A World of Food

World Market has to be one of the best places to browse interesting foods. Couple that with a half-price sale, and I'm in heaven. We stopped in today hoping for some samples, but since it was the middle of the week they only had a couple of flavors of coffee up for grabs. (I passed on that because it was 107 in the shade, so hot coffee was not at the top of my treat list.) However, the sale goodies began almost as soon as we walked through the door.

At the front of the store was a large table with close out wines for half off. After perusing a wide selection of Japanese sakes and several reds from Italy, we happened across a couple of lovely finds. The first is a rich Australian muscat the color of liquid amber. The second is a 2006 Vidal icewine from Magnotta Vineyards in Canada. Icewine is made from grapes harvested in the winter after freezing temperatures. The grapes are left on the vine until December or January, which concentrates the sugars. Then, once the temperature has reached a sufficiently low freezing point - which forms ice crystals in any remaining water in the grape thus further concentrating the flavors - the grapes are picked by hand and crushed almost immediately to make the wine. Having read about this wine in several online articles, I was ecstatic to run across a bottle for less than $20 when it normally retails in the $40 to $50 range. We brought this find home and popped it into the fridge to chill over night. Our plan is to open it tomorrow evening to enjoy with some fresh figs and a few other bargain finds.

After safely tucking our treasures into a cart, we moved to the back of the store in search of more goodies. One of my favorite sections of World Market contains olives. Here you can find large queen olives stuffed with pearl onions, blanched almonds, jalapeno peppers, and garlic cloves. Each of these adds an interesting twist to an icy martini, but alas they were not on sale today, so we passed them by. However, at the end of this row we came across a cheese and salami display that had many sale items. After spending a little time examining the cheeses we decided our recent purchases as Sam's Club would suffice, but we did choose a couple of salami flavors to go with our smoked gouda. (Last night I watched Anthony Bourdain do an entire segment on traditional methods of making salami, so I was in the mood for these goodies.) Our first choice is romano salame which is dry cured without a lot of interior seasoning (a little salt and garlic) while the outside is entirely coated in black pepper. The other selection is an all-natural chianti salami. (The shop offered rose and pinot grigio types as well, but we opted for the chianti flavor thinking it would stand up the best to the seasonings of an artisan salami.) Both of these should be prove excellent additions to our snack plates.

Finally, we made our way to the sweet aisle in search of Jeff's favorite cookies - assorted crispy sugar wafers dipped in or filled with chocolate. This bag of German goodies seems to pull Jeff into World Market even if we are ambling on the other side of the parking lot. He says he could eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner without growing weary. I'll admit, they are addictive because they seem so airy. Surely something so light and tasty couldn't be bad for you.

When we entered the store we had planned to browse, perhaps buy a bag of cookies, and then move on to the next shop in line. However, by the time we were finished we only wanted to run home with all of our goodies to contemplate consuming them. Delayed gratification is coming though, when we enjoy our bargain-priced gourmet treats tomorrow night. Until then, I will have sweet dreams indeed.