kabocha and 100 posts

Happy 100 posts to me. :) Wow that's a lot of hunting-and-pecking the keyboard!

Down the main road aways' we have found an international grocery store called "GrandMart". This is our new favorite place to go and find unique and hard-to-find items, such as foods from Japan and such. This grocery store combines so many different countries together in one place - I've never seen it before. From what we have been able to identify, the store sells a large amount of Korean and Latino foods, then followed by items from Japan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, much from South America, India, and some from Africa.

They have so many things there, and we've been pleasantly surprised a few times already, finding out what they have that we like. I was able to try my first lychee fruit - the actual fruit itself, not anything "flavored" and not in a can. I definitely would always pick, eating the actual fruit hands-down! We buy our rice there from now on, since we found a Japanese brand of rice being sold there. They have all types and cuts of meat, from the usual to the less-mainstream cuts including, all kinds of critter feet (duck, chicken, pig), WHOLE cow tongues, tubs of cow and pig blood, big flaps of pig skin by itself, duck, rabbit, goat, frogs legs, and last but not least WHOLE pig heads. They run about $15 a piec--a head...

Takeshi was thinking of getting one the other day, but he thinks that $15 is still a little much for a pig head, since he says it's mostly bone and skin. I just don't want to have that thing staring at me in my freezer all the time! And Takeshi mentioned that, "It would probably take forever to defrost". .....Eww..... Defrosting pigs head. Anyone hungry?

I did buy a kabocha (Japanese squash) the other day from there! I was so happy to find them. I loved eating kabocha at the inlaws house. So today I made some kabocha amani (=sweet simmered kabocha). Ran out of soy sauce though, but still had enough for the recipe, which is basically simmering the squash in water, suger, and soy sauce. I'm happy to find that they sell multiple grocery items from Japan including, Golden Curry, Kewpie Mayo (expensive, damnit!), and (angels sings) furikake!! (=condiment for sprinkling onto rice)

I. Love. Furikake. I have missed that stuff so much!

All of this food kind of helps to bring me closer to Japan again, even if it is only in my head! But it brings back so many memories for me, because food for me, is probably one of the strongest 'switches' that can do that. And of course I do lovelovelove my Japanese food. ;)