I took the family and Current Mutt to the animal shelter today to check out the very beautiful Other Mutt named Hannah that caught my attention yesterday. She’s a German Shepherd/Smooth-coated Collie mix and she’s about 4x the size of Current Mutt. They got along beautifully after 20 minutes together, though I must say that Current Mutt’s dominance tactic, the “I shall hump you and show you who’s boss!” thing, was hilarious. The shelter volunteer said, “I don’t think he’s afraid of her any longer.” I replied, “Do you think he realizes he’ll never reach his goal?” There he was, attempting to assert himself against the air between her shins…

But I digress (is it digression when you start by being off-topic?)…

On the way home we stopped at a couple of Escondido’s finest (and only) Asian markets. They had everything I could have wanted from an Asian market except for kim chee! I found shrimp chips, extra large S&B curry mix, lup chong, huge heads of bok choi, Panda oyster sauce, Thai chili oil, char siu dry mix (the kind I used back home), bottled bagong, rice wrappers for spring rolls, won tun pi wrappers, etc…yay! I asked the owners of one of the markets if they knew where I could get fresh oxtails in the area and they pointed me toward “any of the Mexican markets around here.”

Oh, sweet, sweet joy. My navigator phone thingie pointed me down the street to Vallarta, with its fresh-cooked deli stuff, its awesome produce section, its incredible carniceria, and its really funky Latino muzak. No oxtails today, but “we get them in tomorrow!” I will SO be there after work grabbing a few pounds of the stuff so I can make soup! And, after looking over their meat department I can assure you that aside from a really good butcher, this is the place to purchase your carnivorous components. Immaculately clean and stocked with everything including beef kidneys, chicken livers, fresh beef livers, pig’s feet, and beef tongues. These are probably not things you’ll eat every day (or any day) but I miss them a lot, especially when drenched in rich veggies and seasonings in Filipino or Asian dishes.

Now that I’ve gotten most of my ono kine shopping haunts mapped out, I’m only lacking one thing: a supplier of fresh taro leaves. The ultimate prize in my culinary cravings is laulau, and what I’ve had here is of the “it’ll do” variety. Our friend back home who made some of the world’s best laulau has stopped catering due to health problems, so I no longer have a connection. I’ll just need to find taro leaves to make my own. In my oven, instead of in an imu. I’m also a huge fan of palusami, a Samoan dish made with taro leaves and coconut cream – yum! So if anyone knows of a place where I can find this particular item, let me know!

Cravings. Yeah. Zip Min and laulau. Sigh.