I almost bought a jar of date mush yesterday at a gas station on the way home from work. Seriously, it's owned by Middle Easterners and they have some interesting things on the shelves. I don't think they have millet, but they do sell ghee (clarified butter). So if I get some millet at the local Middle Eastern food store and then trade a pistol or AK for a girl slave wife, I'll be ready for jihad.
Hmm, I can get all of these at the local mainstream grocery store. A hot bed of terrorism, I suppose.
Possibly so. It depends if people are buying Muslim foods or jihadist foods. Here is a gorgeous Arabic English visual dictionary (PDF) that will help you identify potential jihadists, especially page 151 that covers Arabic names for various drinks like whiskey, beer, tequila, rum, gin, and sherry. While a red-blooded American would go to the bar and order a beer, and some other American might order a cocktail or rum and coke or gin and tonic, an ordinary Arab would go to al-baar and order a beera, a koktayl or rum wa-cola or jin wa-tonik, or perhaps a marteenee or weeskee skotsh wa-maa' (maa' is water). An ISIS jihadist, on the other hand, would shoot the bartender for serving alcohol. If the Arabic alphabet is giving you trouble, stare at this girl till it makes sense.
Yeah, there is a fair sizable middle eastern populatin in San Diego county, mostly Persians who fled after the Shah got tossed out along with a fair amount of Iraqis (mostly Chaldean christians) but there is a smattering of folks from all over. Downtown El Cajon is now referred to as little Assyria due to all the Assyrian and Chaldean owned shops and restaurants there. Any way that means there are now a number of middle eastern supermarkets with the best one being North Park Lroduce but there are well over a dozen different places most of which are just small mom and pop sort of operations. I do notice that a lot of Indians and for some reason Russians also shop at these middle eastern places (probably because they're all recent immigrants so they all move to the same cheaper, older neighborhoods) so you see a strange mix of Russian style cheeses and cured meats, next to Indian ingredients like ghee, and a ton of different middle eastern stuff. I like to buy my hummus there and my couscous along with a few different types of mideastern breads but a lot of the stuff is low quality junk. I love olives and they sell them cheap but their olive oils are low quality junk. I now actually prefer kofta (spiced ground beef) to regular ground beef and they sell their produce dirt cheap but you have to really dig through the piles to find the unbruised fruit and most of it goes bad in just a few days so you have to use it ASAP but they sell it for half the price of the American supermarkets. Honestly, the ethnic markets often have some cool stuff if you keep an open mind and if it is a recent immigration group the prices are often lower. That doesn't seem to be the case in the Japanese or Korean markets as both of those tend to have high prices but the Filipino, Vietnamese, and Chinese places have rock bottom prices for the folks who don't mind getting their hands dirty looking for bargains. The south Asian markets tend to be hit and miss. Northgate Gonzalez Supermarket has some frigging awesome deals and a wide selection of Mexican/Latino orientated goods they have one down by 32nd street naval station.
They could perhaps grow quite a few Middle Eastern staples locally, due to the California climate. Strangely enough, the area is also one of the few places where you can grow frankinscense and myrrh, which may become important because the Ethiopian frankinscense is threatened. 2001 USA today article, which mentions you can get a seedling for $55 from a specialist in Arizona. More on that, and and of course, their plant list I have a friend in Florida who burns non-indigenous invasive plants for the state. I'm trying to convince him to let frankinscence run wild so his burns will smell heavenly. Orthodox priests and rabbis will show up and chant behind his fire crews.
Here Kroger's sells hulled millet and millet flour from Bob's Red Mill, but some of the other Middle Eastern or Indian grains are only in the Asian food stores. And here is the E-bay link for the exotic plants discussed above.
I've heard of that Arab store in North Park. IIRC, they sell lamb sausage, and lamb is next to impossible to find in American markets. I didn't know lamb breast wss a thing till I saw Gordon Ramsay cook some, and now I can try the recipe out.
I routinely buy legs of lamb and lamb chops from my local chain grocery. Costco even sells lamb legs (from Australia, IIRC). Lamb breast... I must look for this.
You'll likely need to go to a local butcher or order online. Even in countries where lamb is eaten more routinely, the breast is not a favorite cut and difficult to cook, as I researched a bit more.
Yeah, North Park Produce has like 2-3 locations and it seems to be the only Arabic market to expand beyond the ethnic neighborhoods and build something of a brand embraced by the wider population. I suspect that is because they offer rock bottom prices and everyone likes a good deal. I usually shop at their Poway location as that one is closest to my house but I hear their original location in North Park is the largest one with the widest selection. I haven't tried their lamb sausages but I have seen them there and they have a full butcher shop where they use every part of the animal from nose to tail. As a lot of their customers are recent immigrants on limited budgets. I can recall seeing sheep's testicles there before so if you want a speciality cut then that would be the place to look.
One thing I love about living in such close proximity to the medical school here is that there are loads of ethnic groceries and restaurants close by. My wife refers to the one local chain grocery store that's nearest the university as "Ellis Island" because so many foreign students shop there.
Another good place to try would be Tip Top Meats on the border between Escondido and San Marcos. It is run by an elderly German couple and their son and they only do house butchered meats which are fresh and never frozen, made in house. Several years back I bought a turducken from them which was great. A lot of the local hunters take their deer or turkeys there as they'll butcher the animals for a reasonable price also on Saturdays and Sundays they smoke meats in a giant barrel smoker, there isn't really a place to eat on site, but you can get honest to god 8 to 12 hour smoked meats there for a reasonable price. There used to be a place in North Park called The Sausage King run by the an old German guy with the thickest German accent you have ever heard. The guy immigrated to America in the late 1940's and was disappointed that American markets didn't carry all the different types of sausages he remembered from back home in Germany. So he opened up his own shop which only sold sausages but he had just about every type of sausage you could imagine and if he didn't have it he had an encyclopedic knowledge of rare types of sausage recipes and he would make it for you. The guy kept working at his little shop into his 90's just because he liked it so much and he died about ten years ago. His family closed the shop, which had been in the same location for decades and decades, because none of his kids or grandkids wanted to take it over. It made all the papers and news shows when it closed because it was something of a local institution.
Anna, is this the recipe you were talking about? It looks good and I think I am going to make it. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...Gn5aEiRVUemiTAdS44oUifg&bvm=bv.79189006,d.cGE
Yep, the very one....posted to FB last week, too. It's too bad about The Sausage King that no one took it up.
This kind of story makes me sad, and I worry the same thing will happen with my butcher shop. It's run by the sweetest old Italian guy, and his hand made sausage is incredible. But at 75, he won't be in business forever. He has a nephew who helps out, and now a step-son, too, but I have no reason to think either wants it as a full-time gig.
I admit I laughed at the name, but for a not-middle school boy reason: When I snarked on Secret Life of the American Teenager, back at TWoP one of the parents owned a butcher shop and the posters dubbed him the Sausage King for his knowing his way around his meats ( ) ad the fact that the actor was a bit on the plus side.
