— Gwen Patton

One thing I have to say, and I think most of you know, that I, uh, completed the Plant Pro course nine years ago, is I always looked at it as an adventure. So I wouldn't go to my conventional grocery store, nor would I go to Whole Foods market, but I would go to my favorite store, which is H Mart, which is the world's largest Asian grocery store in the world. And, uh, H Mart had everything I ever needed for any assignment. So it might be, I used to set a, um, field trip day for myself when I was looking for ingredients and making fun out of that adventure so that I would be able to get my assignment done. So I think sometimes, um, thinking outside your favorite grocery store does make it easy. The other thing is, um, a lot of people enjoy going to, uh, Amazon to find some difficult, um, items. I did wanna say one thing about, uh, the, uh, item that you mentioned, which was a barley miso. So if you are cooking gluten free for someone making a, um, a soup, shall we say, from, uh, barley miso might not be the ticket since barley is not gluten free. So you can go to H Mart where they have an entire section, a refrigerated section on every kind of, um, miso you have ever seen in your life. So sometimes I like to buy, uh, a chickpea miso, which is totally delicious. Uh, usually the gluten-free misos are made from, uh, soybeans. So you can read the instructions or ingredient label on the back of the box. So here's the other thing, um, miso comes in a myriad of colors. So let's say that you go to the grocery store and you can't find that barley, just get a yellow or a white or a red miso. And when you do your assignment, you, you add to the assignment. I was unable to find, uh, you know, barley miso in its place. I use this brand so forth and so on. So I think that sometimes, um, you can't, we can't get caught up in the ingredients, but I always go to sub uh, go to the, you know, Google and ask Google to help me find a great substitute item. So if you didn't have the miso, you could use, uh, coconut aminos or you could also use a tamari, which will render sort of the same flavor and it's also gluten-free.