The San Gabriel Superstore and Yum Cha Cafe

[Preface - The following four posts occurred last weekend during my road trip to Pasadena with TORC, her husband and the Prof.  Because of this fuckery called "limited photo space on blogger" (yes, I've actually exceeded my limit! After nearly 4 years too!), I am in the midst of learning how to navigate flicker, as well as how to upload photos and use the html code and all this other shit that may be easy for the tecnically savvy. 

However, because I am not quite the technical savant, Bert has the fun job of trying dumb down the instruction to me so I can learn me the ropes.  I am in the process of learning how to transfer my photo files to flicker.  Hence, a couple of posts which should have been included in this marathon post, "Memories of a Forgotten War" and "The Pacific Asia Museum" will have to wait until I learn this newfangled mess! I really wanted to post on those two items since that was the main reason of our trip.  Anyhow, those posts will have to wait.]

After our mini tea & cake snack at Vanille, we headed over to the San Gabriel Superstore which is WC's favorite grocery store. Read up on the store here on one of her older posts. She's got waay better pix and descriptions of the store's offerings and general layout.

It was overwhelming seeing all of the different stalls...selling everything from clothing, knick knacks, electronics, jewelry and handbags...

Dried and sweetened coconut for the Lunar New Year

More dried snack items some of which included lotus seeds, potatoes, carrots, coconut and pineapple:

Pre-packaged ingredients for Vietnamese style sour soup (the long stalks are taro stems):

Lau Dua, also known as pandan leaf:

Knotted seaweed - gosh, someone had to tie a knot in each piece!

Pandan jam:

Durian jam! I wonder if this is any good?

Does this look like a sideways PENIS to you?  Okay, maybe I'm the only one with a dirty mind here.  But I still think it does, so there. 

"Three Ladies" Brand rice paper (WC's preferred brand)...I haven't tried these yet...must do. I still have my old package with the rose on it (Superman's wife's favorite brand):

Can you believe this knife was only $2.50? It was supersharp and highly recommended by WC. Both TORC and the Prof bought one.

Here's a product I'm not too familiar with...

The battle of the sardines - Ligo brand (Philippines) and Smiling Fish brand (Thailand):

Read WC's post on Yum Cha here...there's also a Yum Cha in San Diego inside Thuan Phat (the old Vien Dong III). While the food all around smelled so good, I had my eye on something else...

Which was this new item...the lemon grass roasted chicken!

I bought one of these babies! A whole chicken for $4.99! They chopped it up for me and I ate

several pieces on the way home!

The Prof bought one of the roasted ducks (actually just half). This is just a lone duck. She got a fresh one because they brought out another ring dangling with freshly roasted ducks.

It was a really long day - I didn't get home until 9:30 pm. Pasadena was such a pretty little town and I plan on going there again real soon with Bert and TC. Plus, I'd love to check out the Norton Simon Museum as well as the Pasadena Museum of Contemporary Art (PMCA) as well as other restaurants and dessert places...Road trip!