Shopping expedition, Mar 1

Today was the usual smoothie for breakfast. After our morning Theatre Lighting class, we stopped at El Super, a grocery chain that specializes in foods for the Latin@ community. "Mexican groceries," as these types of stores are generally called in our area, generally have a wider variety of beans for sales than your "standard" grocery store, and this one did! In addition to black beans, pinto beans, kidney beans (yuck!), Lima beans, and white beans that my local grocery store has, this one had Mayocoba beans, too.

I had never even heard of these beans before, so I googled them when I got home. They are sometimes considered an "heirloom" bean - meaning it's an "old-fashioned" variety that isn't commonly found anymore. That must be from the perspective of a "standard" grocery store, because they seem to be common in Latin groceries. 💁 These beans are also known as "Canary beans", "Peruvian beans", or just simply "yellow beans", and can be used as a substitute for pinto, cannellini, or Great Northern beans. I didn't get any today, but I probably will the next time I'm at El Super!

I was also looking for some chicharrones (pork rinds) because I'm almost out. El Super had two different kinds of fried pork rinds they make right in the store: "thick skin" and "regular". The thick skin variety looks almost like deep friend bacon and looks and tastes more substantial than the light and airy regular kind. Their "regular" ones were in large sheets - like practically 11x17 paper size! I didn't get any of the store-made ones and just settled for a bag of "Baken-ets", mostly because I didn't want to deal with the large size of the store-made ones!

El Super also makes their own tortillas in-house and they were sooooo tempting because fresh tortillas are awesome! I stayed strong, though, and bought a pack of Mission brand "Carb Balance" low carb tortillas.

I usually buy the whole wheat low carb tortillas from La Tortilla Factory, but they didn't have any, so I figured I'd try something new. Then when we got home, I made a turkey & ham wrap with leafy sprouts and ranch dressing with the new tortillas. They're quite good! I think I like them better than the ones I usually buy.

Speaking of low carb tortillas, I found this list of 50 Best Low Carb Tortillas over at Low Carb Lab, a site I'm going to have to explore a bit more.

I also harvested my green peas, Lady Cream peas, soybeans, and mixed beans today. They are all in the fridge now waiting for me to make yummy meals out of them!

Since we had a late lunch and had church tonight (it being Ash Wednesday), I didn't make dinner. I had a few pieces of Colby-Jack (AKA "Kojak") cheese when we got home from church and I'm not feeling hungry, so I'll count that as all good.

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