Quote:
Originally Posted by Stitchawl
I think a market like the typical Asian market would make the average American housewife afraid to buy... especially the prepared foods, meats and poultry. Nothing is wrapped. Nothing is under glass. Everything is out, exposed to the air. Exposed to people walking past. Nothing has the sterile, sanitized feel of a modern supermarket, where everything is pre-packaged.
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That will depend on the housewife.
My SO does daily food shopping, and little of it comes from the supermarket. There's an open air farmer's market convenient to us in NYC, and she also shops weekly in Chinatown. The Chinese markets don't have the open space yours does, but are otherwise similar. Things are not wrapped, processed, preserved, pre-packaged or otherwise sterile.
Of course, my SO is a gourmet quality cook and multi-lingual - she's fluent in Spanish, and French if it involves food and cooking, and is picking up bits of Cantonese by osmosis from shopping in Chinatown. She's seen as simply another Chinese housewife shopping for the family with her folding cart, save that she doesn't happen to be Chinese. (And she's a capable Chinese style cook.)
Part of the incentive for her is that she enjoys that sort of shopping, and cooking with fresh ingredients. Another is health related - she has an assortment of allergies, and many preprocessed and preserved foods contain things she's allergic to. Stuff she buys at the farmer's and Chinese markets are things she knows she can prepare and eat.
She's currently considering a suggestion from farmer's market vendors that she buy unpasteurized raw milk and make her own cheese. I've been handed a book of dishes and asked to pick out stuff involving cheese that might interest me.
Dinner tonight is lamb stew. The lamb neck bones came from the supermarket. The rest is daily farmer's market produce.
One thing I've been pleased by over the decades is the gradual broadening of the American palate. My mother was an expatriate Brit, whose family emigrated to Canada when she was a child, and who met my father in the US during WWII. She was a superb baker, but mediocre cook, with a horror of spices. (She would cringe when I sprinkled pepper on something.) I didn't learn to properly appreciate many foods till I moved out own my own and learned to cook for myself.
Several decades ago, I worked for a major bank. One year during my tenure, the Finance (where I worked) and Marketing departments had a combined holiday party at a French event space, arranged by a French speaking secretary in Marketing. I found myself sitting at a table with the VP Finance Director, the AVP Accounting Manager, and the AVP Financial Controller (my boss.) Food came out to an at best guarded reception with me trying to explain.
"What's this?"
"That's a salad with Dijon mustard sauce! It's great!"
"And what's this?"
"That's a mushroom stuffed with crab meat. It's only one of the best things I've ever eaten!"
"I dunno. I'm kind of a meat and potatoes guy..."
I managed to
not run screaming into the night, but it took some doing.
I'd expect rather better now.
______
Dennis