I loved reading Rebecca's recent stories of the feast she prepared for Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. Not just for the menu, but for the fact that she pulled it all together by shopping at an Asian supermarket. I love ethnic grocery stores and I think they are an uncelebrated resource for those of us raising kids born in other countries.

When I lived in New York City, I could run out to the Russian supermarkets like White Acacia in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, to stock up on pelmeni. I went to Eagle Provisions, a Polish market at the edge of Park Slope for pierogi. When it was time to make molé sauce and chile rellenos, I hit the Mexican market in Sunset Park. I had my pick of several Chinese supermarkets when I wanted to serve dim sum at home. Now, I've got a pan-Mediterranean market (Italy, the Iberian peninsula, Greece and north Africa), Indian, Chinese, Japanese and, yes, Russian.

Although I'm sure ethnic grocery store owners work hard for their living, they've got a pretty straight shot at opportunity. By the time the mainline supermarkets get done stocking every permutation of Coke and Pepsi, they don't have much shelf space left, especially for an item they might sell 10 of in a month.

But Russian grocery stores are in the minority here in the U.S. and they can be hard to find, even if you have a Russian Yellow Pages for your area like I do. While some Asian stores rival a Kroger's in size and have launched their own private label brands, the Russian stores I know of remain tucked in small locations off the beaten path. I would not have found the one I now shop at, Prime Foods Market, had it not been pointed out to me by a parishioner at my mom's church.

And while Wal-Mart Stores is scouting locations in Russia, I don’t think we Russian adoption parents can expect any help from Russia food groups here anytime soon. The biggest Russian supermarket chain, Pyaterochka, and its main rival, Seventh Continent, still have too much opportunity for expansion at home. The giant, but quixotically named, Wimm-Bill-Dann (its owners like a certain tennis championship that takes place in England) makes food but doesn't retail it.

I'm not one for shopping for food on the Internet, but there are three Russian food sites online: RussianTable.com, RussianFoods.com and Skazka Russian Food. RussianTable has a nice selection of whole grains, which, as I have noted, are so important to the Russian diet. Skazka has a wide range of smoked fish.

So here's what I'm doing about all this: I've started a thread on the chat boards to collect the names of the Russian grocery stores we all have found.

But I do have one request if anybody has some time on their hands. When I go to the Chinese supermarket, I take along my trusty copy of The Asian Grocery Store Demystified. How about somebody writing something similar for the Russian stores?