Even after six years of living here, I occassionally come across things that throw me.
On the menu this week is Kung Pao Chicken. This means I need peanuts. We’ve had Kung Pao Chicken before; I’ve bought peanuts suitable for cooking with before. In Tesco, nuts generally come in a small bag (about a cup’s worth), and will sometimes be with the baking stuff, or with the health food stuff, or now they have a bit in the produce section that has some nuts and dried fruits, or there’s one or two other places to look. Before I got there, I was at the greengrocer’s, Sowerbutts, so I checked their stock of nuts – nope, no peanuts. Right, Tesco it is.
I looked high and low, in all those different places. I found no peanuts. Almonds in twenty different forms, walnuts, pistachios, even macadamia nuts, but no humble peanuts. I then thought, this is crazy, peanuts are the most common snack nut – surely there’s at least some in the snack aisle? So I went slowly down the aisle with the crisps (chips), etc, and nope, no nuts at all. This is insane. How can a whole supermarket have no peanuts? I’m sure I’ve bought them from this very supermarket before!
At last, I found a worker, who led me to the display of snack peanuts (which wasn’t with the crisps, of course). Hooray, peanuts! Now, could there possibly be any that aren’t salted for snacking, but rather plain, more suitable for cooking with? Not these … not those … what are these, down on the bottom shelf?
Monkey nuts? What in the world are monkey nuts?
Hey look, roast peanuts. In shells. So they’re peanuts. Where do the monkeys come from? Who knows.
Hooray, I have some unsalted peanuts now for my Kung Pao, even if I have to shell them myself. Don’t think it’d be quite right with almonds…