Searching for Vanilla Extract

Since it has been so rainy here, I decided to make oatmeal raisin cookies with Michael. Being in a completely new place, the one and only ingredient I already had was eggs. As no one bakes here (most people don't have an oven, and if they do, it's just a toaster oven), I knew that certain ingredients like vanilla would be a little difficult to find, but I still figured I would be able to find everything.

I first went to the chain supermarket Wellcome as I knew the prices would be less than at the specialty store in the basement of SOGO. Once I got there, Michael decided he wanted fruit, so we picked up cherry tomatoes, oranges, bananas and grapes. I put Michael in the baby front section of the shopping cart, which was way too small for him, but kept him out of trouble.

Then the search began. I found everything except vanilla, allspice and baking soda. Of course, I had to buy this massive bag of salt because I couldn't find anything smaller, a bag of sugar that looked way too coarse and had to settle for Taiwanese brown sugar (which they call black sugar). Not exactly the light brown called for in the recipe, but oh well.

As I went through the checkout, I started thinking. How am I going to carry this all home? Why on earth did I buy fruit? It ended up being two large shopping bags, very full and very heavy. No hands for Michael in one of the busiest areas in Taipei.

Walked back to SOGO, where the MRT is anyways, and went to their supermarket. Found the baking soda easily enough (although way more than I would use in years in that one bag - volcanoes are sounding like a good idea to do at school now). No allspice. The recipe actually called for ground cloves but all the reviews said that substituting allspice tasted better. So, I got the ground cloves. Then for the vanilla.

Found the extracts section. They had extracts for EVERYTHING. Except vanilla. The bottles were all labelled in Chinese, so I was looking at the shelf labels which were in English and Chinese, scanning them all for vanilla. I found some vanilla powder and wondered if that would do. They seemed to have tonnes of green apple extract. Everytime I thought I had it, it turned out to be green apple.

Finally found it hidden behind (you guessed it), a bottle of green apple. Vanilla was printed in tiny letters at the bottom of the bottle, so I knew it was right.

I had to throw those three things in with my other bags in order to carry them to the checkout. I felt kind of stupid taking only a few things out of my Wellcome bags at the checkout as I knew they had everything that I had just bought at another store. Why didn't I just buy everything there? Why did I go back for my umbrella? My father instilled too many lessons on saving money as I was growing up I guess.

They asked if I wanted a bag, and when I declined, they put stickers on everything to prove that I had paid for it. I then plopped them in my Wellcome bags and got on the packed MRT.

My arms were falling off by the time we got home and Annie was due to come over soon, so we didn't actually make the cookies. We didn't open most of the fruit either. Sigh.

Here are a couple of pictures of Michael in SOGO, before we went to Wellcome. This garden (which is so perfect that you must be a professional gardener in order to enter) is all enclosed on the top floor of the department store. Two of the walls are all glass so you have quite a view of the city as well.