Tops is Big

Had my dad and my stepmom over for dinner.  Figured I’d make some Chinese food tonight.  That will mean a visit to the market.  Soon I’ll master this.  But it’s been a Stop and Shop for as long as I’ve known it.  That’s the brand I’d associate the market with.  But they’ve changed the name to “Tops”.  Pithy.  It certainly suggests the apogee of stopping and shopping.  I think there was a super market called the A&P.  The Atlantic and Pacific?  This was also where we shopped until we didn’t anymore, because someone bought someone else and they started calling it something like Stop and Shop.

Tops is big.  American supermarkets are necessarily big.  It is unnerving how thoughtfully they’ve anticipated every possible mass market craving and polished the shopping experience so facilitate mass consumption.  The “Asian food” section is however, rather paltry.  I’m not the target.  And regardless they have lots of things I don’t usually have access to, like pizza dough and carrot juice.  But tonight, I’m supposed to make something Chinese and I grab the ingredients I normally would, like chicken and garlic and rice and try to pick out a few sauces, that might help to bring things back home. 

I should have bought some peanut oil.  Even some Canola oil would have been better than the olive oil I have at home.  The diced-up chicken won’t taste get crispy in a frying pan with the same oil we use for dressing salad.  We don’t even have the flames of a proper stove but rather the coils of something electric that is hard to read.  It’s up as hot as it can go, but the activity in the pan isn’t sufficiently ferocious. 

These western eggplants are too big and unwieldy.  I’m suspicious that they won’t taste right no matter how I slice them.  I have some cold cucumber and garlic in mind, but I can’t seem to find any Chinese rice vinegar and the balsamic vinegar won’t do.  Why didn’t I think of all these things back at Tops. 

It all comes off well enough.  My dad and my step mom are enjoying themselves.  I spy my niece and she seems to be eating along, heartily enough.   I know my younger one.  She knows my dishes.  She isn’t turning her nose.  My wife is. But she always does.  And I did the same for her dinner the night before.  Neither of us seem to have more than surface courtesies to offer each other on the topic of what to prepare and how.

Sunday, 09/01/19