To the Asian market we go

I went to the massive Asian market in town today. It was prompted by the fact that Julia keeps refusing formula and seems to far prefer juice. The problem is that juice doesn't have much nutrients. Well, Wendy said at her Asian market there's this soy juice product that seems like it has nutrients. Score!

Aside from being the coffee capital of the world, Seattle is quite the place to get Asian food. It seems like you can get Japanese, Thai, Chinese, Korean within sneezing distance. I have a mild (okay, very mild) appreciation of Asian food. Both S and I do. I like egg rolls, teriyaki sauce, any rice except for fried rice. (I know I'm merging several types of Asian food there.) That's about it. S and I really don't ever go out for Asian food. Except for the Mongolian grill. I'm all over the Mongolian grill, but that's not really Asian food. It's a buffet. My friends dragged me to Korean once, and ooooh it was bad. I couldn't take the appetizers. Then I ordered teriyaki chicken, and the chicken was so fatty. Ick. Needless to say, if we're in the mood for Asian food, we get a spring roll out of the freezer or use Sun Bird packets on chicken and make rice. Let's just say I don't think I was Asian in my past life.

I knew of the Asian market, but I have never gone. You can probably see why. My Asian food cravings have always been quenched by Costco. Feeling out of place, I go into the store. The Asian market is huge! It's a big grocery store. They have really good, affordable fruit. I picked up a lb of fresh blueberries for $2.50. For around here, that's cheap. I pick some more fruit.

The prices are in English and another language. I have no idea what the other language is. My guess would be Korean because we have a large Korean population. Then I get to wondering if Japanese people can read Korean.

I am the only white girl in the store. There's one white guy who's with an Asian woman. (Merely observing) Everyone's really nice even though I'm cluelessly meandering through the store. What I find hysterical is that Christina Aguilera's "Genie in a Bottle" is playing on the loudspeaker. Who is their target market? Since I seem to be the only one bopping up and down to the music (the older Asian ladies are merely pushing their carts purposefully), I've got to wonder. Then 3 Doors Down came on, another of my faves.

Memo to self: I liked all the music at the Asian market.

I am trying to find this soy juice stuff. Since the place is so massive and I'm not sure how it's organized, I go aisle by aisle. A lot of products look familiar. There's quite a bit of overlap between American grocery stores and Asian stores. The noodle aisle did throw me for a loop. It was really intimidating. Packages you couldn't see into with Chinese or Japanese writing on them. I had no idea what anything was. The only thing in English was the nutrition facts. I checked the tofu section - no juice. I found a few bottles in one aisle but figured out it was apple cider vinegar and corn syrup. I kept scouring aisles. Nada. Finally found the beverage aisle. There were some American juices and some Asian juices, same with soda. I couldn't find the soy juice product. I found this thing called rice punch, but the nutrition facts didn't look good.

Asian markets have a ton of seafood. Makes sense. A lot of the Asian diet is noodles and fish. I had never seen so much fish in one place though. All those fishie eyeballs staring at you. It's weird to not see bread or milk. Wait, was there a dairy section and I missed it? I didn't see any cheese either. Shoot, maybe the soy juice was there. I took great enjoyment from the "Western foods" aisle. I think because there were Western foods on almost every aisle that it just seemed strange to also have a designated Western aisle. Lucky Charms were there, along with microwave popcorn and canned fruit. The Mexicans bring enchiladas to Asians, and we bring Lucky Charms.

I didn't find the juice, but I had an awesome experience. And I bought fruit. I will definitely go back when I'm not on such a mission. There was some cool stuff that I want to try.