My local grocery store.

Grocery store.........Cub Foods or HEB it is not.  The store I mostly shop at is called Welcome.  Thank you very much, I do feel welcome when I shop.  The cashier must think strange of me, she sees me practically everyday, probably thinks I have a family of 10 to feed, at least she is nice.  If you can think of a small grocery store in northern Minnesota that has just the essentials to get by, that is what I can find here.  And...since I live in an area where there is a larger concentration of foreigners, the store contains more "western" items (really?  where?).   First of all, the fruit and vegetable aisle......I can get onions, sweet peppers, potatoes (small), tomatoes, cukecumbers,  lettuce (romaine or iceberg), carrots (unbelievably large), celery, broccoli and cauliflower.  I can't find zucchini, I love zucchini!  Most of the time I can't find spinach, I love spinach! All of the other vegetables are ones I don't recognize or use.  So, I guess there is enough, it covers the basics.....barely.  For fruit, we are enjoying the mangos!  We also get kiwi, apples, bananas, watermelon, pineapple.  Berries are harder to come by and very expensive. We have tried some local fruit, wax apple and lychee....both good, but not something I crave.  They also sell a fruit called durian.  If you have watched any of the food travel shows, you might know what I am talking about. It is extremely stinky and has a very soft, gooey texture.  It is a love/hate fruit......I have not built up the courage to try it yet.  One thing I can say about the produce, it tastes very good, like it was meant to, it must be locally grown.  Sadly, I leave the produce aisle....onto meats and asian sauces.  Meat....what can I say?  I think Paul wants to become a vegetarian.  It just tastes different.  Right now Taiwan government is voting wether to allow US beef to be imported (it is not allowed at the moment).  I guess they are afraid of mad cow disease and a trace chemical sometimes found in ground beef.  We did manage to find a USDA steak, it was a yummy, pan-fried hunk of meat!  Chicken looks different.  The feet are usually included in the cut up pack (along with some other unrecognizable bits).  Some chickens are black, not appetizing.  The whole chicken is cut up in a way that I don't know what all the parts are.  I usually make chicken soup out of rotisserie chicken, but the rotisserie chickens here still have the heads and feet on them.....sorry, can't do it.  One thing I can say, the weirdly cut up raw chicken with extra bits makes a surprisingly good soup!  There are trays of cut up "meat".  I say "meat" only because I can't identify its origins.....beef, pork, other?  Trays of seafood/fish too, of course they all have their heads on, unfortunately, I am not a fan.  A whole section of tofu, it has taken me 3 months to find the right kind.  And then there is the sauces.  Soy sauce as far as the eye can see.  I cannot find hoisin sauce, sriracha, and almost couldn't find fish sauce......who would have thought I would not be able to find those things.  Dairy aisle.  I was told to buy the milk that had the cow on the label, otherwise you might not be so sure what you get.  I also have no idea which one is whole milk, 2%, or skim.  There are lots of other milks that have oatmeal in them, grains, fruit, etc.....of course most of this is deduced by pictures.  Small amount of cheese and yogurt, although plain yogurt and sour cream is hard to come by.  Good representation of spaghetti and sauce, too bad I don't crave me a bowl of pasta too often.  Huge oatmeal aisle...who knew?  You should see all the flavors,  crab, ham and corn, etc ........eewwww.  The import aisle is very small.  Pickles, ketchup, refried beans, salad dressing.....every week I go and stare at the shelves thinking that "maybe they got something new!"  Hopes dashed.  I can get SunChips in every conceivable gross flavor, Diet Coke, Goldfish crackers, decent wine.  What they lack is frozen foods.  The only thing other than pork dumplings I get in the frozen food section is frozen peas/corn/carrots (I select the one without the addition of ham).  Nothing else there.  Bread does not exist within the store, some stores will have a bread outpost where you can purchase a loaf after you have already checked out.  Other times you have to walk down the block to the bakery......toast it and slather it with butter, it is quite a treat!  I supplement with trips to the local import store and a monthly trip to Costco for meats, frozen pizza, frozen waffles, frozen blueberries and Starbucks coffee.

Customers dog, waiting patiently for their owner, no leash or chain.

Vegetable aisle.

Taiwan loves corn.  A whole section dedicated to corn, no other vegetable is honored in this way.  You even find corn on pizza and in oatmeal.

Hugest carrot I have ever seen!

32 ounce Nalgene bottle....carrot tastes good too!

2 foot long dried squid.  How do you cook it?

A big vat of ?????  I am afraid to ask.

Black chicken.

This is the import shelves.  It also needs to satisfy the wants of Europeans, not only Americans.

No thank you, I like my oatmeal with fruit and nuts.

Yum!, mushy peas anyone?  I guess a bachelor is the only one who would dare eat these?

MMMMMMM... char grilled steak flavored chips.  I guess thats better than all of the seafood flavored ones.  Also, anything flavored with cheese is sweet too.

Not to be confused with low class sugar.

Look at the lit shelves on the wall to the right.  There are half loaves of bread on the very top, that is my bread selection, white or wheat.  All of the other bread is sweet and savory buns of unknown  ingredients.