John Wise

Shopping for food here in Arizona is both a luxury and a chore. In order for me to collect the essentials for Caroline and my diet, I have more than a dozen locations I visit to find my desired ingredients. At the moment, I’m fasting which should be an indicator to my lizard brain to NOT visit anywhere that serves or sells food of any kind, but it’s inevitable that towards the end of food deprivation I go a bit nuts. The photo above represents a few things from nearly half-a-dozen shops I’ve patronized in the past 24 hours.

On the left is a loaf of German coarse rye bread from Heidelberg Bakery, the yellow container of Goldsaft sugarbeet syrup is from the same place. The ginger required me to visit three Asian stores as one had ginger that was drying out, the other had this rhizome that had experienced freezing which made it slimy, and then finally at H-Mart Korean grocery, I was able to nab the 11 pounds I require for a Burmese salad ingredient I need to replenish. While at H-Mart I also picked up silky tofu we use in the Korean dish Sundubu Jigae I’ve mentioned here before. The pomegranate and cashews are from Costco. There’s a bag of Khatta Meetha and a jar of Gujarati Methia Mango Pickle, both of Indian origins that Caroline and I bought at Turmeric Indian Cash & Carry. Below the pickle is a Chinese Szechuan Pepper Pickle we purchased at Lee Lee’s Asian Grocery where the Mae Ploy Panang Curry Paste was also found. The black currant compote from Poland was also found at Lee Lee’s but typically we’ll fetch that kind of stuff from somewhere like our nearby Balkan Bakery or another Eastern European grocer. Finally, the Rhubarb soda is definitely not from America and had to be ordered through Amazon like so many other things including our favorite Italian vinegar, bulk Himalayan salt, peppercorns from the four corners of the earth, two-year aged soy sauce, and various bulk and ethnic items.

But we’re not done. Not only did I buy other stuff at all those stores while I was out shopping, part of our repertoire includes stops at Whole Foods, a Carniceria around the corner, Food City (another Mexican-centric store), Mekong (Vietnamese-centric), and Nelson’s Fish Market, along with some of the traditional American grocery stores. Other online sources include Mangalitsa Estates for their pork (just look up Mangalitsa pig to see them), a place called Walleye Direct where we buy frozen walleye and perch, two different California growers from whom we buy bulk almonds and walnuts, Honey Pacifica because only eucalyptus honey will do, and Alma Gourmet when you’ve just got to have authentic Guanciale (pork jowl) from Italy.

This list is hardly definitive but is merely an example of some of the sources we are able to utilize. It is also meant to be a reminder to myself how fortunate Caroline and I are to be willing to take advantage of the food diversity we have access to. Certainly, a fair amount of time has to be invested in learning about the ingredients we have grown fond of or have an interest in while the time to collect these foodstuffs must be taken into account, but the luxury of sampling the breadth of earth’s many cultural offerings is never lost on us. While certain items can be pricey such as the two-year-old soy sauce, vinegar, Mangalitsa, and various German foods, the secret of it all is that Asian, Indian, and Hispanic stores have incredible bargains due to the way their commodities are bought, i.e., bulk as nobody only buys a pound of rice, an ounce of turmeric, or canned beans when dry beans in a 20-pound bag are so cheap.

There’s another reason for this post and that is the sense of disappointment we encounter when shopping in the various ethnic grocery’s around the Phoenix, Mesa, Tempe area. You see, we often notice that we are but a couple of a small handful of white customers. Many of the other white customers are with spouses of various ethnicities so that’s their way in. The black people we see shopping in these shops are often Guyanese, Jamaican, or African and are well accustomed to buying whole fish, goat, various organ meats, and bulk spices that help flavor the world’s foods beyond salt and pepper. The problem is that the dominant cultures are not present which means they are stuck in their tiny patterns of eating what they know and not supporting these stores that offer us culinary luxuries from around the world that we can try in our own homes.

I started writing this post before we left home for attending Serb Fest here in Phoenix, Arizona. While we’ve traveled both here in-country and abroad, this is our first festival in years (due to the pandemic) and hopefully not our last. We’ve discussed revisiting the Renaissance Festival this coming spring but this event just recently came to our attention when our friend Brinn told us about it.

I’m sharing this much before we even get there as I can’t even be certain we’ll attend, even after driving out to it. You see, we must get cash (a pain in the butt) then we must contend with parking, a potential other pain in the butt. Once we are on the grounds, I’ll be making a quick evaluation about how I see the attitudes of the other attendees and how many are smoking; if they are poor impressions, we’ll bounce. I’m well aware that these attitudes are not helpful in advancing the potential of our attendance, but when the real payoff is the time spent with Caroline as she reads to me on the way there and the way back home, I can’t help but have great expectations of where I’m willing to offer my time.

So, if I can overcome my anxieties, we’ll be enjoying some ćevapčići and maybe a few other Balkan favorites this afternoon. Along the way, I’ll grab a photo or two to accompany this post with content-appropriate imagery, or maybe just another photo of Caroline reading a book to me. Time to go pick her up.

Obviously, we made it onto the grounds of the Saint Sava Serbian Orthodox Church and we were joined by the aforementioned Brinn, who took the photo. It’s great to attend these types of events, but at the same time, it often occurs that we feel like we are on an island as though everyone else attending can easily see we are not of Serbian heritage and thus shun us. Or maybe it’s because we don’t smoke and drink or speak Serbian, know how to dance, wear the right clothes, or have the wrong hair color? This is definitely not unique to this festival and has typically required us to make a serious effort to engage in talking with someone but that’s not always convenient when the other people attending are celebrating the day with close friends and family. As happened with our visit two years ago we managed to hang out about 90 minutes before bailing out, well at least some money was spent with the Serbian community that in part helps support their church and a way of life worth cherishing.