Shopping

I ran out of Chinese dark soy sauce.

In our house, stir fries can be dated B.CDS or A.CDS depending on whether I had yet acquired Chinese dark soy sauce (wonderful) or not. A.CDS foods are better.

So anyway, I ran out. No problem. Just pop over to one of our local asian markets (my favorite is the one that comes just after Pure Platinum, one of our local strip clubs, which is on "Family Drive" (not kidding), but just before the cinder-block building that houses La Michuacan, a taqueria. That's the only way I know how to find it: "Oh, there's Pure Platinum, and there's La Michuacan in the distance...TURN!") and get some more.

Uh, oh. No Pearl River Chinese Dark Soy on the shelf. No other bottles labeled Chinese Dark Soy. What to do? What to do?

Fortunately, the owner is a very helpful man. He steered me to Mushroom Soy Sauce (China), Dark Soy in a jar (Thailand) and finally to Yakisoba sauce (Japan). I tried to buy all three, because at $2.50 for each it seemed like a little experimentation was in order. But no. After interrogating me about what I planned to cook, he insisted that I put back everything but the Yakisoba sauce. But then he warned me that it might not be salty enough. If not, add soy. Uh...

I browsed.

On one aisle, I found a dry marinade of Korean BBQ flavors. It said: "Made in Hawaii" in big letters. I didn't care. In fact, I kind of liked it. Strike a blow for asian products made in the USA. Whatever.

But that was Totally Unacceptable. The checkout guy picked it up and immediately walked away to show the owner. "No, no," he said. "This is made in Hawaii." Yes, I know. "You want this. Made in Korea." Sure, ok. I would have bought both, of course, but the offensive Hawaiian product was whisked away. So I got this:

And, you know, I'm looking forward to it. I love Korean BBQ.

Finally, I saw something I was pretty sure I understood. Look at that little fella:

That's a baby! As Charles said later, "Gee, honey, you're illiterate in Korean!" Yes. Yes, I am.

So I said, "Are these rice crackers for babies?" and he affirmed that I understood the pictogram correctly. He showed me the notation that it was for 5 months and up (no problem), and we agreed that it was fine. Then he tried to get me to buy Korean animal crackers, but I declined.

Iain had an American version of these crackers at Callie's house, and he powered through it like a ship made of unobtainium can cut through the Earth's core. [That's real science and don't let those eggheads tell you different.]

We tested them today, and Iain liked them just as much this time.