Food, Food, Food!

Well, I've broken the 'culture shock' hurdle.  I mean, I've experienced my first, "I just want to go home where it's normal" moment.  I had high hopes that it wouldn't happen for weeks.  Ah well.   The issue, as you may have guessed, is food.   The problems are:  a) We don't eat seafood.  period.  And we happen to be living on an island in Asia!  LOL  b) 4/5 of my family doesn't like spicy.  Singaporeans in general prefer spicy.  So, no seafood and no spicy eliminates aprox. 95% of the food here.   c) We are, by nature, total cheap skates.  We buy the store brand, we look for sales, etc.   d) My kids are notoriously difficult to please when it comes to food.  - even Western food.  They'll eat about 10% of what I consider a normal (Western) diet.

Now, drop the 5 of us in a grocery store on the 4th level of a mall (they're ALL inside a mall!) with the knowledge that whatever we buy we have to schlep down 4 escalators, through the subway, and 1/4 mile back to the apt., which is at the back of the property up 12 floors.  (Fine.  I'm a whiner.)    Picture the kids bickering about who gets to walk in front of the cart, Mom freaking out about $7.50 small jars of peanut butter, and Dad saying, "You're gonna have to carry that" about everything that goes in the cart.  The shelves are stocked full of 'eye of bat' and 'newt wing' (o.k., I exaggerate - but they DID have seaweed flavored Pringles, as well as the shrimp flavor)  Beef and turkey are each $12 per pound (on sale!).  I'm starting to think we're going to eat plain chicken and rice for supper every night for 2 years.  Except 2/3 of the kids won't eat rice.  [We actually discussed to possibility of 'starving them into eating rice'.  No joke.  The problem is, we couldn't have ANY other food in the house because they'd sneak that in the middle of the night.]  

I almost cried in the store.

We managed to get ingredients for a 'pasta and sauce' supper, and most of what I'd need to make Poppy Seed chicken, as well as ingredients for the world's most expensive pb &j and ham and cheese sandwiches.  total: $83.68 in Singapore dollars.   After we got back, Erin decided to go to Mustafa's which is a huge department store in Little India.  (We were warned not to go on Sunday, but we forgot.  Sunday is the day all the Indians go shopping.)  We had seen converters/adaptors there cheap.  Also, we needed laundry detergent.  And since we hadn't found poppy seeds at the grocery store, I told him to get some there since the Indians always have lots of good spices -cheap.  He looked around for a while and couldn't find any poppy seed in the spice section.  He asked a clerk and the response was, "No can sell in Singapore".  Erin's not sure if the guy was looking at him as though he were a heroin addict or not.  (The penalty for just about anything having to do with drugs here is death.)  So, we'll have to change that poppy seed chicken recipe to sesame seed or something else.

Upon further reflection, I'm just going to have to come to terms with the fact that we can EITHER be picky or cheap.  But not both.  And since I really don't think we're going to give up on the picky (Mom does her best, but it's a constant, uphill battle.), it looks like some of our 'cost of living' allowance is going to go to the grocery store each week.  But we're still going to gripe about it, I think (it's just the way us cheap-o's work!).  Two 14" pizzas for $34!!?!

And to be fair, the store we went to yesterday (Fair Price) is supposed to be the cheapest and most 'local'.  And I think this was a pretty small rendition whose small, cramped isles added to the tension.  There are a couple of other stores (Cold Storage and CarreFour) that cater more to ex-pats and will deliver if you buy over a certain amount.  (yea!)

I'm trying to be a good example in the "try it no matter what it looks like" department.  At breakfast one of the choices for things to spread on your toast is some green stuff with the consistency of butter.  Last week, I put a little on my plate and decided it was yummy.  I've been eating it every morning.  Today I asked the lady what it was and she said, "coconut and [something]" (-possibly "panapen" -which is also called breadfruit or pana de pepita - at least that's the right color.).  First of all, I do NOT like coconut flavor - but this stuff is good, and I'm going to keep eating it.

Today, #2 child (who now wants to be called by his middle name to keep kids from using the second syllable of his 1st name in a derogatory manner), tried a fried thing at breakfast.  It could've been an egg roll, but the cabbage wasn't obvious like most egg rolls, so I'm not sure -and it was triangular instead of tubular.  Gigantic progress that he tried it, and universal progress that he took second and third bites.  Hoo-ray! Hoo-ray!

So, maybe by the time we leave here we will have made some progress into trying new things and finding a few we like.

Now where did I put that recipe with the Bok Choy?