mystery shopper
Grocery shopping here nearly always comes with elements of surprise or mystery. Sometimes the shop will have received a new shipment of imported products, and the shelves will be full of familiar packages and my day will immediately brighten. Othertimes, I'll walk in and immediately feel a pang of regret that I didn't buy that extra box of Cheerios the last time that I was in. I will never *not* buy an extra box of Cheerios on a go forward basis, by the way.
The element of mystery usually comes into play when I get the wacky idea to try cooking or baking something new. Today, it was a recipe for pumpkin loaf. I actually needed to buy a fair amount of the ingredients, but many of them were pantry basics, like brown sugar and chocolate chips (okay, the recipe called for nuts, but why would I make something with nuts when I could use chocolate chips instead?). One thing that I would be buying for the first time in Thailand was evaporated milk. I figured that it wouldn't be hard to find as there seemed to be a plethora of canned milk products available here. Alas, I came home in the freakish heat and humidity empty-handed.
There was something on the shelf that I think *might* have been evaporated milk. The thing that gave me pause was that the Thai characters on the can were identical to those on the can of sweetened condensed milk. I really had no idea what I was considering buying. I might as well admit that. Anyway. Chef Google produced many suggestions to use half-and-half as a substitute for evaporated milk, and hunting the grocery store for half-and-half appeals to me more than reducing whole milk on the stovetop (another frequently suggested substitution). So, maybe I'll still end up baking a pumpkin loaf this upcoming week ...
