The quest was for bamboo salt. Since our customary source has vanished, at least for the time being, we set off in search of a new one. The plan was to start north and head back to town, checking along the way. We found it at the very first place, New Oriental Market (6929 Airport). And we also could not resist these beautiful packets of seeds for growing ingredients of Korean cuisine. These are only three, but there were more varieties in the rack by the register. This store has an active bulletin board: are there any sushi chefs out there who’d like to work at H-E-B? In an adjoining room, we could see groups of happy people dining. This was tempting, but there were too many errands on the list and the time was too short before we were due to appear for a mid-afternoon meal elsewhere.

A second quest was for Cafe Josie Equatorial Eclipse grill sauce, and we had another eureka moment, at the Whole Foods north. The ingredients of this superlative and one-of-a-kind item may seem exotic: shoyu tamari, sun-dried raisins, cider vinegar, canola oil, toasted sesame oil, chiles japones, ginger, and tamarind. They’re just plain delicious. Someone had just bought all the remaining Cafe Josie blue-label jerk sauce, but there were just a few bottles of the eclipse, and we swept all of them into our basket.

At Discount Electronics, the friendly staff found a battery for that notebook ancient of days from Dell. The last stop was the main branch of the library, soon to be closed for a few weeks, where the shelves were picked over and the lines were long, but we did find some of those old-fashioned portable entertainment devices known as books. Now, we’re ready for the week to come.