From market to table

Sunday Markets

Every Sunday my flatmate’s Komira and I always go to Sunday market in order to buy groceries such as vegetables, fruit, fish, and eggs.

There are two Sunday markets near our apartment, namely Sunday market near the New world supermarket and other Sunday market which is about 10 minutes on foot from my accommodation.

The first Sunday market has many agricultural products and there are many vegetable sell in this market, but it is quite a bit different from the other market because most vegetables are European style vegetable such as cabbages, pumpkins, potato, sweet potato etc, there are also lamb and pork and the price is quite high. Most customers and sellers are European Kiwi.

The other Sunday market is Asian style, because there are many Asian agriculture products such as Asian vegetables, so many kindsof them that I even don’t know what to call them in English. There are good and clean fish which arevery fresh in this market as well. Most customers and sellers are Asian; the Asian sellers are more friendly with me and some of them can speak Thai language so I can speak with them very well. The important thing is most products in this market are cheaper than the other market.

Although the Asian Sunday market is a little bit far from my place, but my friend and I still chose to go to this market rather than the first market. We usually buy quite a big amount in order to make sure that we will have vegetables, fruit and eggs - enough for 1 or 2 weeks.

A Vietnamese meal

When Thuong invited her conversation buddies to have dinner in her apartment she cooked Vietnamese food for them. It took her nearly four hours to prepare dinner. She made chicken salad, spring roll and fried noodles.

“I was happy because both of them like our food. This was the first time they had eaten Vietnamese spring roll. I don't know how many kinds of spring roll are in the world, but I am sure that they are totally different from Vietnamese spring rolls in ingredients and wrap. I remember that a famous businessman, Philip Kotler, at a meeting in Viet Nam years ago said that Viet Nam can be a “kitchen of the world”. Vietnamese food doesn't use too much oil, sugar and chillie, and especially no cheese, no butter and no curry. Thus, food will not lose its taste. In addition, we put many types of vegetables into dishes, so our food balances meat and vegetables, even more vegetables than meat.

Normally, it takes at least one hour to prepare a meal for us, because we often have 3 main dishes for a meal such as rice, meat, vegetable and soup. Vietnamese soup varies from other countries’ soup because it takes so long to cook, so this is a challenge for housewives.”