Field Trip - Food Bazaar

I wanted to share with you one of my favorite places to go re-stock my inventory of cans.  This is Food Bazaar in Bridgeport, CT.  It's a small chain of grocery stores in the tri-state area (NY, NJ, CT) that cater to a very diverse and multicultural demographic. The chain is relatively small, but everything else about Food Bazaar is larger than life from the mounds of Yucca and Tomatillos to the 9 ft. floor to ceiling end cap displays.

For those who live in New York City, this store offers about the equivalent in terms of the availability of unique ingredients  that you wouldn't find in a suburban Stop and Shop.  

In case you are looking forward to a recipe with this ingredient, I wouldn't hold your breath.  Or this one...

The contents of this package were not visible, nor could I bring myself to even look at them.  But it is intriguing. 

Along with about every edible piece of an animal, there are some great deals, for the more traditional carnivore.

I also love exploring the aisles.  This place redefines the small selection of ethnic ingredients you might find elsewhere.  Instead of Latin foods, aisles are specifically marked Eucadorian, Colombian, Peruvian, catering to every little deviation of South American cuisine.  Asian aisle?  No, there's Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, not to mention what you can find in the refrigerated sections.  So you can imagine what kind of cans I find...

I didn't even know what this was.  It is apparently the national fruit of Jamaica and needs to be harvested, prepared  and cooked very carefully or you will be "ackee-ing" all over the place and can potentially die.  The fruit needs to be picked only when the pod it comes in has naturally opened.  Only the arils of this fruit can be eaten and need to be boiled for 30 minutes.  Under ripe fruit is toxic. I got a kick out of this description on Wikipedia. "Though it may be poisonous when improperly prepared, ackee has high nutritional value and is rich in essential fatty acids, vitamin A, zinc, and protein." I don't know, maybe not worth the risk.  Instead, I bought a can of Lychee and Figs - so let's see what I come up with for that.

I took this picture in case someone comes after me for using Andy Warhol's image in my masthead

Cans at Food Bazaar also come in all sorts of shapes and sizes including this 6 lb commercial sizes

If you ever get a chance you should visit this store.  It is highly educational and a lot of fun. That's about it for our visit.  Thanks for coming shopping with me.