Beautiful little Beech Mushrooms.

As a very wise professor I know once told me “The two greatest things in life are grocery shopping and sex,”  and I will most certainly agree with the first. There is nothing more thrilling to me than grocery shopping, especially in strange ethnic supermarkets. In the mono culture of Saratoga Springs, NY the closest thing we have to an ethnic market is Roma’s, an Italian import market that has great subs. While their selection of pastas and canned tomatoes is great…there are no mung bean threads or jars of kim chi to be found. A few friends and I decided yesterday to venture to the state capital, Albany for some Vietnamese food. My friend Michelle and I debated back and forth over google reviews and finally settled on a place called Van’s on Central Ave. in Albany. It was well worth the forty five minute drive, we all got delicious pho – ga and spring rolls, as Michelle said, it was “pho-nomenal.”

As if delicious pho weren’t enough, on the way back we stopped at a quaint looking “Asian Supermarket.” Inside it wasn’t quaint at all…but a mecca of all things ASIAN. I couldn’t believe my eyes…aisles and aisles of adzuki beans, bins bulging with bamboo, shelves stocked with seaweed, counters crowded with crabs! For those of you who don’t know me very well, I grew up in Los Angeles and I’m completely obsessed with Asian food, so much so that I make my parents send me giant care packages with miso soup, soba noodles, ponzu and just about everything else.

So  thanks mom and for your support and spending over the past three years…but I don’t NEED you anymore (well i Do, but just not in the form of Japanese market care package shopping) because I now have my own Asian supermarket. Here are a few of the things that I bought….stick around for another post and find out what I decide to make!

A Tangle of Long Beans

Chinese Broccoli. I wonder what it tastes like.