Morton Williams Supermarket

Pulpo, indeed. Octopus salad ($4.99 per pound) was mushy; the vigorous seasoning improved it only a little.

On numerous other occasions:

A jar of Square brand "traditional Polish salad" (670 g.; $1.99) included white cabbage, carrots, onion, and red and yellow peppers. Colorful, but unsurprisingly it tasted more of the vinegary brine than any vegetable. (What had attracted me to the supermarket display was the cucumber-heavy "Swedish salad with onion." I switched salads when I saw that it, too, was a product of Poland.)

During Rosh Hashanah, I ventured to the salad bar ($4.99 per pound) for tsimmes, a cold carrot salad often sweetened with honey. Usually, I understand, it's more of a stew and can include many combinations of fruit, vegetables, and even meat. Here, the carrots are still a little crunchy, and they're accompanied by raisins in a not-overly-sweet white liquid.

Soho Natural blueberry soda (23 fl. oz. can; 99 cents) was reddish, highly carbonated and had a reasonably good flavor considering that "blueberry" does not appear anywhere in the list of ingredients.

Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray soda (12 fl. oz. can; 89 cents) gets its flavor from an extract of celery seed and "other natural flavors," as well as "high-fructose corn syrup/sugar." One can be refreshing, especially if you like your vegetables, but I can't imagine ever drinking two.

For a late-night snack, a quarter-pound of Kaserei brand champignon with peppercorns cheese ($14.99 per pound) tasted much like a Bavarian brie, heavy on the pepper. Dessert was a "movie pak" of Nestle Goobers (3.5 oz.; 99 cents) that won out this evening over the Raisinets and the Sno-Caps. Managed to save more than half till I got home.

Another evening, I was searching for some berry-flavored kefir, a yogurt drink that occasionally is almost too thick to drink. Ronnybrook's version, in blackberry (12 fl. oz. plastic bottle; $2.99), "made with eight live cultures, including four buttermilk cultures," was nicely sour; goes down easy.

Morton Williams Supermarket
Many locations