Over the years, I have slowly taken the lead when it comes to cooking in my household. Rather than act egotistical about it, though, let's just say that I like to experiment more than my wife. And over the years, my experiments have been met with a greater success rate than they used to. I like to try different ethnic cuisines, and I occasionally like to mix and match. When we lived in the big city, I loved picking up specialty ethnic items like coconut milk and exotic spices. Since we moved to a small town, our palette of available food products has gotten much smaller. The local grocery stores only have the typical stuff, so I always get excited when I run across a new source for special cooking ingredients. Lately, I've been looking online.
If you're into Italian and you want it to be authentic, check out a site like Ditalia Italian Food. They've got all sorts of exotic balsamic glazes and imported desert chocolates that are sure to make your run-of-the-mill chicken meal anything but domesticated. If, like me, you're living on a budget, they have regular sales and a newsletter that they send out with their weekly Italian Food Deals. I've been eyeballing the porcini mushrooms, as both choosymom and the kids are mushroom freaks and we've never been able to find these in town. For a special meal that doesn't break the budget, I'd suggest picking up what you can find locally, and then adding some finesse by ordering a select few products from one of these online ethnic food stores. There's no sense in ordering things like black pepper from a specialty site, in my opinion. If you're lucky enough to actually have ethnic markets in your town, check them out. Don't be afraid to try new things and ask the store-owners if you can't figure out what a certain product may be for. In doing so, you may unknowingly receive a secret family recipe!
I've yet to try ordering any type of frozen foods from any of these online food stores yet. Has anyone had any experience with this? The seafood selections in my area are either over-priced or non-existent.