Supermarket Specials 1

I decided to blog about some quirky stuff I found at the Chinese supermarket, Kamman, "near" [har har! Not say how near] my house. I've never noticed it before, but they sell umami seasoning. I suppose after writing that paper about umami. All of a sudden, umami seasoning popped onto the shelves at Kamman! I honestly don't recall ever seeing it before, when I combed the store all those times. Well, it's quite interesting to see cute shakers of this stuff, just as described in those articles I read for my Writing Seminar class.

They even come in economy size! By the pound! One note of irony, I suppose, is that the brand name is meant to be Japanese, yet it quite clearly states that it is a "PRODUCT OF U.S.A." In addition, there is a French translation ["glutamate monosodique", "produit des etats-unis d'amerique" - pardon my lack of accents]. Now, this is notable because the stereotype is that French cuisine is flavourful, gourmet, fresh - whatever you like - yet the translation happens to be in French. The French are not known to use MSG. Yet, the package, in an Asian supermarket, has a French translation [not even a Chinese translation, which would be expected since the [false] stigma is that all the Chinese use MSG by the bucket]. Perhaps this is saying something about the way the world is heading; after all, MSG makes stuff taste good without having to cook stocks for 17 hours. I would be pretty upset if all soups tasted umami though. What about the hint of celery, or hint of broccoli?

MSG is much cheaper to buy and use than cooking a stock for 17 hours. The gas/electricity price of cooking stock costs more than a pinch of MSG crystals, I'm guessing.

So, another thing I saw, this time at Target, during the Winter sale, was garlic. Sure, Target now has a whole section selling fresh food, but this was found in the sale section, among the wrapper paper, holiday cards and chocolate. It was a box of garlic.

I have never seen garlic packaged in a cardboard box, wrapped in plastic before. This is completely novel to me. Of course, it begs the question: why did a company decided to sell garlic in a box during the holiday season? [Especially when vampires are loved, in this Twilight era...?]

I suppose since I was happy to get a pie pan for my Holiday present, maybe some people enjoy getting 57 g of garlic.

Then again, I would really love 57 g of garlic if I didn't have much money, or if I hadn't eaten garlic in months/years.

So perhaps it IS rational to package garlic that way, for easy wrapping and giving during the holiday season.

The last thing I will talk about, which I actually bought, is the canned coconut milk. I plan to use this when I go back home for Spring break, but I definitely will not be throwing away the cans that hold the two coconut milks! If you can't figure out why I think the cans are funny, it's ok; I suppose it's not that funny except for immature teenagers/young adults like me.

More Fries...

This is partly why I don't like to travel with my family. We went to the Jersey Gardens Mall for the first time today. It was okay. Same old, same old.

And at dinnertime, they all got fries. Seriously. Without knowing that they had all bought fries.

They also didn't finish the fries, even though I ate some. Three different types of fries! This was like fry-tasting! The top ones are from Burger King. They were crispy and bland. The second ones were more diner-like, with the potato skins still intact. The ones from the "fish and chip" store, Nathan's, was really potatoey. They weren't crunchy enough in my opinion... but they were shaped cool, which means that they were definitely made in a factory. There also was some weird corn-flour-bready-thingy that neither my brother nor I could identify. It was like some mystery meat meatball, except that it was some savoury carb thing instead. The coleslaw was icky. I mean, in my mind, coleslaw is always at least six vegetables with a bit of dressing. Not 90% dressing with pieces of old carrot and cabbage...

The tartar sauce, however, was amazingly zingy and I have never had such tangy tartar sauce before. I do not know what made it so savourrryyyyy.

Well. That was fatty. :(

Why Follow?

Why follow the instructions on the package?

Do you ever follow the recipe on the can of sweetened condensed milk? No! The one on the plastic wrapper that envelopes chocolate chips? No! The one on the back of cake mix?

W-WAIT! Of course you follow the one on the back of cake mix, or cookie mix, or pudding mix... there just is NO other way to use up that powdery stuff! You MUST add three medium sized [yes, medium] eggs, one stick of butter, and half a cup of water. Otherwise, the cake will cease to ever exist! It will blow up the oven, or stick to the spoon, or end human intelligence [not that THAT would be a huge deal, since it happens if you DO follow the recipe down to the millimole]!

However, since this household lacks butter, I decided to make this gluten-free cake mix that my mum bought [I don't know why, since she knows that I rarely use mix, let alone gluten-free cake mix] using my brainpower.

Also, I didn't want to use the oven because it would waste a lot of energy.

All I did was add two eggs and some water. In other words, this cake is pretty much "fat-free". Then I microwaved a bowl of it, for about 148 seconds.

And... it tasted like plain store-bought-cake-mix chocolate sponge cake. Without the burnt parts, and the wasted oven heat.

Easy.

You don't see cakes in bowls much.

This is technically the 27th, but I microwaved my first cake on the 26th.

Kamman!

I always enjoy going to the Asian foods store, because there are always really funny brand names and logos and such. For example, Chiz Curls evidently spelled the word "cheese" wrong by spelling their product as "Chiz". Right below, however, the word "Cheese" is not only correctly spelled, but also correctly capitalised! It's also funny since there are no actual "curls" in the bag [well, I could be wrong, since I've never actually opened a bag of them]. Those puffed corn pieces are actually... well, rod shaped. Not curly. :) But, it's funny.

Gosh, I really love this one. Oh the biology-related innuendos! Would you like some bacterial pili to contaminate your food - I mean, they can contaminate your nuts! Oh! Hey, the pili are growing! *New Discovery!* - Pili have nuts! To be a health nut, you gotta obtain a ton of conjugation via pili!

... the list goes on.