Last week I had a field trip. No, not my daughter’s field trip. This one was mine! My good friend from Malaysia brought some of us curious moms to a local Asian grocery store. This one was called Pacific Ocean Marketplace.Why would we take a field trip to an Asian grocery store? Because when you eat Paleo or AIP or any other non-FastFood-American-style, you sometimes need to broaden your spectrum of foods and look at how other countries nourish themselves. There is a WORLD of differences out there! And what I found was a boatload of new foods that I can eat! These are foods that I either cannot find in the typical grocery store, or they are super expensive there.
We started down the produce aisle and found okra, enoki mushrooms, bok choy (many kinds!), huge daikon radishes, and “melons” to add to your stir fry. I’d never seen lemon grass with the stalk on it or the actual turmeric root. Some fruit and vegetables were cheaper than my grocer ($1.50/head of cauliflower), and some were more expensive (bananas .99/lb). One thing at this grocer, they do not distinguish between organic or non-organic produce.
We then surveyed the meats. Chicken feet, turkey feet, and even duck feet were available to help increase the gelatin in your broth. My friend tells me I need to cut off the fingernails of the feet before adding though. Beside their live seafood tanks, one of the funniest things I saw was the frozen pasture-raised chicken they sold under the name “walking chicken”.
The best shelf food I found was the noodles and wraps. I am super sensitive to rice at this time, so to find the noodles made out of sweet potato starch was a true jackpot. While I can find a small package of sweet potato noodles (AKA “glass noodles) at my King Soopers store, it is a higher price for a small amount. At POM, we found noodles galore! In shapes of spaghetti and fettucini, multi brands, and some with tapioca starch as well. Lots of tests to be had! We can use these with the typical marinara or pesto sauce, or in a stir fry. My youngest likes them with just butter.
The tapioca wraps were another great find. We’ve made bison burger rolls the first night and the fun spring rolls with shrimp and veggies another night.Other foods that I have found to be less expensive at the Asian supermarket are: coconut cream in a can, tapioca starch, and arrow root starch/powder.
So if you are tired of the same old ground beef and sweet potato ingredients, try an Asian grocer and see what the rest of the WORLD eats
After our 1.5 hour class held in the Asian marketplace, sometimes clogging the aisle with all our carts as our teacher explained the foods and how they are usually cooked, we checked out, packed our new-found groceries in the car (no frozen foods this time), and walked to the Vietnamese restaurant Pho 79 next door. A fabulous cap to a fabulous field trip for us moms!
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