Shopaholic

Today in Hong Kong, for a Thanksgiving party, I made the sweet potatoes! Actually the recipe I wanted to make called for canned sweet potatoes and since I was going for a hike today too, I didn't try to substitute with real yams.

At one super market (for westerners), I found ONE can of sweet potatoes, enough for half a recipe. I said ok but when I looked at it I knew that I would need to get another. After dinner with my boyfriend's family for his mom's birthday I ran to another upscale grocery store and prayed they were still open. They were, another 15 minutes left.

I found that they had 2 cans of already pureed stuff. Great! so I used the one can of chunks and one can of this purreed stuff.

Then I couldn't find any pecans! I could only find candied walnuts or candied pecans (actually I am not sure which it was). This was going to be one sweet pie!
But I asked and a guy went to a section I had already looked at, which I told him so he stopped looking but then I saw a bag of walnuts so decided to get that. Then right next to the walnuts, way back because there was only 1 bag left, I found non-candied pecans!! Yay!

The whole thing cost about $20 to make but it was really good and everyone liked them and I got to cook in my kitchen!!
I had to mix the stuff in three cereal bowls!

Hong Kong has stores that cater to the expat community. There is a newish store called 360 that is like Whole Foods with all organic stuff and grains and brown rice, etc.
There is a store called Oliver's that carries a lot of American stuff! It is very upscale but has things like Doritos Cool Ranch corn chips!!
City Super seems to have an aisle for each community- one for Japanese, one for French (uh, the dairy aisle!), one for Americans, etc. It is also just for any gourmet thing you might need (like canned pureed sweet potatoes). I think most people go here to do their shopping.
But I did notice that a small bag of shallots is HK$25 while at the wet market near my house the same thing is HK$4.
A place called Great has good granola and a good cheese and prepared foods area as well as most things we need.
The local stores, like Park n Shop and Wellcome are very Chinese for the most part, but those that are in heavily expat-populated areas have different things than a regular one, catering to the population around them.

We have a small local Park n Shop and the wet market by us. It is perfect except for those times when we need something special. And down the street is a Costco-like place that sells Tuna and Campbell's in bulk! and they deliver!