alway visit your local grocer

indian_grocer

You can’t go wrong by wandering into a small local grocer of whatever immigrant community lives nearby.  We are blessed with numerous small grocers around us. Here’s the fruit of a stop in at our local Indian grocer.

Ingredients

The drill is to walk in like a dumb angmo and ask for help. Most grocers are people persons and will be happy to instruct you, inform you, give you recipes, keep your dumb ass out of trouble. Be nice to them and say thank you.  Go back and become a regular. The produce is usually way fresher and way cheaper than at your local hypermarche and you will slowly add new and interesting stuff to your kitchen arsenal.  Here’s what I left with:

  • a couple kinds of masala (I keep experimenting)
  • your usual veg
  • Lay’s masala chips (crisps). Why are these not in all grocers everywhere?
  • Rooh afza:The smell always reminds me of Arusha, Tanzania. Good memories. I usually dump around 15-30 ml into a glass with a teaspoon of sugar and water. Great in the summers.

So there, go thou and explore.