Can’t Always Get What You Want
So today I did my weekly grocery shopping at one of the three local grocery stores. Since there are so many nearby I tend to shop at whichever is most convenient any given week; and this week’s winner was Kroger. For the past several years I have been following the Menu-Mailer from SavingDinner.com to help me plan my shopping and menus to make life easier for myself. However, lately (as in the past year or so) the ingredients have been getting more and more esoteric. In fact, I often have to visit at least 2 of the local grocery stores and sometimes even make the 45 minute drive to Whole Foods or Central Market in order to find items on the list. Even more often I have to make substitutions. I have no idea where the folks who design the weekly menus shop, but it certainly isn’t in my grocery store.
Since I normally don’t realize what I won’t be able to find until after I’m already at the store, I have taken to looking these things up on my iPhone. Google is a wonderful thing. I used to ask the butcher/produce manager/fishmonger/etc. what an appropriate substitution would be, but after getting lots of clueless looks (well except from the folks at Whole Foods and Central Market) I mostly just rely on the Internet. Normally the first search is to figure out what in the world is the odd ingredient in the first place. Then after some futile searching around I typically repeat the search with “substitution” added. Today’s missing item was a beef tri-tip roast. The butcher at the store looked at me like I was crazy when I asked. Enter Google. Turns out a tri-tip roast is a cut of sirloin taken from the flank and there’s only one per side of beef. And if you can’t find one (which you might not be able to because it’s usually cut up for stew beef) you can substitute a flank steak. Now those I could find.