Lemongrass is a key ingredient in southeast Asian cooking, including some of the dishes I've cooked for this blog, like beef rendang and lamb curry. By my calculation, these packages of lemongrass put the price of it at a relatively low 25 cents per inch. Most of the recipes I use require anywhere from 12 inches to 24 inches of lemongrass per recipe.
After last year's scarcity of lemongrass, including the impossibility of getting any before my birthday last February, I've been buying and freezing every package I can get my hands on. Lemongrass is readily available in the Cleveland area, but here in the Youngstown area, lemongrass is worth its weight in gold.
And I mean that literally. Last year, after talking the produce manager at the same Giant Eagle into ordering lemongrass last year, I was faced with a bill for lemongrass that broke down to approximately $1.50 per inch! We argued, and he showed me the invoice. I ended up paying more like $1 an inch for that transaction, and Giant Eagle made no profit, but... suffice it to say, I felt ripped off, even if it was the market price at the time. It just didn't seem right to pay less for the meat in the dish I was cooking than for just one of the herbs!
My lemongrass interaction with Giant Eagle last year, however, impacted the local market. The brand name on the packages of lemongrass is completely different from the brand name on the packages of other herbs. The new packages contain three times as much lemongrass as last year's packages. Plus, because I've been buying two or three packages a week, today I noticed that Giant Eagle has started to stock 6 packages!
In other words, my friends, now there's enough lemongrass in Boardman for me and for you, too!
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