Shopping discoveries

[spacealien_vamp]

I've been avoiding going shopping for a long time, due to cold and rain. However, I finally ran completely out of milk yesterday, so I had no choice but to venture out into the cold shower to restock on groceries. While shopping, I made a number of discoveries.

1) The one store where I could buy nonfat milk was out, and they had a sticker up saying they were replacing it with a different product. ;_; I had to buy lowfat instead. I hope that means they're simply replacing it with a different brand of nonfat milk, as they did last time I had this crisis. Why do the Japanese people insist on this preference for chock-full-of-fat milk? They ADVERTISE the high fat content on the cartons as a selling point.

2) I browsed the cereal section, which usually contains A) Corn Flakes, B) All Bran, C) Mueslix, and little else. The Japanese don't eat cereal much. (The Japanese idea of a Western-style breakfast is toast and salad.) Lo and behold, however, they had Chex. Not just any Chex--chocolate Chex. (When did THAT happen?)

3) I moved on to the potato chip section. Japanese potato chip flavors constantly amuse me, as I've mentioned before. I passed by the pickled plum flavor. >_< I tried the basil/cheese flavor, yet though it didn't taste bad, it made me wish it were pizza instead of chips. I bought a bag of Caesar salad flavor, thinking, Salad-flavored potato chips. What could be safer? After I bought it, however, I checked the ingredients, only to find that it contained anchovy powder. O_O The Japanese will put fish in anything. I tried one called "five blacks plus salt"--containing five different ground-up black items, such as black sesame, black beans, black rice, and so on. It was actually pretty good...but then I couldn't find it again, so it might have been a seasonal flavor. (Darn those seasonal flavors!) Finally, I tried one that was cheese/soy milk flavor. That was surprisingly tasty.

Comments

[kirbyfest.livejournal.com]

Traditional Caesar salads are made with anchovies, or anchovy paste. My mom uses Worstershire (sp?) sauce, which has a bit of anchovy paste, and doesn't add any additional fishies. She doesn't use a raw egg, either-- she's such a rebel. :)

[spacealien-vamp.livejournal.com]

Traditional Caesar salads are made with anchovies, or anchovy paste.

Geh. I've heard of adding chicken to salad, and sometimes shrimp, and ruining a perfectly good salad by doing so has always annoyed me because usually I consider "salad" to be "safe" food, and when it's not I feel kind of betrayed. ;_; But I'd never heard of adding fish. Ewww.

[mangaroo.livejournal.com]

I remember when I ordered my first real Caesar salad in a restaurant. So embarrassing. "This tastes funn...what's THIS?" <pulling fishy bit out> ... my companion had to call the waiter to replace it with a salad without fishy surprises. Still, the time I mispronounced "mojito" in my drink order was worse.

[spacealien-vamp.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much how I was at Shoujocon when we ate in the hotel restaurant. Practically everything on the menu had meat in it, so I ordered one of the only two things that didn't SAY meat--pasta with bolognese sauce. Little did I realize that bolognese sauce had meat in it...it just didn't say so on the menu, the customer was expected to know from the name. (And HOW are we supposed to know, if we've never had it before?)

...And then there's the time I bought satsuma-age, believing from the name that it was fried satsuma-imo (sweet potato). No, it turns out that it's actually made from fish.

I say it's all a conspiracy to make me starve. ...Or have to wash more dishes.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

kirbyfest is correct

True, old fashioned, made in front of your very eyes by a cute, young, waiter involves both raw egg yolk and anchovies. The anchovies and egg are part of the flavor in the dressing.

When you buy caesar salad dressing, always check the ingredients.

[sara-tanaquil.livejournal.com]

I still haven't recovered from the roasted chicken flavor crisps in England... and, worse, the prawn cocktail crisps, which were HOT PINK.

Ironically, I seem to remember that both were meat-product free and very popular with my vegetarian friends. I stuck with salt and vinegar, myself.