I find the Asian market to be absolutely fascinating. I’ve mentioned this before. I like everything about it except for the fact that it smells like an unwashed bidet. After careful sleuthing, I believe I may have located the source of the odor, and it’s sort of a nightmare in and of itself:
Just so you know, this festival of trailing feces and scales is why I don’t swim in natural bodies of water.
Like dropping bad acid and watching Finding Nemo in an alley by yourself.
If I can just unsee the fish internment camp of death, then I can allow myself to be pleasantly surprised by the sheer variety of truly weird shit eaten in cultures outside of my own.
I will be the first to agree that Caucasian Americans eat some weird shit, also. The artichoke, for example, is a clearly hostile type of produce that wants us dead. Yet we persevere past the thorns and thick thatch of purple hair that guards its intimate regions to get to the tender payload within. It’s just like sleeping with Katy Perry, probably.
Another example would be anything from Taco Bell.
Asian market produce section, though, is a virtual who’s who of everything that I’m pretty sure isn’t meant for consumption. I’ve divided it into a few important categories, although certainly many of the foods cross over into multiple categories. Like a tank, which can explode you AND run you over AND shoot you with mounted guns.
Possible categories include: Oh My Gourd, Attack Food, Hairy Food, Food With Eyeballs, Sexual Innuendo Food, Made Up Food, and Food That Looks Like Twigs. I’m sure you’ll have no problem figuring out what goes where, and where the overlaps occur.
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- I’m uncomfortable with my produce looking like I need to hit it with a Gilette Mach 5 before I hit it with a vegetable peeler. Just because it’s blonde doesn’t mean you don’t have to keep up with basic grooming. I should know.
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- If I can use it to beat someone unconscious, then it isn’t okra. Don’t lie to me. You can actually see my hand flexing to keep this motherlover upright, and that’s not okay. Especially if the key quality that okra brings to a culinary party is “mucilaginous.” If I want this quantity of slimy goo in my mouth, I’ll volunteer to be the cookie.
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- The durian is well known for smelling like someone put their balls inside a gym sock and ran a marathon. It’s less well-known for looking like the business end of a mace. Again, let’s leave the consumption of weapons to the sword swallowers/carnies and keep it friendly.
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- Unnecessary. Completely unnecessary. Why are they staring at me? Judging, always judging.
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- Oh good! We’ve discovered a way to capture the souls of shrimp and package them for consumption with a festive chile-lime salt! I don’t believe in horcruxes as a source of nutrition. And how come they still have eyeballs?
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- Considering that 2/3 of the produce department appears to be medical waste from amputating Ron Jeremy’s sexual limbs, these look positively tiny in comparison. So calling them “Long Squash” seems like an exaggeration and a disappointment.
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- Like a cucumber that was left in the sun for too many days, these wrinkled, shriveled knobs are more reminiscent of nursing home sponge bath time than they are of their tumescent, proud gourd ancestors.
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- I’ll take “barnacles” for 500, Alex! One time, I fell asleep reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and this is exactly what the bubotubers looked like in my dream-Herbology classroom.
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- I saw these on the X-Files once. I didn’t sleep for weeks. Don’t turn off the lights, whatever you do!
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- If “jackfruit” isn’t a euphemism for testicle, then I’m the Mona Lisa.
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- Aloe: This enormous, dangerous specimen means old plan out, new plan in. Instead of sharpening my toothbrush on my (eventual) cell floor in jail, I’ll just fake a sunburn and WHAM. Instant shiv.
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- I love turmeric. Its musky flavor, brilliant yellow color, and health benefits are more than enough draw for me to put the powder in any meal that will tolerate it. That said, these are not turmeric. They’re beetle husks. I think I saw one of these being removed from a corpse on Silence of the Lambs, right?
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- Gray Squash: This is fifty shades of false advertisement. It’s green, dammit. The only interest I have in this item is taking its color and marketing it as “heathered clover” to the lululemon clothing company.
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- The box said “cherimoya,” which sounded more like a Pokemon character than a fruit. I hit up Google and it said that it’s otherwise known as the “ice cream fruit” for its creamy, delicious interior. SOLD! Except for that’s a fat fucking lie, as we’ll later discover.
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- I *think* this is supposed to be a daikon radish, but again it looks like a whacking stick to ward of rapists, so I don’t want to put it in my stir fry so much as I want to put it in my survival bag for end-of-days scenarios.
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- This is both a very thick twig, AND hairy. Do I peel it? Do I draw a face on it and grant it personhood in the state of Alabama?
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- I want this to be an angry cucumber, but it has spines like a dinosaur, a beak like a bird, and a tail like a flagellate. Anyone around here good at taxonomy?
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- I just…what??? I need punctuation to make this make sense. Unless this is a headline for how underage sex tourism in Cambodia has been eradicated.
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- If this doesn’t say “summer marital aid” then I don’t know what does. Cool off those vaginal hot flashes with a SCREW ICE BAR.
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- How do you know what my milkis feel like?? And why in God’s name is Mary Poppins landing on the moon’s spinal cord?!? Related: My milkis bring all the British nannies to my yard.
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- “Hey, baby. I’m-a put my long stick in your fish cake, mmkay? TWO THUMBS UP!” This cartoon ninja is totally putting the moves on me, and it’s working.
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- These are shaped wrong to be sperm, so I’m going to go with the only other possible option: these are the tiny little fish that swim up your peehole and lay eggs in your junk if you go in lake water without a bathing suit.
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- Tree phallus. This is how baby Ents are made.
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- I don’t know if this is a tuber or a tree tumor, but whatever it is, I want to treat it with radiation and then not go near it until it shrinks in size.
So next time you’re at the Asian Market, be sure to pack gloves, a machete, some calamine lotion, OFF with DHT, Raid, and an open mind.
The heck with the OFF. I’m packing a bomb disposal suit and a flamethrower….
You forgot chicken feet. I always get my chicken feet at the aisian market because they are SOOOO cheap and great for broth
Excellent post. I used to go to the asian market in my old town all the time. I stopped bringing my kids after the first time though because they didn’t know how to not complain out loud about the smell or how to not cry at the whole (still with their faces on) dead roasted ducks and other birds hanging up by their feet in the front of the store.
You’d be a terrific cooking teacher until you fell into the arms of an underage Zac Efron look alike.