Don't cry for me Margerina

There are a couple of things here in Korea that you would never had imagined it would be so hard to come by back home. One of it would be margarine. Since I do not have a fridge with me, butter is out of the question. Back in Malaysia, numerous brands and flavours crying for your attention, but here, you would be crying to find it.

I have been checking out E-Mart, Home plus and even Hanaro mart here in Busan, not every store has margarine in their inventory. The only option I found so far is from Ottogi, as seen from the picture above. Even if you found it, most likely you won't be getting the whole range, as advertised on their website here.

Also from the website, there is supposed to be a larger 400g size, but what I have found so far is stores only stock the 200g (limited) range. That explains why I have bought 3 in a span of a month, including two from the picture above and one just 2 days ago, the olive oil version. Hmmm.... the company should give me a discount or free sample given that I have bought so many of it.

Ah, one other thing, which aisle or section in supermarket would you think you can locate margarine? Edible oil section you say? That is where I never found margarine. One store "categorised" it as baking product, one placed it near to the chill dairy section, while another store placed it together with jam, peanut butter and so on. It reminds me of the game show Supermarket Sweep, or even Finder's Keeper.

If you look closely at the product information behind the box, you will notice something familiar. See those portion I marked in red, 말레이시아산, which means produced in Malaysia. Apparently margarine here has palm olein and palm stearin in it, despite having picture of soybean, corn flavoured margarine, or even olive oil margarine. What the heck is olein and stearin? According to Malaysian Palm Oil Council, olein is the liquid component and stearin is the solid component of palm oil. Now I see why palm oil is one of the main export of Malaysia. Maybe they should start exporting palm oil based margarine from Malaysia to Korea, given that now they know there is a demand, i.e. Me, in Korea.