We've been trying to eat healthier and cook at home. I'm in charge of grocery shopping. New grocery store combined with obscure (to me) ingredients, make for some long trips.

By far the toughest thing to find has been dashi. I went to two different stores (one of them fancy) and called a third. No one could even figure out what dashi is, let alone if they have it.

Me: I think it's some kind of spice, maybe. It's Asian. But I don't really know. It just says here on the recipe "a few granules of dashi."

One grocery store employee disappeared for fifteen minutes and came back with sheets of paper he'd printed up from internet research. "I think it might be some kind of soup stock," he said, rifling though the pages, "but I'm still not sure. It says here, 'Some consider dashi an essential ingredient while many will have never even heard of it.'"

That's when I started getting angry at the recipe. Those sonsa bitches. It's easy for them to just write down the word, but I have to freakin' find it.

I was eventually able to track some down at an Asian Market near our apartment.

"Dashi" has become my new exclamation when I'm frustrated or annoyed. Dashi!!

The miso soup did taste great, though.