Ingredients

Trying to find ingredients that I am used to finding easily in the states is sometimes like finding a needle in a haystack. I have a healthy understanding that things are different here and that I won’t find (nor should I!) everything that I am looking for, but sometimes you get homesick for the familiar. That having been said, I have had a great deal of luck in the past couple of weeks.

I recently found the following items in the wonderful grocery store of a local “spiritual community” (read: hippy commune) called the Findhorn Foundation:

• Proper horseradish (not horseradish sauce!). Now I can make deviled eggs which no one here even knows about (yet). And, more importantly, I can make killer Bloody Marys.
• Chipotles in spicy adobo sauce. Finding this in a country that has never heard of poblano peppers, puts a ketchup-y creation over corn chips instead of salsa, and says “jalapeno” with a “j” as in “just plain wrong” is quite the coup.
• Sour dough bread. Someone at the Foundation must have come from San Francisco!

I also luckily found pretzels the other day at a local grocery store…they are from Poland and I was so excited, I almost opened them before I got to the check out. Unfortunately, they weren’t Snyder’s Sourdough pretzels.

I am still on the hunt for corn meal for corn bread, graham crackers, and cherry pie filling in a can.

I had to give up on the idea of ever having a fresh baked bagel let alone an everything bagel. It might have been the lowest of lows when I “concocted” one recently. I basically mixed the “everything-s” (sesame seeds, pepper, salt, onions, garlic) into cream cheese and spread it on toast. I was sad and desperate and even sadder after I was done! The description of the event in my Facebook status elicited some of the most sincere sympathy from my friends back home I’ve had to date.

The flip side is there would be things that I will miss if I ever go home…like my single malt collection, Glen Fiddich liqueur, oatcakes, cheese and onion pasties and, of course, cullen skink (that’s fish soup for those of you who don’t know)…