Food Stories

1) I've mentioned before that produce is very affordable here.  Just wanted to show you what that looks like.  We spent less than $7 total on all of the peppers, lemons, and avocados shown below:

2) Little Guy eats a lot of oats.  Recently, I've also started cooking some semolina (smeed in Arabic, which is always fun to say) for him.  We usually add fruit to his cereals, but today I mixed in dehydrated peas.  Sound delicious?  Wait, it gets better.  I call this, cleverly, Pea Smeed.  It looks a little like pistachio pudding (are you hungry yet?).

I was snacking while I fed him Pea Smeed; Cheerios and peanut butter for me (you know, also legume and grain, but so much tastier).  Why don't I eat Cheerios with milk like a normal person?  Simple: a) there is no milk in our house and b) peanut butter is good.

Which brings me to another story.

3) I love peanut butter.  I have consumed it in unreasonable quantities since I was very small.  I typically prefer natural peanut butter, but that's impossible to find here, and I don't have a blender or food processor to make it myself.  For the first couple of weeks after we arrived, I scoured the peanut butter shelf every time we went to the supermarket and, ultimately, turned up my nose at the lots-of-sugar-added options.  But then I got desperate; I had to pick something.  Like everything else (except produce, obviously!), peanut butter is expensive, BUT our supermarket sold small-ish jars of Luna brand peanut butter (from Saudi Arabia) for about $2.  I tried it and, in spite of the sugar, it tasted good.  So all was well for about 10 days, and I ate a lot of peanut noodles for lunch.

Then I bought the last jar of Luna peanut butter off the shelf at our store.  No problem, I figured, they've sold out (to me!), but they'll restock soon, certainly before I finish off this jar.  So I checked back.  Again.  And again.  Nothing.  I started making special trips to other supermarkets in our area.  Ethan popped into every market that he passed coming home each day.  No sign of Luna peanut butter.  Even the super-big branch of the market we use had no Luna.

Reality sank in: I ate the last jar of Luna peanut butter ever made.

Finally, desperate again (this IS peanut butter we're talking about), I surveyed my remaining options (Peter Pan, Kroger, American Garden, Magic Time...there are plenty to choose from, but they're all basically the same) and bought one.  It cost more than double what Luna did.  But it had to be done.