Today's spur-of-the-moment trip to New York (expensive train ticket, but I do work best on the train, second-best work in coffee shops with good pastry) was probably my most successful shopping trip ever. I now have, or had:
-Two bunches green garlic.
-Two bunches ramps.
-One big bag of excellent-looking arugula.
-One bunch each, chard and broccoli rabe.
-One City Bakery chocolate croissant.
-One sake oyakodon, Sobaya.
-One (discounted) book I'd been looking for, Strand.
-One package frozen tofu skin, Sunrise Mart.
-One massively discounted Tsubaki Damage Care set, same store. Yes, that's right, a set. For $27 - giant shampoo and conditioner and a normal-size tub of the hair mask. The mask itself is normally $20.
What this tells us:
-Almost my entire non-necessity budget goes to food. Allium if at all possible. Glanced and Uniqlo and Sephora but was unimpressed.
-I'm under the mistaken impression that I'm Japanese.
-Farmers markets in Central NJ-to-Philadelphia don't open until May, and supermarkets around here don't seem keen on stocking decent produce, local or far-flung. It has indeed come to this.
-I had the opportunity to get coffee out, at any number of HMYF establishments, but simply forgot. To be fair, I had to get back early because there was a talk by a famous historian on blogging and French history, preceded by a wine and cheese reception, aka a WWPD dream (free!) event.
"I'm under the mistaken impression that I'm Japanese."
ReplyDeleteHave I ever mentioned that you might enjoy a day-trip to the Mitsuwa Marketplace?
(Any brief exploration of the topic will definitely show that the Japanese are god's true chosen people, so it makes sense that you or I might occasionally fall under that mistaken impression.)
Do you find the frozen tofu skin superior to the dried and reconstituted?
ReplyDeleteAmber,
ReplyDeleteI've never come across the dried variety in a supermarket, and am not sure which version one gets in restaurants. The frozen one's pretty good. I do know there are Japanese and Chinese versions of this, and that I generally prefer the Japanese.
I think you must be going to the downtown Sunrise Mart-- whereas I tend to go to the one near NYPL on 42nd St.-- so I'm not sure if that Sunrise Mart stocks the same baked goods, but if it does, I highly, highly recommend the banana & chocolate croissant. That, plus a chocolate-covered mochi donut from Zaiya-- is my reward for going to the library these days.
ReplyDeleteFourtinefork,
ReplyDeleteSomehow, when I was doing research at the NYPL, I never noticed there was a Sunrise Mart over there. I would get some good prepackaged sushi, but that's about it.