One thing we don’t have here yet is the aunty-go-market basket-on-wheels-thing, so I can’t be a full-fledged market aunty. Darn!
Groceries are pretty expensive since almost everything is imported from all over the world. Unless you don’t mind drinking camel’s milk, most of the dairy products, fresh produce, etc come from other countries in the Middle East, and of course from all other parts of the world. Ben n I still haven’t found ok-tasting milk. Especially for me, if milk tastes too… uh, milky, it grosses me out. I prefer stuff like HL, which hardly tastes like milk! But of course, good luck finding that here.
Taugeh (bean sprouts) here cost a bomb! You either pay a lot for really pathetic string-thin wilted taugeh, or pay A LOT MORE, for really big taugeh. I bought ‘em big ones once… Wasn’t worth the price. Now I stick to buying ‘em bunches of green leafy stuff that they sell for Dhs.0.95/bunch at the Fresh Herbs section in Géant or Carrefour.
The Housemate just bought a pack of green beans today and plans to GROW taugeh in this butter cookies tin. Dumbass thinks he’s still in Standard Six doing an Alam & Manusia project or what?
There’s kangkung! Well, they call it Morning Glory and it’s a different variety, but kangkung by any other name still tastes as sweet… Then we have something they call Watercress which is definitely not the watercress we use for pork bone soup. This stuff is more like that “ti wan choy” stuff they sometimes sell at NTUC Fairprice. It has a weird aftertaste, but it’s nice and crunchy.
I’ve stopped buying the “paksoy” (pak choy) here cos it’s really limp n pathetic – no crunch y’know. So the other vege I get is something that looks like “chye sim”.
Other than that, we get potatoes n carrots from all over the world, depending on how much you wanna pay - cheap ones from Lebanon, India, etc, expensive ones from France, Australia… There’s also cabbage, brocolli, capsicum… So ok lah, at least I have lots of veggie to keep me happy.
The only seafood I buy is whole pomfret for steaming teochew-style (substitute kiam chye with rice vinegar), or Kingfish cuts (batang fish) for curry or asam pedas. Fish n seafood isn't very fresh though. Prawns here are called shrimp no matter how huge they are. And the white sotong here… I dare not buy man. It’s huge! Sometimes they sell it whole, and it looks like it was just fished out of the tank at Sentosa’s Underwater World. At Géant they pack your seafood nicely in these paper/foil things.
Thai fragrant rice costs about Dhs.8 for a 2kg packet. And at least there’s stuff like soya sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, etc from brands like Kikkoman, Lee Kum Kee, Maggi, and this Blue Dragon brand that seems to be the popular brand sold here for South East Asian and Japanese sauces and foodstuff.
Now we go on to meat… I’ve mentioned before that the chicken here smells very… uh, chicken-ny. Whole “fresh” chicken is actually frozen n thawed, sold as fresh. My Mom keeps reminding me to wash meat properly before cooking, cos cows n pigs don’t get bathed before they’re slaughtered… Now who would’ve thought of that huh. So anyway, I don’t buy whole chicken cos by the time I’m thru with cutting it into pieces (with a pair of scissors!), the chicken-ny chicken is pretty “nuah” n gross, and I start to smell really chicken-ny too. So I buy parts. Unfortunately, they don’t sell mixed parts, only packs of all wings, all drumsticks, all breasts… I wash it thoroughly of course. Perhaps too clean… especially since the taps here are heated so “C” gives u really warm water and “H” stands for Hot as Hell.
After I give the chicken a “clean bath”, I still marinade it with lots of pepper or whatever sauce, and clean, marinated chicken is then used for almost anything – chicken stew, chicken curry, chicken rendang, ayam pongteh, ayam masak merah, chicken kapitan… My choices are running out though, cos the pre-packed sauces I brought here with me are running low. What Ben n I are rationing really slowly is my Mom’s homemade kapitan sauce and Desmond's Mom's power sambal.
Beef from India is of slightly cheaper than New Zealand. This also goes into stews, curries, rendang… Oh, talking 'bout rendang. They don’t have Kara coconut cream here man. Just cans of coconut milk from Philippines and Thailand that’s quite watery. They also sell “freshly” grated coconut that's really roughly shaven, with bits of husk in it.
And then, supermarkets like Choithram have a small, secluded Pork section, selling “fresh” pork, or imported bacon, sausages, pork products. It’s damn expensive of course, so Ben n I treat ourselves to bacon and cheese sausages just once in a while. A pack of just 4 precious slices of streaky bacon costs Dhs.14, here, take my arm! And 10 really yummy “cheese dogs” (cheese-stuffed pork sausages) cost Dhs.17, and there’s my leg!
Last week, The Housemate excitedly showed me a pack of frozen pork leg that he bought at 40-over dirhams. I thought, being Chinese and all, we’d be seeing a pot of authentic “tauyu” vinegar pork leg stew. But alamak, our friend just dumped it in a big pot full of water and boiled it as soup. Here’s a pic but u can’t really see how gross it was cos this was taken after it was kept in the fridge, so the soup turned into an even gross-er jelly-like thing. It looked so gross Ben almost threw up when he saw it.
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