Review: Asinayo Market

Asinayo Market, Framingham, MA

I love the variety found
in little local asian
markets. Asinayo Market
is a Korean grocer in
downtown Framingham,
MA, across the street
from the Town Hall.

In addition to the typical rice, noodles, tea and sea vegetables, there are some kitchen gadgets, Korean videos, and an extensive refrigerated and frozen foods section. And dare I mention the candy counter where I picked up a few treats including some Hello Kitty candies.

The staff are friendly and
generous. They've offered
to carry my grocery bags
to the car (I decline, but I
guess having a few kids
along makes it look like I
need some help).

Here are my purchases from
my recent visit: a HUGE bag
of dried shiitake mushrooms,
soy sauce, sweet potato
crackers, mini gel cups, coconut milk, Hello Kitty candy, black sesame furikake, dried gourd strips, red bean paste cookies, and vegetable potstickers.

I was really surprised to find that the mini gel cups were vegan; I'm glad I decided to check the ingredients! Sure, they're just sugar, agar agar, and food coloring, but I think they will look cool added to a new kindergarteners lunchbox.

Asinayo
Market
can be
found at
185
Concord
Street.

There
is on-
street
parking
and some
spots
in the
municipal
lot by
the town
offices.

508-875-3634

good stuff

Sometimes you just have to have a post about other people's cool stuff!
So let's start off with Hello Kitty bento inspiration...enough to have you drooling and ooohing through autumn!
Sanrio hosted their 3rd annual bento contest...check out the winners and runners up here. So incredibly awesome!!!

And speaking of Hello Kitty...people are always asking me where to buy bento items locally, especially Hello Kitty. Usually I direct them to the craft store, party store, or educational toy store and tell them to cross their fingers that it's been restocked recently. Last year I reviewed our local Korean market Asinayo, and the other day Maia and I found that they have started stocking a few Hello Kitty bentos in addition to wooden Hello Kitty and Shinkansen chopsticks. Woohoo! They also have Hello kitty plates and mugs, Thomas the Tank Engine training chopsticks, Peter Rabbit spoons, crocheted fruit holders, Hello Kitty socks and various other knick knacks, and plenty of edible goodies to make a trip there worthwhile (and more expensive! LOL).

Maia immediately pointed and lunged at everything from her sling, totally suckering me in to spending $18 on a new pink picnic bento. Me, buying pink! What is this world coming to??













The bottom tier has two subdivided subdividers, LOL, making four compartments on the bottom if you need them, or two, or one. Very versatile. It really is pretty darned cute. And Maia would not stop playing with it all day long!

Now, seeing as Halloween is only 2 months off (it's our favourite holiday), I usually turn to PETA's vegan candy list for assistance. Otherwise I read read read ingredients and do my best. But Cuny Queen's awesome vegan blog has got me in a tizzy. I am going to email all the companies in question, because as it turns out, many of the candies I previously thought to be vegan, may actually contain cochineal or carmine disguised as "artificial color". ARRRRGGGGHHH!!!! I don't want me or my kids eating crushed bugs thank you very much.
Anyhow, I haven't checked Snopes yet, but I will be contacting Willy Wonka among others to verify this info.

To end this post on a happier note, I recently came across this review of Saisai Lunch on Just Bento, the first vegan bento book I've ever seen. (I know there's Vegan Lunch Box, which is good and all, but it's not really bento because she usually uses a larger Laptop Lunchbox presentation.) The only problems are a) it's not been translated into English yet, and b) it's only available via Amazon Japan, but here's the link anyway! I'm hoping I'll get a copy some day!

Now I'm off to figure out what to do for Ryan's first bento of the school year. I've been slacking!

Hot Dogs & Curry

Ryan's lunch: strawberries; Yves Good Dog hot dogs w/ketchup & mustard; a Tirosh sandwich biscuit; marinated mushrooms; balsamic zucchini.

AJ's snack: biscuit
& hot dog.

Yep, out of time this
morning!



Since my instructor at the
Y was on vacation, I used
the time to pick up groceries
at Asinayo, the local asian
market in town. They were
out of the teensy gel cups I
usually buy for Ryan for a
treat in his lunches, but they
had this huge bucket super
cheap so I thought I'd give
them a try; there are four
flavours: strawberry, mango,
lychee & grape. Ryan is dying to try them but I'm making him wait for lunch!

This afternoon this blog hit 2,000 hits per month. Yahoo!

And in other fun, there's still time to enter the giveaway over at Lunch In A Box for a Kids Konserve lunch set. Kewl! There are many great places online to buy stainless steel lunch products now.

And here's Nate playing
with his castle while I
cooked dinner...when he
wasn't busy trying to
remove outlet covers to
plug in a LiteBrite or
ransack his brothers'
Bionicle collection.


Along with basmati rice
& a chick pea curry, I
wanted to use up some
potatoes...so I created
this recipe...


Lemon Curry Potatoes

3 medium potatoes, peeled,
cubed
2 cloves garlic, peeled & roughly chopped
1 T. olive oil
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. mustard powder
1/4 tsp. turmeric
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/4 tsp. ground coriander
a pinch of ground red pepper
1 T. lemon juice

In a small saucepan, boil potatoes until soft, about 15 minutes. Add garlic, cook another 2 minutes, remove from heat. Drain. Allow to cool somewhat.
Add olive oil & cook over medium heat 2-3 minutes.
Add remaining ingredients and cook until heated through.