Finding the Holy Land (field trip)

This past weekend, I visited Northeast Minneapolis's most famous Middle Eastern grocery: Holy Land!  Famous for their pita bread and hummus carried in many grocery stores throughout Minnesota, Holy Land also offers a full grocery store and deli of their own.  With a rough list of items to buy, I went out to the unique retailer and demanded that they take my money.

Holy Land offered all kinds of things I've never seen available for sale before like exotic animal parts, whole almond fruits, a dizzying array of grains and of course an immensely abundant ground spice section. 

cow stomach featured on the right

Exotic Spam

Lastly,  the Meat Shop!  The busiest corner of the store, Holy Land's Meat Shop offers fresh cuts of goat, lamb, cow, and chicken.  A good deal of middle eastern dishes feature bone-on meats and as such when you get a "pound of goat" you get that weight (or a rough equivalent) in meat on bone that has been cut into chunks with a band saw.  The chicken cuts come as a result of being hacked at with a cleaver yielding a similar product.  From what I understand, by leaving bones in one can skip the use of stock or broth and instead allow the flavors from the bones to speak for themselves.

More importantly to the community Holy Land seeks to serve, all meats offered are Halal, meaning they have been raised and slaughtered in a fashion satisfactory to the laws of Islam.  This criteria, in some ways similar to Kosher standards, offers an interesting look into the ways culture seeks to make sure the food consumed by its subscribers is suitable.

I always geek out about grocery stores serving different communities than my own, be it Indian, Chinese or Middle Eastern.  Holy Land prompted a similar response from me and it was difficult to contain my excitement at all the exotic materials available...then again...I was the guy with a camera taking pictures of everything so perhaps my excitement wasn't so well contained!