goin' down to chinatown

today was a good day. it started off sucky cause I couldn't sleep last night and then I finally went to sleep and ended up oversleeping. then i started to get an eye infection so i had to take out my contact lens. but soon it was time for suejin and i to go grocery shopping. we are on a very tight budget (about $180.00/month) on food for 4-5 people so we were a little worried about the food situation and like an answer from the cosmos we stopped at a light at the intersection of price st and henry st and had a fateful conversation. i always wondered what was inside the brick building that had a sign that said "chinatown grocery" on it. why? because it's the ONLY sign in savannah that even says chinatown, there's not a single asian person in sight because we are in the g-h-e-t-t-o. surely, it wasn't really a chinese grocery store - that would be....wierd. but for some reason i wanted to go check it out.

so we go inside and sure enough, it looks like a typical convenience store in the ghetto. but then... i found something that caught my eye. something so exciting that i almost thought my eyes were decieving me. there, at the front of the store was a big table with opened boxes full of - asian pastries!!! like the kind you get at mozarts - custard filled breads and sesame balls with red bean paste and even a hot dog stuffed bun! i was thrilled. so was suejin. we immediatly picked out some pastries for breakfast and continued looking around. in the back there was a meat counter and a petite asian woman doing something with her back turned to us. it wasn't a very busy store so i wasn't sure if the food was fresh but then i read some signs on the wall that said, "family specials". they had a meat deal where you could get 3 lbs of ground beef, 3 lbs of turkey wings, 3 lbs of turkey necks, 3 lbs of fish, 3 lbs of pork chops, 3 lbs of chicken thighs, 3 lbs of chicken drumsticks for $31.95. that's a lot of meat! we were wondering what we could make out of turkey necks and wings when the butcher came up and offered to give us extra chicken instead of the turkey. DEAL.

then out of nowhere an asian man tells us, there's more the back. so we go back there and it was like god smiled down upon us. it was a mini asian farmers market!! there were freezers full of rice cakes, squids, a produce section with persimmons and chestnuts and fresh ginger, a few aisles of asian canned goods like noodles, coconut milk and curries. every time we turned around a corner one of us was squealing with delight. suejin even found a shelf of asian cookies and yelled out, "LOOK, they have choco-pies!!"

we happily paid for our pastries and the wonderful butcher brought the boxof meat to our car. we were so happy. we had a month's worth of meat for $32. right now our freezer is packed to the gills.

we love chinatown.