Well after several years of having fun with the blog I’m going to put the old Culinary Passport in the drawer. Where I live now isn’t great for finding new international restaurants without driving a good distance. If I want new international dishes I’d do better trying to cook them up myself. That realization did inspire my mini-series to close out on.

I’m going to visit some international grocery stores and see what’s what. I’m starting with International Food & Deli in Anderson. I plan to look for Asian & Latin American markets near me and if I come across African or Caribbean market those could be part of the countdown as well. Anyway the first on the docket was this one.

They are off a main round on a side road that you would not find unless you mapped it out first. It is small but they use all the space to stock up on primarily eastern European goods. Well I say that but maybe it would be more accurate in some cases to say European inspired since a lot of the items were made in the US.

The layout has coolers around 3 walls with meats, fish, dairy, perogies, frozen treats and more. The center has interesting square shelves that are stocked with jars of pickled stuff, tins of fishy stuff, bags of grains, snacks, jams, and many other goods. I went in planning to spend $20 bucks in each of 5 categories; meat, cheese, frozen food, boxed / jarred foods, and snacks. I was pretty close at $90. The items were priced at a little bit of a premium as you might expect from a specialty store. Since I expected it I was quite happy to pick out my items and hit the checkout.

I did fully walk the store before adding the first item to my basket just to make sure I didn’t blow my budget on the first aisle and have remorse at missing something good. As I walked around several people came in and out making purchases and most of them were eastern European. “How do you know Mr Smarty Pants?”, I hear you wondering. They were speaking non-English languages and while I was not able to determine which ones I do know enough to place the general global location. That made me feel better about the authenticity and quality of the products. Here is my haul.

The products I got were made in the US, Ukraine, Poland, Russia, Turkey & Croatia. I plan to construct a few meals with combos of items here. Red lentils and some of the sausage, the perogies with the kielbasa, maybe sausage and the shredded red cabbage with apples. The farmers cheese will have to be used in there somewhere. The snacks include some seed / nut bars, coffee & cream sugar cookies, some pâtés and wild raspberry jam. Oh and not to forget the Holland hard cheese slices or the kvass to drink.

I’ll post some photos and comments how things turn out on the Culinary-Passport Facebook page. I’m planning to keep that live even after the blog is shuttered.