A big part of a healthy low carb diet is produce. You need to eat a variety of good, crunchy, non-starchy, veggies in colors like green, red, and purple. They fill you up without bringing the calories. They bring fiber, vitamins, and antioxidants to the table. Even if you’re not dieting, eating more non-starchy vegetables is just going to be good for you.
The other part is fresh herbs. If you’re going to cut the fat, you need to bring flavor from other sources. You can use bottled sauces and marinades, but fresh herbs are going to bring flavors to the party that you just cannot get from a bottle.
And if you want to get an abundance of fresh produce and herbs, don’t go to the local supermarket. Find an Asian supermarket.
I discovered the wonders of the Asian supermarket produce section when I was working downtown in the International District, in an office park near Qwest Field. Right across from the office park was Uwajimaya, a Japanese supermarket. They had all sorts of fresh herbs shrinkwrapped on the premises and reasonably priced. Their other produce ran the gamut from the hothouse tomatoes we all know and love to Chinese long beans and star fruit.
This weekend, I checked out a new store that opened up near Alderwood Mall, about a 10 minute drive away. Hmart is a Korean supermarket, almost a mini-mall. They took over a space that housed a Mervyn’s department store, creating a wonderful supermarket at the center, then putting in small shops that target a Korean clientele ringing it in a semi-circle, and a food court on one side. Unlike Uwajimaya, which has three locations and doesn’t seem too interested in growing beyond that, Hmart has 33 locations nationwide… so far.
When I walked into their produce section, I knew I was in love. Their section dedicated just to peppers was nearly as big as one whole side of Safeway’s produce aisle. They had all sorts of stewing greens — collards, kale, mustard greens, multiple colors of chard — at prices that blew all the other markets away. They had all the fruits and veggies Safeway carries, plus a bunch more they don’t. And maybe they just got a special buy, but their tomato prices were nearly 1/3 of the prices at the other local supermarkets.
There were no tiny portions of herbs, packaged in plastic clamshells at some factory some unknown time ago, selling at $2-3 for an ounce or two. Their herbs were well portioned in butcher trays, plastic wrapped and labeled. The only problem was that a lot of them were ones I never heard of before. Basil, curry leaves, and chives, sure, but how about rau ram, la lot, and ngo gai? I actually pulled out my Treo and jotted down the names of the ones I couldn’t recognize so I could Google them later.
Three of the ones I wrote down did not come up on Google at all. That’s right, out of the billions of documents and trillions of words indexed by Google, despite its amazing abilities to provide answers, 42% of the herb names I jotted down came up with a big goose egg on the results. Here are the names…
- hung gai
- tia to
- dot greens
If any of you know about these particular herbs and can provide more information, please post a comment below.
I may still hit the local supermarket’s produce section when I just need an onion and it’s not worth going all the way over to the mall, but you can bet I’ll be making a weekly pilgrimage to the Hmart produce section from now on.
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