Exploring: A Shanghai Wet-Market

For any readers living in North American, Europe, Australia….I am extremely jealous. Each time I cook a meal or bake something, I end up spending a great deal of money on ingredients, especially on things like meat (ha!) , butter, cheese. I can’t even imagine EXPERIMENTING! To waste those precious ingredients!!! I have to admit though, ruined recipes still end up in my eager belly…it would just be rude to subject your loved ones to the failed attempt ; )

One thing we do have here in the East are the wonderfully stinky wet-markets. They carry the freshest produce, seafood, meat - all at the best prices. And what would be better than to be able to talk to the person who owns the farm your tomatoes are coming from? Any of you living close to a Farmers Market would know what I’m talking about. The pride and sense of ownership for each hand-picked food gives it so much more value when you’re cooking with it. What I absolutely can’t stand is that they smell AWFUL. All the orphaned bits of seafood, meat, rotten fruits and vegetables end up carpeting the weathered tiles.

Until last week when S. visited, I did everything possible to avoid entering wet-markets. It might have been the horror I saw as a little girl when I watched them pinch, choose, and pluck (also, dare I say, keeeeell aka kill) Chicken Little flanked by stalls with curtains of hanging Miss Piggys and Betsy the Cows. Luckily I had a terrible cold and wasn’t able to breathe through my nose, so I was able to follow S. to the wet-market for a little photo session.

Meet S...eating black rice steamed cake

I was surprised by how organized, and dare I say CLEAN the market was. D., my Shanghainese-Fujian-American-Philippino friend informed me that not too long ago, the city moved all of the wet-markets into covered buildings to further push the modernization of the city. On one side were the vegetable stalls, in another aisle was the seafood, and further down there was meat. At the far end of the building were dried goods like Chinese medicine ingredients for soups, dried mushrooms, nuts and beans. I didn’t buy anything that day (too busy with work recently to be able to cook anything), but I will definitely be doing my fresh-produce shopping there in the future – maybe…if S. is around to hold my hand as I walk by the caged chickens… and if my nose is stuffed to 90% breathe-ability.

By the way, this year was the first time I didn’t get to celebrate Thanksgiving with a turkey dinner and more importantly, getting together with my family. The clan was scattered around the globe making a get-together pretty much impossible (Skype Thanksgiving dinner?) – oh and also, I was working. I still have a lot to be thankful for though – something I thought about while I worked on a really sad and empty stomach. Already planning Christmas Dinner – proposed menu will be posted, and more likely changed quite frequently between now and C-Day. Any suggestions?