Sunday, June 15, 2008

Grocery shopping


Here is where Heidi shops several times a week for her fresh vegetables and fruits. This is a local, neighborhood market about 10 minutes away from her house. There are all kinds of shops and vendors in this area. Many shops are outside just set up around a big open concrete area. Besides the fruits, people were selling goods and services: kites, antiques furniture, flowers, fans, bicycle repairing, nuts, seeds, noodles, so many little stalls I can't even remember what all we saw. There were lots of different kinds of indoor shops around this area too. All the veggie vendors were inside a huge covered structure.

We strolled from vendor to vendor. They mostly had the same produce. Heidi had a few people that she always deals with and they knew her and she knew how to communicate with them. There were some veggies that I had never seen before and I would point at something and then look at the vendor with a perplexed expression and they would tell me the name but since I don't understand Chinese, it didn't help very much. Look at those green beans... yes, the long, skinny, about 18" long strands. Have you ever seen green beans that long? Me neither. We bought carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, celery, onions... mostly normal things.


Here is the line of fruit vendor stalls. The fruits were amazing... so colorful and delicious. They would let you sample anything. Once again there were a lot of fruits that I did not recognize but they were always anxious to give me a taste and hope I might buy some.
We mostly stuck with watermelon, apples, oranges and bananas. There was a melon that Heidi's family has taken a liking to called something like "hukiqui" (I'm sure I have that wrong!) but it is the shape of a rounder football and it is similar to the color of a honeydew melon on the outside but the inside is the color of a cantelope but it taste more like a combination honeydew/cantelope... very unusual but really good.


Here is one of the fruits that I had never seen before. Maybe you recognize it. The vendor lady opened one for me and had me take a bite. The skin/shell was quite thick and almost woody inside and then the fruit was the texture of a grape but white. It had larger seeds than grapes do centered in the middle of about 6 of those grape-like sections. Hopefully you can imagine my description. I did buy 4 from her but I only ended up eating one of them after I got them home. I wasn't a big fan but they were OK.
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Kristi Lee said...

Love all your pictures. I am new to your daughters blog and really enjoy seeing the pics of China. It must have been so cool to stay for so long that it felt like living there and not a vacation. My brother had to travel there for work and didn't eat much for a week. I'm afraid that would be me too. The pictures are fun to look at though :-)

Barbara said...

WOW...all fresh.
This is way our grandma’s cooked. No fast food, no prefab, no frozen. Just whole foods that they made delicious!!
I can still taste grandma’s Chicken Paprikash (Hungarian Dish)
Wish they still taught relief society cooking classes.. my young daughter would love that!
I learned to can and cook and all kinds of wonderful homemaking skills when I joined the church as a young mother and wife.
Great Market let's go buy tonight’s dinner??? hehehee
Fondly, B

Anonymous said...

Hi! Poppibf in from Singapore. Just came by from Heidi's website. That purple fruit is called mangosteen. A tropical fruit much loved by Southeast Asians. In fact, its the queen of fruits, usually eaten after durians (king of fruit) as it's believed to be cooling, as opposed to the heaty properties of the durian.=)

Crystal said...

Hi, Heidi's Mom ! I followed the link from her blog and it's been great reading about your adventures in China. We visited Beijing with our daughter and her husband (who had been working in Taiwan) 2 years ago so it feels like coming home again.

The fruit you are wondering about is called lychee (leechee) and it's usually peeled before eating the grapelike center. You can buy it in cans here in Canada too. I think you either love it or hate it!

Thanks for sharing your pictures and impressions. Have a great week!

mads said...

its mangosteen. common in southeast asia.