Ingredients: The Scavenger Hunt

Everyone knows that there's more to cooking than what you do in the kitchen: one of the most important things is doing the shopping. With the advent of supermarkets and instant cooking, some ingredients are becoming harder and harder to find. When I first moved in- I wanted to try a lemon chicken recipe I had which called for lemon curd. After figuring out what I was looking for, I found it in only one of the 4 grocery stores in town. More recently, I've been looking for frozen rhubarb and Mexican sweet chocolate. As far as the frozen rhubarb goes, it seems that the dole product has had a falling out with major supermarkets, and I will have to replace it with fresh rhubarb. For the Mexican sweet chocolate, I am lucky enough to work with a Mexican man who was able to direct me to a handful of Mexican grocers, and tell me at least one brand that I'll definitely be able to find.

The lesson here- is when you have a recipe that calls for an ingredient that you're not completely familiar with, look for that ingredient first before you get any others, or make any plan to use that recipe. Not everything is as readily available as you might think.