Adventures in Grocery Shopping - Baltimore, MD - August 2009

So I have to preface this blog entry by saying that The Hub and I really LOVE sushi! On a couple of occasions The Hub has actually attempted to make it at home., so when a couple of The Hub’s new friends from work told him about H Mart, an Asian Grocery store that had sushi grade fish, trying again was only a matter of time till he tried again.

Today we made our way to the Catonsville, MD H Mart to check it out. We were a little worried when we got to the entrance and found this sign… In case you can’t read it it says “We are not responsible for sandal accidents”, but after a brief family conference we decided that we could handle any sort of sandal obstacles that the H Mart could throw at us, so in we went. I kid you not; it felt like we stepped directly into China.

Note to Reader: I’ve never been to China, but have had friends go there and the inside of this grocery store is exactly how I imagine it when they tell me stories. There were people EVERYWHERE!

There were men with hand trucks scooting through the crowds replenishing everything from produce to 80 lb bags of rice. There were kids running around eating samples of Asian candies and there were some of the most amazingly interesting foods I’ve ever seen. There was Kimchi, Stinky Tofu, Beef Tongue, Blood Sausage, whole entire fish with heads and eyeballs and every other fish body part still attached.

Additional Note to Reader: There’s something you should know about the hub. He secretly covets Andrew Zimmerman’s job. He is the host of the Food Network show Bizarre Foods. So he actually wants to eat all of the crazy foods listed above.

There were also live crabs that we affectionately called Chinese fighting crabs or Crabby Crabs(see video).

After wandering as much of the store as we could with all the people there, we returned with a bag of sushi rice, a bottle of rice vinegar, low sodium soy sauce, seaweed salad, two handmade wooden bowls, and sushi grade tuna and octopus.

After 50 minutes of tedious rice preparation, The Hub created THIS!!!

(Tuna and octopus sashimi, sushi rice, and seaweed salad)
So so so so Yummy!!!

Till next time,
Bon Voyage!