Adventures in Grocery Shopping (or how the Japanese and Citibank conspired to make me miss home at Xmas)

To begin with, apologies all around for not blogging all week. My internet was out the last couple of days and the rest of the days... Well, there were X-rays and blood draws and visa applications and papers to fix that just got in the way. But rather than recap the last couple of weeks, I'll just skip to today. Sunday, 18 December, and my mini-adventures around 101 and the Xinyi area.

The weekend has all-in-all been on the calm end of the spectrum. Well, as calm as I can be. Yesterday was Shilin Night Market, which, along with Raohe Night Market, is a whole other post. Today I was lured to the shade of 101 by promises of tangyuan, these pretty pastel sweet rice balls that are apparently to the Chinese winter solstice what tamales are to Christmas. So I'd heard there was some sort of festival in the parking lot of Mitsukoshi Department Store and decided that was good enough reason to take my search for breakfast to the Xinyi District. Ok, now where to begin...

So Taipei is broken down into various districts. The Xinyi (means 'honest' I'm told by Wikipedia) District was one of the last developed and has grown into the financial and shopping hotbed of the city. As such, it is also one of the most decked out for Christmas, as everybody knows evergreens keep department stores ever green ;-). This is where Taipei 101 holds court and where you'll also find Shin Kong Mitsukoshi (新光三越), a Japanese-based monolithic department store. Only, to say "department store" is like saying Taipei 101 is some building. The origins of Mitsukoshi dates to 1673 when it started selling kimonos. Yeah. Not a typo. 1673. BUILDINGS 4, 8, 9 and 11 reside in Xinyi and I think it would take a few days just to tour those four. 

Not my pic, mind you. Bored from http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2071/2126488587_b0b21e6bd5.jpg because they were just too fun to pass up!

But back to rice balls. Apparently, the Hakka -- that's the aboriginal folks of Taiwan -- tradition around the winter solstice is to gather the family a-round for a round sweet treat. And not unlike the Native Americans, the Hakka are working hard to not only keep their traditions, but also to share those traditions. By share, I of course mean it wouldn't hurt to make a few NT (think: $$) off the native wine, coffee, marmalade and hand stitched crafts. This is quite the good luck if you're in the market for marble-sized multicolored rice flour delectables or if you just won't feel complete as a human until you try mulberry vinegar or kumquat jam or nougat candies. Or if you're in the market for cute kids dressed up and singing.

While there were no children singing at the "Taiwan Hakka Glue Pudding Festival" (yeah, tang yuan IS a little more appetizing) there was plenty of indigenous flavor in the form of coffee, wine, nougat, jam, moon cakes and  kumquat juice, all produced right here on the island. I did not actually get around to the tang yuan, stupidly, I know. But I'm in luck as this week's Christmas festivities at the Institute includes a tang yuan party. I'm excited. So stay tuned.

On to Christmas. The English radio DJ this morning said that this year there was more Christmas crap than ever before. And for the last few weeks I would have been ok with it. It was really not more of a slightly commercialized hum and a few trees here and there. You probably noticed the Calvin Klein sad christmas homage and the Ferrer Rocher chocolates tree in some of my other posts. But now we're pulling out the cutesy stops.

The area around Mitsukoshi and 101 recently seems to have become littered with cheer actually. No, really. This tree is made of sporks. Where's the Grinch when you need him? 

So moving on, I had a nice cream cheese frosting cinnamon roll with raisins from one of the MANY beautiful bakeries in the basement of Mitsukoshi. In other news, I discovered where I could scratch the cupcake itch should it arise.

                          

Also in the basement -- the basement below the bakery basement, I think -- there's a killer food court (one of several in the Department Complex):

And -- drum roll, please -- a grocery store. Which brings me to next big topic of this post. What you can get and where in Taipei that smacks of good old fashioned American processed food. So Florida bakery has tortillas and salsa and tortilla chips and pretty iced sugar cookies, along with the usual Taipei bakery awesomeness. I've HEARD you can also get masa harina there, but I think you may have to ask for it.

I was amused about the salsa and filed it for later until I discovered that you can also find this at Mitsukoshi. My mother was excited that they care La Costena even, a brand familiar from my beloved H-E-B back home. They also carry AMERICAN cheddar cheese, in addition to the "good" stuff, although price-wise you're probably not much better off with the "cheap" American cheese. American cheese, for those interested, isn't terribly hard to come by. As for quality, I haven't much to say as that stuff is too far below this cheese snob. Also, I spotted Rosarita refried beans, Campbell soup, Duncan Hinz cake mix, pancake mix, and jimmies. You know, sprinkles. Like for cupcakes. Oh, and marshmallows, which for some inexplicable reason American's always seem to get gooey over and miss terribly. I always see people asking on expat boards. Also in stock was McCormick's buffalo wing spice, spaghetti mix and gravy I think. They also carry a couple of varieties of Tabasco sauce.

On top of it all, you can get all sorts of Japanese, Taiwanese, etc. tasty vittles that I couldn't even BEGIN to catalog.

A bit further down the road at a Walmart-clone, A-Mart, I was able to find the same McCormick envelopes of spice in addition to dried pinto beans, Nature Valley cookies (I noticed this because they were giving out samples, a big thing apparently on Saturdays at the grocery store ;-) ), inexpensive olives, more Tabasco sauce, pasta sauce, and Miller Lite, (in the "foreign foods" section where they put all the American, Vietnamese, and Indian foods, lol).

So what do you find in the regular supermarket? All sorts of things! First off, about a solid aisle (short though it may be) devoted to varieties of rice. The cold food section varies in size, but at minimum you'll find frozen dumplings, buns, ice cream, one or two brands of butter, cheese limited to some American-esque slices and shredded "Pizza Cheese," milk, lots of juice, a small selection of beer including several light but decent Taiwanese brands, a wide selection of tofu, and meats that are frequently sliced and ready for a hot pot. The fresh veg sections aren't as big as you'd think, but I think that's because many people do their produce shopping at open air markets. For my money, I've found the quality to be better at these markets than the supermarkets. The "hypermarkets" like Carrefour or A-Mart are a lot like a Super Target or Walmart in that they have in-house bakeries with some pretty good bread -- and free samples, too! -- and also prepared foods like chicken and lots of vegetables and tofu. There are also frequently bins of dried fruits and meats (or what I take to be meats anyway). Even the smaller grocery stores have lots of junk food like the cookies and "pepper steak flavored potato chips" I have previously mentioned. Cereal is pretty easy to come by and if I'm ever going to break my quickly-becoming-an-addiction morning bakery run habit I'm going to have to invest in some corn flakes and milk. Lots of soft drinks, but I haven't paid much attention as I prefer my drink calories to come with some alcohol. Also some low-grade coffee, lots of instant coffee and tea. In the tea section you'll find milk tea, black teas, green teas, etc. The "baking" aisle has flour, baking soda, MSG (Don't laugh -- I nearly bought that when I was shooting for baking soda!), tapioca flour, rice flour, bread crumbs, and something called "crispy" flour -- haven't gotten to the bottom of that one yet. And something like pancake batter mix, which I think may for something along the lines of okonomiyaki, the tasty japanese savory pancake.

AT ANY RATE, I think you really can find just about anything here, given the energy to look and possibly the NT$ to drop on it. I haven't really been LOOKING for American goods (except the tortillas, por supuesto), but as I haven't figured out the logic of the Taiwanese supermarket layout I have to wander around a bunch. And stare and labels to figure out whether I'm buying rat poison or MSG or pancake batter mix. So my advice is if you ever see a foreigner at a grocery store looking confused -- and chances are good if you take ten random snapshops of THIS foreigner on any give day you'll come out with at least nine VERY befuddled snuggly cactus pictures -- be nice and ask them if they'd like some help. 'Cause you just never know when you'll be staring at the can with a label that hints at corn chowder, condensed milk, or tapioca and reminding yourself not to get your little heart set on anything in particular because no matter how long you stare at, there's always the chance you'll be cracking open a can of pears in light syrup.