I thought I would write a blog post about some of my favorite things that I've found at the grocery store so far.
One of my favorite foods is mushrooms and you can find a TON of different types of mushrooms at the store... and all of them are affordable! In Seattle, usually only crimini or white mushrooms are affordable; wild mushrooms cost an arm and a leg and we only buy portabella or shitake mushrooms for special occasions. But here I buy fancy mushrooms every time I go to the store!!!
Kyle took a bunch of pictures of different types of mushrooms we can buy... and these aren't even all of them!
The following is an addition from Molly M. regarding the mushroom photo above. I thought it was interesting and wanted to share it with everyone else. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've gotten all but one of these from the Korean market and other Asian markets, where they also aren't very expensive (compared to a Whole Food Market wild-caught Chanterelle, for instance). Fresh Shiitake are sold about everywhere (around here and in the Bay Area anyway) nowadays. Enoki are pretty common too.
Here's what I concluded about mine, and yours, from the pictures.
From bottom left in the group picture (of mushrooms), and working counterclockwise:
Fresh Shiitake at 6:00
Two kinds of Shimeji ( Wikipedia says Hypsizygus tesselatus) -- the white one is a newish cultivar. I didn't like the ones I got all that much. It's amazing how much more there is about these mushrooms on the web now -- lots of descriptions about how they're used. I have something like it that pops up on dying wood at the bases of trees once in a while -- at, call it 9:00 for both. The vacuum packed ones might be pickled or salted Shimeji?
More Shiitake (different cultivar?), I suspect, at top left.
Next, the Eryngi, a relative of the oyster mushroom (genus Pleurotus). King Trumpet in American. Hokio is an American company (also? exclusively?) so were your Eryngi imported I wonder? I've only seen them in Asian stores here.
The skinny little guys are Enoke, of course. Pretty good in a salad.
The wide thin one at bottom right looks like Pleurotus, one of the many oyster mushrooms. They grow in big colonies on tree trunks, and come back year after year. They seem to like a little life in the tree but can be cultivated on logs, and are. Pleurotus is the a gilled mushroom. The other choice would be Maitake, which is a polypore (think Artists' Conk, the big plate-like woody mushroom with the nice white drawing surface underneath) and a relative of Chicken of the Woods -- the bright yellow or orange Polyporus sulphureus , which has very thick edges that you cut off. Maitake is the one I haven't seen, but Hokio grows it. I hardly ever look for particular mushrooms -- just grab anything I haven't ever had before!
m
Here's what I concluded about mine, and yours, from the pictures.
From bottom left in the group picture (of mushrooms), and working counterclockwise:
Fresh Shiitake at 6:00
Two kinds of Shimeji ( Wikipedia says Hypsizygus tesselatus) -- the white one is a newish cultivar. I didn't like the ones I got all that much. It's amazing how much more there is about these mushrooms on the web now -- lots of descriptions about how they're used. I have something like it that pops up on dying wood at the bases of trees once in a while -- at, call it 9:00 for both. The vacuum packed ones might be pickled or salted Shimeji?
More Shiitake (different cultivar?), I suspect, at top left.
Next, the Eryngi, a relative of the oyster mushroom (genus Pleurotus). King Trumpet in American. Hokio is an American company (also? exclusively?) so were your Eryngi imported I wonder? I've only seen them in Asian stores here.
The skinny little guys are Enoke, of course. Pretty good in a salad.
The wide thin one at bottom right looks like Pleurotus, one of the many oyster mushrooms. They grow in big colonies on tree trunks, and come back year after year. They seem to like a little life in the tree but can be cultivated on logs, and are. Pleurotus is the a gilled mushroom. The other choice would be Maitake, which is a polypore (think Artists' Conk, the big plate-like woody mushroom with the nice white drawing surface underneath) and a relative of Chicken of the Woods -- the bright yellow or orange Polyporus sulphureus , which has very thick edges that you cut off. Maitake is the one I haven't seen, but Hokio grows it. I hardly ever look for particular mushrooms -- just grab anything I haven't ever had before!
m
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Here's a rice dish I made with a bunch of them. It was tasty.
Some other favorite foods we've found at the store are fresh noodles (pictured below), fresh gyoza, many different kinds of tofu, daikon radishes and interesting green leafy vegetables that we can't identify.
And some people have been asking about sweets.
This is the best chocolate bar company that I've found so far (in my milk-chocolate opinion).
This is our favorite hard candy-- Mitsuya Cider is a type of soda, and the candy is like soda-- fizzy.
And this is my favorite cookie.
So there you have it-- some things at the grocery store that make me excited.
-Bre (and Kyle)
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