Supermarkets
Other than pork and alcohol, there are many food which could not be found in Qatar. As I've been always complaining, we have to lug a huge amount of food from Singapore. It's not that I'm a glutton, and I'm not craving for exotic food. These are actually very basic foodstuff which we take all the time in Singapore
For example,
Fish balls
Sotong balls (or prawn balls, pork balls, mushroom balls, crab balls, etc)
Chinese mushroom (ok, this is sold in limited amt in some supermarkets but it's too expensive here)
Paus (charsiew pau, vege pau, lianrong pau, tau sar pau etc)
Dried shrimps
Dried ikan bilis
Soy beans (for soup making)
Peanuts (for soup/porridge)
Bottled cai xin
Fermented beancurd
Century eggs
Egg toufu
decent instant noodles (which are not koka, maggi, indomie or some filipino brand)
For the last few months, I haven't been able to find glutinous rice. I did find it once a year ago in a farway supermarket near Corniche. After that, I couldn't find it anymore in all the supermarkets I visited. So, aftermy CNY trip back home, I brought 1 kg glutinous rice back from Singapore with me. Then last week, ....
!!!
I found glutinous rice right at my nearest supermarket, Lulu. And they are in 2 kg packs, which is quite manageable. I have seen 20 kg packs before which I could not possible buy as we can't finish it.
Isn't this infuriating?
We forgot to buy a particular dark soya sauce with us this time. My husband really misses it.
Actually I didn't really forget it, I remembered the last bottle we're been using is finishing soon. It's just that I thought there was a large bottle of this at the back of our pantry cabinet. It turned out that the large bottle is a watery form of dark soya sauce, while what we missed is the viscous type (the kind you eat with Hainaness chicken rice). Well, that large bottle also has green label, I really could blame myself for mistaking.
My husband misses it so much that he asked our friend, Guan, to buy this and pass it to a colleague who was in Singapore for a few days, and bring it back to Qatar. I had to google for a photo of it so that Guan could understand what to buy.
For example,
Fish balls
Sotong balls (or prawn balls, pork balls, mushroom balls, crab balls, etc)
Chinese mushroom (ok, this is sold in limited amt in some supermarkets but it's too expensive here)
Paus (charsiew pau, vege pau, lianrong pau, tau sar pau etc)
Dried shrimps
Dried ikan bilis
Soy beans (for soup making)
Peanuts (for soup/porridge)
Bottled cai xin
Fermented beancurd
Century eggs
Egg toufu
decent instant noodles (which are not koka, maggi, indomie or some filipino brand)
For the last few months, I haven't been able to find glutinous rice. I did find it once a year ago in a farway supermarket near Corniche. After that, I couldn't find it anymore in all the supermarkets I visited. So, aftermy CNY trip back home, I brought 1 kg glutinous rice back from Singapore with me. Then last week, ....
!!!
I found glutinous rice right at my nearest supermarket, Lulu. And they are in 2 kg packs, which is quite manageable. I have seen 20 kg packs before which I could not possible buy as we can't finish it.
Isn't this infuriating?
We forgot to buy a particular dark soya sauce with us this time. My husband really misses it.
Actually I didn't really forget it, I remembered the last bottle we're been using is finishing soon. It's just that I thought there was a large bottle of this at the back of our pantry cabinet. It turned out that the large bottle is a watery form of dark soya sauce, while what we missed is the viscous type (the kind you eat with Hainaness chicken rice). Well, that large bottle also has green label, I really could blame myself for mistaking.
My husband misses it so much that he asked our friend, Guan, to buy this and pass it to a colleague who was in Singapore for a few days, and bring it back to Qatar. I had to google for a photo of it so that Guan could understand what to buy.
You know the problem with the supermarkets here? They don't really label their fresh produce.
Sometimes they jumble up the labels, you see a basket of cucumbers but when you raise your head to see the label above, it says "cabbage", then you have to search around for the label for "cucumbers" or "zucchinis" to find out the price. This is not a huge issue actually. The issue comes when I don't recognize the products.
You must be laughing at me, the product is in front of you, why you cannot see ah?
Ok, maybe it's my fault that I haven't been visiting the supermarket or wet market when I was in Singapore. But hello, why would I need to go supermarket to buy vege when I'm in Singapore? I don't need to cook also.
As Qatar sells very limited type of leafy vege (which I couldn't differentiate), I have no issue. At least I can tell what is cabbage, what is lettuce and what is chinese cabbage. But I have an issue when it comes to roots. I cannot really tell apart tapioca, yam, sweet potatoes, lotus roots (unless it's already broken apart and I can see the insides). Even if it's just yam, there are few types. And some yams are not really yams, if you know what I mean.
Who can recognize this pile of roots?
You see, they are all messed up, dunno which is which. Even if got label, you wouldn't know which label goes with what. Worse still, usually these are just labeled as "Indian vegetables"
I remembered I once cooked yam rice, but I used tapioca. We were wondering why the "yam" is not fragrant at all, doesn't taste like yam. Later on, I realize that it was tapioca. Sounds stupid.
posted by WSW at 8:14 PM
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