my trip to Food Bazaar yesterday

 I wanted to make chicken paprikash and I wanted mashed potatoes to go with that. So I went to Food Bazaar because they were supposed to have 10 lbs on sale for $4. I didn't see that, but 10 lbs is heavy anyway. I got 5 lbs for $2.50.

It was too crowded and everyone was pushing around empty carts and leaving carts everywhere. I survived.

I bought so much stuff I usually wouldn't. Like korean rice cakes, genoa salami, provolone, leeks. The leeks had a price on their sign that didn't make sense and then they were expensive. I spent over $5 on leeks. I got buttermilk for my mashed potatoes.

They had a lot of Mexican stuff I didn't notice before like cueritos (pickled pig skin) and huitlacoche. 

I went to Chinatown on Chinese New Year's Eve

I needed dumpling wrappers and even though the wrappers are manufactured in my neighborhood, I have to go to Chinatown to buy them.

The store was packed. I couldn't even find a basket, so I bought a bit less than I would have otherwise. I got 4 packs of dumpling wrappers (yellow/white, round/square), napa cabbage, a leek, and a giant bottle of soy sauce. Dumpling wrappers cost $2.49 and $2.99 now. They used to be half that.

Anyway, I can't complain about the experience. I knew what I was getting into and that's one of the reasons I wanted to go. But now I should go buy the rest of my things. I still need ground pork, mushrooms, and maybe shrimp.

Cock-a-leekie

Yesterday was Burns Night, so I looked at Scottish cuisine on wikipedia. I can't make haggis, but cock-a-leekie seemed easy enough. It's chicken (cock) and leek (ie) soup.

Graham Market/Finefare sells leeks for $0.89 each. That seems like a good price, but now I have to look everywhere else. I watched a Jacques Pepin video about how to prep leeks and he said they are expensive.

Here's the video. It's about 2 minutes.