The Wet Markets

One of my favorite places to shop is the wet markets. Think farmer's market on steroids. In Central, the largest and closest of these is the Gage Street Market. This area covers several blocks of interconnected streets that are filled with stalls of fresh fruits, vegetables, grains, poultry, meats as well as fish and seafood. There are even a few baked goods shops interspersed throughout. And of course there are the flower stalls.

It is a place where you can loose yourself just looking at the vast variety of items for sale. By now I have found my favorite shops and stalls but I am always on the look out for new ones to try. On Christmas Eve we went to the wet markets to get our items for Christmas dinner. My favorite place for veggies is the Wai Kee Fresh Fruit & Vegetable Ltd. 

Tomatoes, lemons and limes are about the only fruit you can find. The remainder of the shop is filled with vegetables of all sorts and sizes from all corners of the globe.

As an added bonus you get some parsley or cilantro and some spring onions for free each time you buy. I can easily reach my carrying weight limit in this one shop. But there is more - much more.

Eggs are everywhere. You can get white and brown chicken eggs, duck eggs, quail eggs, preserved eggs and types of eggs I still do not know.

There are vegetables and fruits that I am still unfamiliar with alongside some of our regular favorites.

Don't you love the long beans? They are amazing in size. 

The meat and fish stalls are not on my usual route. If I want prawn it is fine or other shellfish, but I am not as well versed in fish to know what I am doing. I have also found out that cuts of meat I ask for and the ones I get are often two entirely different things. So for meat I stick to the western supermarkets unless it is chicken breast or something that cannot be confused. The time I ordered pork tenderloin and the butcher gave me pork knuckle had dinner tasting like shoe leather. The pork knuckle just needs to be cooked differently than tenderloin - lesson learned.

Fruit is one of my favorite things and dragon fruit and lignin were on the list for this day. Pomelo is another of my favorites. Lychee which are out of season along with mango, guava, rhombutan and mangosteen make up my usual list of local fare. Sometimes you can find them, but they are not as good this time of year.

The flower stalls always look beautiful and smell wonderful. Orchids are always in season.

There are stalls where you can buy nuts of all varieties.

And for those of you from Grand Rapids, we even have the Chinese version of Frank's hot shots.

You can get grains and rice by the kilo.

Dried goods such as mushrooms and fish products are plentiful.

Choi sum has become one of our favorite greens and, if you like it, hand made fresh tofu is abundant in the markets.

With our shopping totes overflowing, we left the markets behind and headed back up the mountain to unpack our treasurers and prepare for the feast to come.