Fresh Bamboo Shoots - How to Prepare 準備新鮮冬筍

I grew up thinking food only came from supermarkets and so am forever grateful that I have had the chance to discover and experience the wet markets of Hong Kong where anything and everything culinary can be found for your eating pleasure.  

There's nothing quite like the subtle thrill inside as you wander through the bustling real food markets on your daily round, keeping the corner of your eye on the lookout for whatever food treasures that day will bring.  

I was so excited with my latest discovery that we found in a humble dirt sprinkled box, these strange horn shaped plants? vegetables? that turned out to be Fresh Bamboo Shoots!  Woo-hoo!  I've always wanted to try fresh bamboo shoots!  It turns out that these fresh bamboo shoots are not only easy to prepare but much more delicious than the canned bamboo shoots that we usually use.  (But of course it is!)

Boiled Fresh Octopus 白灼新鮮八爪魚

Have you ever seen a live octopus up close?  Beautifully sinuous creatures in constant fascinating motion, their suction cups giving off a rapid fire pop, pop, pop as they propel themselves all over the place with ease.  

At the wet market seafood section the other day one of the fish vendors had a basketful of live octopus.  We stopped to watch the feisty boneless creatures writhe this way and that for a long while, my little girl was just fascinated!  In the end, of course, we ended up taking one of the octopus home!  

We made the simplest and best dish one can make with super duper fresh octopus: Boiled Fresh Octopus 白灼新鮮八爪魚 served simply with a soy sauce and wasabi dip.  So fresh and yummilicious!

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Happy (after) Halloween to one and all!  I hope all of you have had just as gruesome and spookity a Halloween as we did!  Well, to be honest, ours was probably not so spookity as yours since it was mostly centered around tiny crazy costumed kids and their apparently insatiable appetite for sugary treats.  

And of course there was the Halloween costume to be made to order (umm...anybody else still traumatized from weeks spent making a Queen Elsa costume?) and the treats to be purchased and distributed and...last, but not least, one of my personal favorite parts of Halloween, the choosing and the carving of dear ol' Jack O' Lantern pumpkin!  (Do you like the slightly creepy way Jack's eyes came out?)   

And under the general motto of 'Waste not, want not," we always try to repurpose dear ol' Jack by eating his flesh (see our delicious Anise Pumpkin Cookies recipe!) or, this year, by ripping out his gook-ily guts and making yummilicious Roasted Pumpkin Seeds from the very seeds that we plucked out from Jack's innards!