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Culture shopping spree at Mi Rancho market
By Deborah Taylor-Hollis
Peanut butter, milk, toilet paper and eggs. Those are staples. Weekly staples in our house. Bread has become an almost daily run if I don't bake it at home (and if the bread machine had not arrived for Mother's Day, that home-baked bread thing would be less than a memory around here). I shop based on how I feel about cooking on any given day, and more often than not, I make several runs in a week.
Safeway, Albertson's and Costco come immediately to mind when I have a list of more than five things, and I end up buying more than planned as I walk the aisles and see what I forgot, what we haven't had in a while, and what's on sale. But at the main stores, there is a boring repetitiousness of product, a sameness of selection, and a wide but never-varied variety.
Then there is Mi Rancho. The little grocer opened slightly more than a year ago on the corner of Coe and Lincoln avenues where Chuck Dadis ran the successful neighborhood market "Lincoln Lanes" for more than 15 years before the recession hit him with full force. A short series of badly underfunded operations moved in afterward, and then Mi Rancho appeared.
At first, I was kind of uncomfortable using my local market. No one really spoke English, and its early operating budget left the owners with lots of empty space and only a smattering of items I even recognized.
But I could always count on them to provide peanut butter, milk, toilet paper and eggs, so I kept using them when supplies ran low.
They opened the meat market at the back, and for a while, trying out my poorly remembered and unevenly spoken Spanish not only produced no results for me, but created such a stir as one employee after another arrived to try to help that eventually I stuck with pointing and buying just 1 pound at a time. That "uno" thing worked fine. And their bacon was fantastic and thick.
Then they filled out the store with a full produce end, and added more freezer space and dairy. And the jewelry store. This is the only quick stop I know where I can also get great birthday presents for my girlfriend in 18K gold.
By last summer, each time I walked in to pick up a few things, I found myself contemplating whether I really needed a piñata or just wanted one because they were pretty.
Then sometime this winter, the meat department put up signs with English translations. I figured out the word pounds is "libras," and I could order enough hamburger for a meatloaf without creating an international incident.
I started noticing the packaging. Many English-language products sold to ethnic markets are packaged just for them. The powdered chocolate drink mix is in old-style round cans with a metal pop-top lid. I haven't seen one of those in 10 years. The fabric softener has the old-style caps for measured pouring that were discontinued at Safeway six years ago.
Even more interesting is the array of Hispanic copy products. The cereal aisle is especially amusing. For each cartoon spokesman of a traditional brand name, there is its slightly more outrageous cartoon counterpart. From toucans to bunnies, their Hispanic counterparts are brighter, wilder and much more "animated." They all appear to have eaten too much white sugar before posing for their box fronts.
I had forgotten how many kinds of lard I could get to make truly perfect pie crusts rather than rely on Crisco, and have found a wonderful supply of votive candles at half the price I pay elsewhere. My eggs are cheaper by almost a dollar a dozen, as are several other things on that "staples" list.
There are times when I shake my head at the cultural differences. Whole cow feet, intestines, and stuff I don't even want to know about take up way more space in the display case than I thought possible. I do not have any recipes for these items, and I doubt if the narrow-minded dining habits of my son and spouse would tolerate anything with a hoof. Maybe they have to get out more.
Mi Rancho got the new lemon Coke before any other store, and was the only place Taco Lunchables could be found for more than a year, both of which made me wonder about what else I was missing in the world of "ethnic" foods. There is always someone who can understand me when I fumble for a word, and most everyone is bilingual and kind to a pathetic middle-aged woman wandering in the canned goods isle trying to decide if "hominy" is a good thing.
The only real problem I have is with the white sliced bread. There is just something about buying "Bimbo" bread that bothers me to no end.
Send Debi your recipes for calf's hooves, tongue or anything with brains at DTHollis@svcn.com.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
