This Little Piggy Went to Market

       I've always thought one of the best ways to understand a country or culture is to visit its food markets.  What you find there says a lot about what's important to the ordinary people who shop there.  Grocery stores are also good places to get interesting souvenirs when you're on a trip (though often the folks back home aren't quite as delighted by it  as you were when you enjoyed it first-hand.)  
       Looking at this picture, can you tell what's important to Malaysians (as well as Filipinos, Japanese and others, of course.)  Right!  Instant noodles!  American supermarkets have walls and walls of different kinds of pizzas on display, but here in Penang, in ordinary-people supermarkets, it's NOODLES!  Oh, and chicken!  Fresh chicken, frozen chicken, fried chicken, recently-killed chicken.  

     And speaking of recently-alive food items, I know that fish is supposed to be fresh.  All those years in Japan drilled that into me, although I was a Midwestern gal who thought fish came in nice rectangular waxed-paper-wrapped boxes labelled "Mrs. Paul's Fish Stix."  It was a big surprise to me to learn that fish actually came with fins and eyeballs!  But back in Japan, the fish was either swimming in a tank in the shop, waiting to die, or it was tidily packaged up with a little bit of plastic grass to make it look natural.  So, when I rounded the corner of the new Tesco Supermarket and encountered THIS collection of fish -- well, let's just say that we had steak for dinner that night.  This fish was entirely too fresh for me!

        The "real-people" supermarket (as opposed to the expat one) also had some other interesting items, which I secretly photographed.    Oh, yummy!  Bird's nest flavoured drink!  Left that one behind.  How about some nice breakfast cereal?   No, thanks.  

And luckily, I have no need for these offerings above, either!