Welcome To The Jungle

One of the best perks about making this move to Louisville is being closer to some very good friends of ours that live near Dayton Ohio. Now, of course we would love to take the drive up there for the shear joy of spending time with them...HOWEVER...if we just happen to pass THE most wonderful food market I've ever seen, aka, Jungle Jim's, on the way...well, that's just icing on the cake.

Jungle Jim's International Food Market looks like a zoo from the outside, and looks like my version of heaven on the inside. It's located just north of Cincinnati and although it's a bit of a drive from Louisville, I honestly believe it's worth the drive at least a few times a year to stock up on things you really can't find anywhere else.

When we left Philly we also left behind a plethora of ethnic food options. We used to stock up on our Chinese groceries in an underground market...literally (it was in a pretty funky looking basement but there wasn't anything they didn't have). We would head over to the Italian Market for some amazing cured meats and cheese. Philly even had a Little Vietnam.

Jungle Jim's takes the idea of International Grocery Shopping to a whole new level.......

Nick and I were trying to recreate a meal we had in Munich's Englischer Garten so we picked up some kartoffelknoedel mix (potato dumplings), some good German mustard, some amazing looking wursts and just for fun, some pork belly (schweinebauch) stuffed with pork, beef, veal and diced pickles...of course!.

Now we're getting warmed up!

Let's head to China! Some of our favorite things to buy in our old underground market were fish balls. A pretty typical Chinese street food, but try to find them in your local takeout place and you might be disappointed. Have no fear...they have them here! Throw in a few packets of prawn flavored noodles (the hubby's favorite) and some dried mushrooms and you've got yourself the makings of a noodle bowl.

What's for breakfast you ask? Well, for the past few months it hasn't been scrapple since we've been unable to find it anywhere. Fortunately that's no longer the case! Nick will be eating high on the hog this weekend because we not only picked up a few bricks of scrapple, we also grabbed a package of Irish White Pudding. We've never had it before but like we always say, "You never know unless you try"!

And no trip would be complete without grabbing a few hunks of foie gras on the way out. Oh, what's that? Wild Boar medallions? Ok, throw 'em in the cart as well.

Now, this was just the tip of our shopping cart shaped iceberg. There is so much more to be discovered. The produce section is pretty amazing and Nick literally had to pry me away from the cheese department.

So if the economy has cut your vacation budget in half and an intercontinental trip is out of your budget, just scrape up enough dough for gas money and groceries and head up to Cincinnati. Welcome to the jungle.