Tim and I were out and about exploring the Wellington suburb of Petone (peh-tone-eeee, even though it looks like pet-one) and we happened upon something most surprising. We bussed out following the suggestion of friend in Tim's lab. He mentioned that there's a little store in Petone that sells all different kinds of foods from all over the world. It originally came up when he and Tim were talking about dill pickles (because you can't buy them in the stores here - we're stuck with bread and butter pickles which are no substitution for yummy dills). He told Tim and that we could get out dill pickles fix at this store called On Trays. On a whim we checked it out yesterday and happened upon all kinds of goodies but mostly things we had never seen.
We were perusing the Mexican food section and drooling over all the beans, salsas and hot sauces while simultaneously cringing at the prices (one particular brand of black beans was $9.95 NZD a can!). It was then I saw something I never expected to encounter since summer 2003 when I lived in Puebla, Mexico. I was crazy about the food there as was evidenced by the fact that I came home a couple pounds heavier than when I left the US. :) One thing I encountered there was called cajeta; it's a caramel-like spread made from a base of goat's milk. I know it sounds totally bizarre but it became one of my favorite things. So much so that my host family and another family I befriended sent me home with two bottles of cajeta. :) I think it's designed to top ice cream or other desserts but we actually just spread it on bread or french toast. YUM! With that in mind imagine my surprise when my eyes landed on a bottle of cajeta!! What are the odds of finding this obscure food product in NZ?! And what did Tim say? He snatched it off the shelf and said that we HAD to get it. I was on cloud nine - I'm crazy about happy surprises. :)
So this morning I whipped up some french toast; I wanted Tim to experience cajeta just how I remembered it from Mexico. I gave Tim the first couple pieces and watched happily as he put them away. Then I tried one for myself wondering if it would live up to the memories and I'm happy to say that it did!!
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