This Saturday I took a really fun trip up to Atlanta with W and his parents to shop at the huge international farmers’ market as well as a big Latin mall. It was quite the adventure!

I was excited to get the chance to roam the aisles of a huge international market, looking for interesting foods and drinks to take home. Grocery shopping in Auburn has significantly improved ever since we got an Earth Fare a year or two ago (it’s essentially a smaller Whole Foods-style store), but we don’t really have any international markets. I knew I could find all kinds of cool things in Atlanta that can’t be had here.

Before we hit the market, though, we checked out the all-Latin mall and grocery store nearby, browsing around and perusing the various shops. I saw some amazing cowboy boots and W got a new wallet (with Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe on it, love it) and we had an excellent lunch at a little lunch counter there.

Some delicious enchiladas (but a dauntingly huge plate — I only ate half and still felt stuffed). I also tried some cactus from W’s mom’s plate, which was really good. Next time I will definitely order some for myself.

At the market, I found myself amazed by the unusual produce first of all: Look at all these spiky fruits!

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That’s Jack fruit, chayote, and durian. I snapped plenty of pictures of the more exotic looking items, but wound up buying other things instead (heirloom tomatoes, jicama, yuca, sun-dried tomatoes, medjool dates, among others). Maybe next time I will get more adventurous.

I found some frozen udon noodles, miso, and some needed sushi things. I’m planning on a sushi and soup night sometime soon. Hopefully I can get W to try making the sushi rolls with me. His mom, who is from Mexico, also helped me find some things to make mole sauce (the rich, chocolatey kind) and explained how to do it, so enchiladas de mole are in the works some time, too.

Along the way, I also found some interesting drinks, including a cucumber soda of some kind and a (non-alcoholic) pineapple cider. I don’t know, either. I will surely post to flickr when I try them. At our new Publix store in Auburn, I had just recently made a build-your-own six-pack of different beers to try, so I picked up a seventh new beer at the market in Atlanta, planning to try a different beer every day for seven days.

Sunday night’s beer was Leinenkugel’s Berry Weiss (a Publix pick). I cannot recommend this beer, unless you are someone who typically does not like beer at all and prefers a fruity cocktail. If that’s the case (B, I am looking at you!), you might like this. It was way too sweet for me, though, and I am in fact someone who does not usually shy away from fruity beers (e.g. Bell’s Cherry Stout, Abita’s Purple Haze and Satsuma Wit, Magic Hat’s Number 9 and Wacko, even Samuel Adams Blackberry Witbier).

Tonight’s beer was St. Peter’s Organic English Ale, which I found at the international market and admittedly chose based on its whiskey-bottle shape and nice label design. I thoroughly enjoyed this — all 16 ounces. Full-bodied and bitter, but very “drinkable.” Wished I’d had more, but I’m on a one beer per day limit at the moment (thank’s for nothing, lingering holiday flab).

At the store, I also took a few snaps for what I have decided to call the Gallery of Horrors. Would you like a peek? Of course you would.

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What you see here, from left to right, is:

1) Extra-Lean Celebrity (all well and good, but which celebrity is it???).

2) Sali-Kritz, aka Salz Lakritz, aka The Devil’s Candy, aka the candy that haunted me night and day when I lived in Germany junior year of college. It’s extremely pungent, salty black licorice covered in a friendly-looking pastel candy coating. Dumb Americans such as myself will be inclined to assume this is chocolate with a candy coating, but upon taking a bite will soon begin praying for death. Of course, the black packaging suggests this candy’s evil nature, but I always saw it in bowls and hence was very often fooled.

3) Chelada, an adult beverage consisting of Budweiser and Clamato. CLAMATO. CLAM AND TOMATO JUICE. THIS HAS CLAM IN IT. SWEET MOTHER OF DOG.

Well then. Just be glad you did not opt for the smell-o-vision hardware package when you bought that computer. Oh my god, you didn’t did you?