-Important correction time: I did not, as I claimed—as I believed!!—invent intuitive shopping. Little did I know, but none other than Isabel Slone did, in 2020, in an article for Fashion magazine article that is not available online. I should have known—Isabel is first where all things fashion-and-style are related! This is the woman who introduced cottagecore and prairie dresses to the masses. How did I not know she invented intuitive shopping, too?
But I do now, and so do you. Isabel also points me to someone else’s 2023 Medium post on the concept. Neither of these popped up in my pre-posting googling of “intuitive shopping,” alas. Off to have a word with my newsletter’s imaginary research assistants.
-Less-important but still happening update time: I know you are all waiting to hear how it’s going on the anchovies-in-olive-oil-in-Canada front, and there is news.
A bunch of supermarkets or delis or whatever also don’t have them, although someone on Twitter found them in a Liberty Village Metro. I decided to start more locally, in a newly-opened Spanish gourmet shop in Roncesvalles specializing in the famous tinned fish. Well! Anchovies in olive oil they have… for what was it $20? $30? for these tiny refrigerated packages. There were also some in actual cans, but those were $17 or something and had additional ingredients (olives, lemon, vinegar) and I wasn’t convinced. The cheese shop a few doors down… had the exact same can, same brand, not anywhere near an expiration date, and $9. Well!
I brought them home and realized why the logo looked familiar. These are Patagonia-brand anchovies, same as the fleeces. I had bought fish from a fleece company.
I didn’t want to hold it against what was, after all, a $9 (CAD) can of ostensibly inexpensive fish. (In context, next to their $17 counterparts, this had seemed a sensible purchase, but the more I thought about it…) I opened it, for use chopped and on top of some pasta with sauce—doubtless not the intended use, or maybe?—and I cannot emphasize enough how unappealing this was. Made me question the entire anchovy quest itself, which was always a bit questionable. I’ve maybe always liked the idea of tinned fish—of fish, period—more than its reality.
Yes, as they (apparently) say, Spanish anchovies are less salty than their Italian cousins. And this is supposed to be a good thing? These particular ones—I will not hold this against all Spanish-style anchovies—tasted like if mediocre canned tuna were somehow shaped into unappetizing little fish.
Since neither I nor any members of my household (those who did and didn’t taste some) were ‘biting,’ this made its inevitable journey from the attempt at avoiding food waste stint in the glass Tupperware thing into the compost.
Eataly’s website said they had the good ones, the ones that are $6 and more to the point known to be good. But I didn’t want to risk it with an order and wind up with a substitute, as you may recall. Did I go in person on an extremely cold weekend day to find out? I did, but in my defense, I have a toddler who only weekend-naps in a stroller, and it was too windy to be outside for long, so transit-to-mall it was.
I asked the first person I saw who worked in the store, who directed me to the fish counter. I asked someone at the fish counter, who directed me to the fresh pasta section, which I had unfortunately already seen didn’t have it. I asked at the checkout, and while the cashier wasn’t sure, he knew who to ask. Suddenly there was a man from the grocery department, and he knew exactly what I meant, and could confirm that they do still stock this, but the delivery last week didn’t have it, but the one this week will.
I played it cool, I was all, I’m not sure if I’ll be back to Eataly next week, given that I don’t live near it, but the chances are high that I will be taking the same multi-leg stroller journey, through some of Toronto’s most vile-smelling subway elevators (but at least there are subway elevators, sometimes) in the hopes of having located this most elusive ingredient.