Laowai

I did find baking soda and baking powder. They are sold in little envelopes about the size of a business card – 3 envelopes are sold together but it still makes for a measly amount. I also had to buy sugar – the largest container looks to be about 6 cups of sugar. I guess the people here just don’t do so much baking. 

 

I finally had a little bit of baking success – Bea and I made banana bread yesterday. The recipe I like to use calls for chocolate chips but they don’t seem to have chocolate chips and I couldn’t find a dark chocolate bar (Bea was getting antsy). So I just added some raisins and it turned out yummy. When we have sweets and treats I like them to be homemade. Now if I could just find some molasses I could make Grandma Dice’s extremely comforting molasses cookie recipe. 

I spend a lot of time in the grocery store these days. Bea is patient sometimes and other times… not so much. The grocery stores I go to are not large but it takes me forever to interpret things and I just want to explore everything they have.

The produce is good and you can buy things like mushrooms and potatoes in little wooden boxes that make me happy.

Cheese is a whole other can of worms. The cheese is yummy, but I stand there forever at the large cheese section trying to figure out what type of cheese we want. Only some of the grocery stores have cheddar and it’s not bright orange like back home. At first Bea would whine that she didn’t like the cheese but I think she’s getting over it and is more accepting of pale yellowish colored cheese now. Today there was no cheddar so I chose this one based on the nice illustration on the package. Smart way to shop huh – I guess I’ve been known to do that before.