Food News :: by Mama

As is probably evident by now, food is a big part of our lives here in Bangladesh. There is no one grocery store that has every food we buy, so we end up devoting substantial chunks of time to traveling around, buying a few things here and a few things there, until everything is crossed off our list. Also, being accustomed to all-American, supersized packages of bulk goods from Costco, we have found the standard package sizes here to be woefully inadequate for our needs. We were constantly running out of things, until we adopted our own version of the Costco mentality and started stockpiling multiple packages of basic necessities. Chris has accused me of acting as though I am preparing for the Great Depression, but at least we don't run out of things any more.

The strange thing is, it seems that almost every time I go shopping for food, I find something new that I have never seen before in Bangladesh. I don't really understand where these things come from, but they just appear and, sometimes, disappear just as quickly. Here are a few of the discoveries we've made recently:

1. Strawberries, locally grown! I totally did not see this one coming, especially since tomato and zucchini season is just ending. Since when do strawberries come after tomatoes? Since we live in Bangladesh, apparently. Clearly they are only being grown for the expat market -- and are priced accordingly, at about US$3 for half a pound, yikes! -- but we could not pass them up. Kaya had been asking for strawberries just a week or two before these appeared. Lucky boy.

2. Tahini (and ketchup from Thailand, which is not new but came home in the same bag and ended up in the photo). Tahini was on my list of food to bring back next summer, and now it is here! Now I just have to get around to making some hummus with it.

3. Chocolate chips. Mmmmm. I didn't actually find these in a grocery store. A friend gave them to us before heading back to the States for her maternity leave. She had sent them in her air shipment last August and hadn't used them yet! Thank you, Misti. Your chocolate chips are gone.