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.