Jungle Jim's International Market

After we toured the conservatory near downtown, we hopped on N I-75 and made our way to Fairfield, Ohio where you can find the wackiest, weirdest and wildest grocery store I've ever been in: Jungle Jim's International Market.  This place was strange, but cool and had every possible grocery item I could dream of.  They import things from all over the world, making for some interesting shopping.  Their brochure says it a 'theme park of food' and a dream destination for 'foodies'.  It really was.  The place is enormous with 6 acres of shopping space.  Their displays range from firetrucks to entire scenes of Robin Hood and Sherwood Forest.  They have on display a mountain of cheese that weighs over 750 lbs!  We found Golden Griddle syrup that I haven't found anywhere else while living in Kentucky or Ohio.  I spied candy that I haven't seen since I was child (old fashion candy bars, candy cigarettes and bubble gum cigars) and we oohed and ahh'ed over the 1 1/2 acres of produce.  We ended up with a cartful of unique things: a dragon fruit, a Ugli fruit from Jamaica, a passion fruit, a coconut, 2 types of mangoes and taro root.  We made sure we found the International candy aisle and picked up different European chocolate bars made in Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, Belgium, Spain, England.  One was made 100% from milk from the Alps.  The creamy Swiss chocolate was the best, but Germany was a close second.  The most entertaining part of the day was browsing the International meat section where we could have purchased: whole bone-in rattlesnake, ostrich fillets, buffalo steaks, turtle meat, pork brains, quail, duck, antelope, elk, wild boar or alligator.  Nothing sounds too appealing, so we stuck to the good old hamburgers and hot dog variety of protein sources.  It was a fun ending to a day with the kids and an event we will never forget. 

(This photo is for you Kurt)