FIELD TRIP! Matthew’s Foods

Finally! After weeks of saying “Sure, we’re going,” but being daunted by the wind/rain/sleet/hail/dark of night, we finally had SUN, and thus made our way to Matthew’s Foods, which turns out to be only a little over a mile away from our flat, and it takes up four storefronts (yet NONE of the cab drivers or anyone we talked to knew where it was. Go figure). We didn’t know, or we’d have been there way before today! (It’s near some steam-spewing distilleries and the dire neighborhood of Possil Park, however, a neighborhood we’ve seen on TV shows about bad areas of Glasgow, so we’ll be going there in the MORNINGS, and moving through the area quickly!) It was SO NICE to go into an Asian Market and see familiar foods — limes, taro root, all manner of greens and Chinese pancakes for mu-shu. And the tofu — oh, the rows and rows of tofu of all firmness and silkiness, in blocks and tubes. (Yes, we got followed around the store by a grim looking Chinese man after we took pictures of it, but oh well! I’m sure they think we’re just some other weird foreigners…)

An exciting discovery in the tofu aisle made us stop dead: Glasgow has a tofu factory. The lovely, FRESH tofu was priced out to be £2.88 / kg instead of the £5.52 / kg we have found at Tesco or Asda (a curse be upon their name). So, we bought tofu … and can we say how wonderful it is? It’s not the hybridized “firm silken” stuff, found in the Blue Dragon cartons, nor is it the super “firm” we’ve gotten from Calderon Foods, it’s … well, the right tofu! Fresh, medium firm, non-GMO, made locally and far less expensive!? … Altogether it’s good stuff!

No field trip is complete without purchases of foods you don’t really need but want anyway. Not the “eggplants” (see why Americans call them that now? I know – here they’re aubergines, but there IS a reason for the name!), nor the pickled squid nor the massive taro roots nor the heads of wheat — or some sort of herb — or the slabs of rock sugar made it into our basket (we might have picked up the squid for a picture but it looked scary). We splurged instead on hunks of coconut dried in sugar, dried bean curd sheets, hot and spicy seaweed and delicious mae ploy sauce. Those are the flavors of many a quick stir-fry of the past. (And, no, we didn’t buy any Thai Betel nut … but we thought of some friends at home, who’ve lived in Thailand, so had to take the picture. We doubt you can buy Betel nut in the US, as it is a mild narcotic, and repeated use rots the teeth to black stubs. Lovely!)

It was funny to find bowls that match a Chinese bowl we have here that friends picked up in Japantown in San Francisco ages ago. Which just goes to tell you that you can find a little corner of Asia anywhere in the world. Thank GOODNESS. We hadn’t realized how much we’d missed it.

As you can see, we had a marvelous lunch!

Okay, here’s a quick thought for our UK readers: what’s a brand of jam that you know of that isn’t too sweet? We usually enjoy St. Dalfour, but tried to find a local product and purchased Mackay’s ginger and rhubarb jam — and wow is that stuff sweet! What do the rest of you buy when you don’t have the fresh berries and all to make your own jams?

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