To Market, To Market

So guess what was learned this week?  I can find authentic, Asian ingredients amazingly priced at... wait for it... the Asian market.  I did not know this until Thursday when I visited a really good one for the first time.  It turns out I've been paying twice the amount I needed to for baby coconuts at the local health food store.  Yeah, and all those really delicious looking raw Asian dishes I've been so eager to try but couldn't find ingredients for at supermarkets or Trader Joe's?  Yeah, they're at the Asian market.

Many thanks to my friend Sky for helping me find my new favorite place on Market Street. (How fitting, right?  Market Street?  The Asian Market is on Market Street?  I thought so...)  If it hadn't been for her, I wouldn't have found these:

Or these (those things next to the shockingly-priced green onions are lemongrass, friends!):

I was hoping the leaves were lime leaves (my sweet lime tree died in the frost while we we're out of town *sniff*), but when I asked the storekeeper what they were, I'm pretty sure he said, "Curry."  I bet they'll be yummy in the soup the mushrooms are going in, whatever they are.

My husband doesn't even know I have these babies.  I can't wait to surprise him with a hopefully delicious raw nori roll dish.  Is it bad that they say they're roasted?  That doesn't sound too raw, but all the nori rolls said they were roasted, so...

But the most exciting item to find was this!

On my new-find high, I quickly scurried home in the rain and whipped up Sky's delicious raw pudding (blast the blurry picture.  It was beautiful, I tell you):

And, well, I kinda forgot to take a picture of this before I commenced consumption.  It's not yet perfected, but wowza!  I can make my own Thai tea for pennies!

And do you know what else I learned from Sky?  That you can order things from stores.  Like a case of coconuts.  Meaning, instead of coming home with a couple, I can definitely come home with a case.  It's the simple, obvious but newly discovered things in life that fill me with glee and wonder.  Also, let it be known that you can, indeed, outgrow a morbid spelling problem.  There were no misspelled words in this post according to spell check, people.  None.  Will wonders never cease?