International Markets Galore

Over the past several months, Eric and I have realized that the first few years we spent in Ann Arbor were sadly wasted in a major way. We did all our shopping at Kroger. It wasn't until a few months ago that we began to tap into the glorious multi-ethnic/multicultural food aspects of Ypsilanti. It started a few months ago when we stopped by Hua Xing, the local Chinese food market, and picked up loads of frozen dumplings as well as our new secret ingredient in all stir-frys, sesame oil (so good!). We also took Eric's parents there and his mom bought stuff to make bubble tea. Our obsession with bubble tea will be saved for another blog.

Then last month Dos Hermanos, a Mexican grocery store, opened down the street from us and we walked down to purchase some handmade frozen tamales. And finally, we got an urge to start trying our hand at Indian cooking. So tasty, but there really aren't any cheap restaurants around here. We got a pretty straight forward recipe for chicken tikka masala from allrecipes.com (check it out, really great stuff there), but the "foreign food" aisle at Kroger had no garam masala. I mean, really. So we took a little trip down Packard Rd to Bombay Market, which had a mother load of Indian foods, including garam masala (w're not sure quite what it is yet, but we'll let you know)! And Bollywood movies, but that's another day. There's an entire strip of foreign food markets on Packard, including an Eastern European market and many Middle Eastern markets. We went back to one today, Aladdin's Market, to buy pine nuts for the fresh pesto we were making. And also picked up some yummy cheap Middle Eastern treats for lunch as well.

I guess we really like to eat. And we really like to travel, mostly because of the exotic foods we get to eat (OK, not mostly). So these new discoveries are a fun way to tide us over until we get to travel again. Stop by our house, any time, and we'll cook you up some yummy foreign foods. And I promise, I won't let Eric make them too spicy. :)