All I wanted was to get this lovely item for the family dinner on Sunday. And, I was hoping to get it from one of my favorite stores.
Yesterday evening, when I was searching for sauerkraut at Trader Joes in Hillcrest, I was beginning to get the feeling I was looking for the uncoolest item in the world. I simply could not find it anywhere. I looked on the shelf with the pickles. I looked near the sandwiches and sushi, and I even looked near the franks. Not to be seen anyhwere. Of course, I sent my search out into Twitterville, and one of my twitter friends told she saw it, and I looked again. It wasn’t there. Then I got confirmation from an employee who told me they don’t stock sauerkraut.
I was hoping not to pick up just any sauerkraut. I could have easily done that at the Ralph’s next door. I wanted a green gourmet, Trader Joe’s branded approach to America’s favorite accompaniment to hot dogs, sausages, and corned beef. After all, I can pick up a box of dry macaroni and powdered cheese mix, which is not much different from its Kraft counterpart. With the former, I can feel super cool, while with the latter, I just feel trashy. Somehow, I left Trader Joe’s feeling like I was uncool, the wrong kind of customer, or something. However, I wasn’t daunted in my search. I just took it somewhere else.
I found plenty of jars of sauerkraut at Whole Foods. As shown in the photo, there were several different kinds. Naturally, Whole foods offers more choices than Trader Joe’s. However, with all their expensive gourmet products and hip eco-friendly groceries, Whole Foods even offered the tragically unhip sauerkraut. Now I have my contribution to Sunday dinner.
As for culinary adventures and traveling the food world without a plane ticket and passport, Trader Joe’s doesn’t seem to like Germany.
