking was well worth it.