Noodle Soup with Mushroom Balls

With the price of gasoline these days, it isn’t smart to go food shopping in far-away supermarkets. The nearer, the less gasoline is required. And I buy in bulk to avoid multiple trips. But there are only two supermarkets in Antipolo, Shopwise and Budget Lane, and the latter is not exactly a foodie’s paradise. Shopwise is okay except that shopping in the same supermarket, and seeing the same stuff every time, can get boring. Unimart in Greenhills is my all-time favorite supermarket but it is more than an hour’s drive away.

Last week, when a trip to the supermarket was already a must, I couldn’t bring myself to go to Shopwise again. My husband suggested SM Hypermarket in SM Taytay. It was a god-awful experience. The bottles and cartons of juice were in three separate aisles that weren’t even adjacent to each other. Same thing with the mayonnaise. Organizations must be alien to the management of SM Hypermarket. And, talk about the noise. A woman’s voice was practically screaming into a microphone and her mispronounced announcements were blaring over the PA system. The experience was nothing short of stressful. There was a saving grace through the mushroom balls.

They cost P375 per kilo but you can buy as little as 100 grams. I’m not a fan of processed food but my daughter, Sam, wanted crab balls and shrimp balls and I figured it wasn’t such a risk since we could only buy a hundred grams of each to try them out. Much more practical than buying pre-packed brands. And since I can eat neither the crab nor shrimp balls, I ordered a hundred grams of mushroom balls as well. And that was what I had for lunch today. The mushroom balls left no floury taste, they were firm and they were flavorful. And I was happy to see bits of real shiitake mushrooms in them.