Grocery Shopping

This is the Carrefour soy sauce aisle:

50 metres of unadulterated choice.  Only you can't read anything so you laugh until you cry and then walk away empty-handed.  And then you go back.  

Because you refuse to be beaten by a condiment. 

1.5 hours later, victory is mine.  I mean, victory is shallow because all the vegetables I bagged in the fresh food section got taken away and put behind the cashier's till.  In an elaborate guessing game, I learned that one must weigh one's produce and print the sticker IN the fresh food section.  All this from an eye wiggle and hand movement.  On the upside, frozen and fresh dumplings are super cheap.  And super delicious: 

 

But the thing in the bowl on the left…meh.  When a woman behind the counter stuck her whole hand into a plastic bag and then into the vat of pre-prepared whatever, I should've known.  Maybe it's the image of the hand reaching in but I suspect it was some kind of undercooked bamboo/lotus root/plant extract that was then seasoned with the fire of a hundred chillies. 

And when I'm having an off day and I want a taste of home (because the taste of home has become bad tex-mex versions of my former grandparental nation), the shop at the bottom of my compound sells these beauties: 

You can never go wrong with red wine.