I am still overwhelmed by food shopping for myself. Navigating my local produce market is fine -- for the most part, I recognize the vegetables, ask for a price, negotiate if necessary (I hardly ever do this because produce is so cheap), and pay. I know what I'm getting.
But my local "super grocery stores" are another story. There's seemingly endless aisles of foodstuffs that I don't recognize, all wrapped tightly in vacuum-sealed plastic or jars, each labeled tauntingly in Chinese. English-label descriptions are rare; when they appear, they are maddeningly cryptic, like "Hunan-Style Brown Sauce".
Witness the "preserved foods refrigerated sections" at my local grocery store. I have no idea what to do with any of it.
"What are you!??!" I long to scream to the package of thinly-sliced brownish-red things. "What can I do with you? What do you taste like!?!?"
They don't answer.
Posted by Astrid at October 29, 2004 02:50 AM