The rise in food prices has been mostly annoying, of course, but the other day I was at QFC and said, “Hey, that’s cool.”

I was in the cooking oil section. The price of canola is way, way up. The price of peanut hasn’t changed. (Yet.) I keep good Hong Kong peanut oil in my fridge at all times, but when I need to use a couple of cups of oil, I reach for canola, because I’m a cheapskate.

Now, however, I’m going peanut all the way. I bought a bottle of Planters for $5 and used some last night for pan-frying smelt. Crispy and fabulous. Probably when peanut oil goes up again, I’ll be too hooked on it to switch back.

In another price distortion, King Arthur flour now costs over a dollar more than the fancy local flour (Shepherd’s Grain). I say “distortion,” but I suppose this actually makes sense. So I’m buying the local.

I love shopping.

I asked my parents for tea for my birthday, and yesterday a package arrived in the mail from Fukushima, Japan.

Iris is a born aesthete. Sure, she can be impressed by gaudy princess gear, but I have never, ever seen her more excited about a package than this one, which is odd, since (a) it was not for her, and (b) she doesn’t like tea.

The package, from [o-cha.com](http://www.o-cha.com/), contained a packet of tea (printed with Japanese calligraphy and a color drawing of growing tea leaves), a washi paper tea canister, and a polished cherrywood teaspoon. Iris was especially blown away by the canister, which looks like this:

You can order your own, but it won’t look like ours. They’re all different.

As for the tea, it’s fukamushi sencha, probably the greenest and strongest of all Japanese teas. I love it. “It’s like spinach tea,” said my mom, and she’s right. If you don’t already love green tea, this is not the place to start. It would be like going out to sushi for the first time and ordering a bunch of uni. You can probably tell when someone is opening the canister in the other room.

O-Cha’s stuff is not cheap, but everything they sell is high quality, and this box only took four days to arrive from Japan.

Iris is going to be waking up in a few minutes, and I’m sure she will ask to open the washi canister. Based on this experience, I predict that when we actually go to Japan, Iris’s head is going to explode.

If you should find yourself in Vancouver BC and wanting to pony up for large quantities of meat and conversation, this series looks unbeatable:

The Meat of the Matter

Everyone involved is a certified expert, and there’s even a butcher shop field trip. (Have you ever seen _So I Married an Ax Murderer_?) One of the presenters in Jennifer McLagan, whose new book Fat is wonderful and I’ll have more to say about it in a few days.

The downside is, it’s $700, but it sounds totally worth it, plus today is my birthday and gifts are accepted.

I stopped into Safeway the other day for a doughnut. (Sometimes I really like a bad doughnut. Does this happen to you?) On previous visits I’d chuckled at the sign above the doughnut case, which read:

AT SAFEWAY, A DOZEN IS 14

This time, however, I completely lost it, because someone had carefully pasted a square of paper over the “14” and written “12.”

I was all set to come home and write about this, but it occurred to me to Google it first. It turns out I am late to this party:

The Consumerist: Grocery Shrink Ray Unleashes Its Fury On Safeway Bakery

The sign at my local Safeway was more tastefully redone than this. But wow, apparently some genius at corporate sent out a memo to stores telling them to scratch out their generous doughnut policy with a Sharpie. This is so awesome I don’t know where to start. Like, if they had raised the price of a dozen doughnuts by a dollar, hardly anybody would have even noticed, right? Whereas this way it’s more like…

SAFEWAY IS STEALING MY DOUGHNUTS

Would an enterprising culture jammer please mount a doughnut protest at Safeway and post the video? I would so love to see that. And if you, dear readers, were going to attend such a protest, what would you write on your picket signs?

This month on Culinate:

Green Goddess: The subtle pleasures of green tea

> Take a trip to your local supermarket, and you might find Lipton 100% Green, Mighty Leaf Green Tea Tropical, Stash Premium Green, or Bigelow Naturally Decaffeinated. All will assure you that they are loaded with antioxidants. Some, such as Yogi Tea Slim Life, claim to help you lose weight.

> But few will tell you–on the front of the box at least–whether they contain Chinese or Japanese tea. This is a major omission, because to my palate, Chinese and Japanese green teas are as distinct as green and black tea. They’re grown and processed differently, and the difference in the cup is huge.

One dumb fact I ended up cutting: if you want to brew your green tea at a perfect 175°F, one way to do it is to boil your water at Everest Base Camp, elevation 17,700 feet.