So I was at the grocery store today to pick up a few odds and ends.  I do one “large” scale grocery run on Sunday morning, then stop in 1 or 2 times during the week to pick up any extras I may need.  (please note, when I say “large” I would be laughed out of the room by any self respecting shopper with 2-3 carts of food every week. It is – after all – only my husband and myself here and we don’t eat that much).  Today’s little excursion included a search for capers.

I have no idea why, but I always have a hard time finding capers in the store.  I know which aisle the stockers use. I even know the approximate location within said aisle.  Yet the few times a year when I want to grab a jar, it takes me over 5 minutes to find them.

They blend.

They are always located with the pickles and olives.   The jars are small.  For some reason I tend to look right past them.  The longer I look, the less I see them. The more irritated I become.  It gets to the point that I must make myself start at the top shelf and specifically look at each and every jar until I finally see them.

Of course I know they were hiding behind jars of olives the first 15 times I looked, yet when I have to make the laborious effort to look at every jar, they sudden sneak out of hiding and are sitting on the shelf as if they’ve been there all along.

With all the new techno-gadgetry out there, I think we need to come up with little tags for these hard to find items.  The homing signal can be coded into your cell phone.  As you waive the phone over the face of the shelves, it rings when it goes directly past the item you are looking for.  Think how much time it would save.

Of course I could always not buy capers.  Just leave them on the shelf.  But I do like them in certain dishes.  At least I have a new jar as of today.  I don’t have to worry about it for a while. In the meantime, I should “write an app for that”.  Heh.

I haven’t forgotten my little blog here, I’ve just been very busy of late and haven’t had time to look for interesting food articles.   However, after having some wonderful sushi for dinner I am feeling very happy with the world at large and decided to see if I could find anything food related to blog (besides the fact that I love sushi).

I decided to go look up Mustard in wikipedia.  I must say I was rather disappointed.  Considering the type of intenseness that goes into making Balsamic Vinegar, I fully expected mustard to have the same type of following.  However, such is not the case.  *sigh – how sad*

I mean look at this statement:

Dijon mustard is not covered by a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) or a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) under the auspices of the European Union; thus, while there are major mustard plants in Dijon and suburbs, most Dijon mustard is manufactured outside of Dijon.

That’s just not right!  There should be mustard cults and daggers drawn over who gets to label their mustard with certain names.

It’s all highly disappointing and rather dull.  The only thing of real interest in the entire wiki was this:

One of the factors that determines the strength of a prepared mustard is the temperature of the water, vinegar, or other liquid mixed with the ground seeds: hotter liquids are more hostile to the strength-producing compounds. Thus, hot mustard is made with cold water, while using hot water results in milder mustard (other factors remaining the same).

It sounds backward to me, but I guess they know what they’re talking about.  Oh well.  Hopefully things slow down a bit as the week goes on and I can find some fun stuff to blog here.  We shall see.  In the meantime – enjoy your mustard, be it yellow, dijon, or spicy.