OK, it's my own fault. I'd learned of 99 Ranch Markets, a chain of Chinese groceries, only about 12 stores but nation-wide (even one in Newark).

I set out visit the one in San Gabriel. I never got there.

I knew I'd just passed the store, it's apparently deep within a huge modern shopping development.

I knew from the local signage I must now be deep in the heart of Saigon.

Before I could turn and go back I spotted a rather disreputable looking place titled Hawaii Supermarket. Cool - my kind of store!

I turned into their vast parking lot and soon managed to find and slip into an empty parking slot without anyone trying to slit my throat for it, and went on into the store.

It's huge! HUGE! I took a quick tour and then scrambled out of there as fast as I could before much stuff could stick to me.

When I got home I took inventory of the stuff that did stick:

• 2 Bamboo Shoots: fresh ones about 14" long just as cut from the bamboo with their full load of cyanide intact.
• a bag of Black Nuts - don't know anything about them yet but they're really weird. Each one looks like a tiny model of a watter buffalo head, with horns.
• 2 Galingal roots (prosaic, but I need them to make new batches of my Thai curry pastes).
• 1 tray of tiny crabs from Vietnam (species to be identified).
• 1 bag of frozen Thai chilis: the little tiny truly incindiary ones you can't find in the U.S. (too perishable).
• 1 bag tiny whole clams, a little smaller than Manila clams (species to be identified).
• 1 bag of spiral snails - sea snails I believe (species to be identified).
• 1 bag of whole Rambutans.
• 1 bag of whole Mangosteens.

Also: a 37 inch eel
[image|http://www.clovegarden.com/ingred/img/sf_eela06b.jpg||||]
and a really cool skate.
[image|http://www.clovegarden.com/ingred/img/sf_skate26g.jpg||||]

The whole lot set me back nearly US $20.

. . are pretty responsive with special crops now, though lamb is still expensive and while herds are being expanded rapidly goat is still in short supply. We're going to need a whole lot more of both when the U.S. pulls out of Iraq and all the "cooperators" move here and join the Iranians.