Hi friends - sorry it's been so long since posting here.  I'd like to say I've been busy, but I haven't been THAT busy.  If you need your Asian vegetables fix (cooking, growing, or other related topics), do join the Chinese Kitchen Garden Facebook Group, which is updated much more frequently and is a place we can actually interact more effectively!  Here are some ideas (including a recipe) that I put together for the Curious Gardener blog on Womanswork. Womanswork a great woman-owned company that sells so many different types of gardening gloves, among a few other quailty gardening things. There's definitley a gift on the website ready to be purchased for yourself or a gardening friend. Dorian is also offering a Chinese Kitchen Garden book giveaway along with some seeds by Renee's Garden Seeds - an excellent seed source and another woman-owned business.  You should check it all out! 

Here's the thing...the bamboo shoots you get in Chinese restaurants are gross.  They're often the things you pick out onto your napkin, and honestly, there have been several occasions when the source of something funky can be atrributed to bamboo shoots.  

What you see in the photo may as well be a completely different vegetable.  There is simply no comparison between fresh bamboo shoots and what you get out of a can (which is what restaurants use). It's like comparing a fresh spring garden pea to a can of Green Giant, or sweet summer corn to a can of Del Monte. The difference might even be greater.  

Here's my mom's bamboo shoots (and pork belly) cooked in a sweet soy sauce.  The meat falls apart and makes your lips stick together and the sweet and savory sauce settles in the nooks of the shoots. I've captured the recipe in The Chinese Kitchen Garden book and I'll be referring to it this weekend! 

In The Chinese Kitchen Garden, there is a recipe for a noodle dish featuring my favorite noodles - wide, flat, rice noodles.  You can see how a finshed dish using these soft and chewy noodles looks in this post.

Unfortunately, I have never seen these noodles for sale anywhere except for in Asian supermarkets. They're often bagged like you see in the photo above, or on a styrofoam tray and wrapped in plastic. They're usually found in the refrigerated section, or if they're fresh and meant to be sold daily, they can be found unrefrigerated like the noodles above.  As you see in the photo, they're usually sold in sheets that have to be cut to size, separated, and then stir-fried.  It's easy and SO YUMMY.