happiness is food. when we used to live in camberwell, we discovered this small japanese grocer's up the road. i thought i'd died and gone to heaven when i saw they sold green tea ice cream mix. the instructions were in japanese, so the person behind the counter had to translate them for me. then we moved away and away and away again, and i thought the only way i could get the ice cream mix was by making a trip back to camberwell. not so! the asian grocer's down the road from here has one little shelf dedicated to japanese ingredients, and what did i find there? the green tea ice mix, complete with stickered-on english preparation instructions. i was obviously not the only non-japanese person who's a fan of this stuff. i was just down at the grocer's before (it's called 'kfl', but mark and i refer to it as 'klf, uh-huh uh-huh'), and i found something else - green tea flavoured tapioca pearls (the same things that you can get in your iced tea at bubble cup - mmm, bubble cup!). when i was a kid and not feeling well, my mum would make me what we called 'sabu-dana' - basically, tiny globes of tapioca cooked in milk and sugar, like a pudding or a porridge. the tapioca absorbs the milk and gets plump and translucent, and it has a chewy texture. anyway, the pearls that i found look like jumbo green peas. made myself a bowlful before, and now my jaw aches, but it was well worth it. another thing i like about this grocer is that they have a huge range of what (when we were growing up in fiji) we used to call 'chinese lollies' - salty preserved plums. they are definitely an acquired taste - though it's fun to give them to people who've never had them before and sit back and watch their reactions. we used to pop them in glasses of coke or lemonade, then eat them after we'd finished the drink. they're also really good if you stick them in the middle of an ornage that's been cut crossways, then squeeze out the juice... ah, childhood memories. anyway, i was down at the grocers to get some glutinous rice because i read a blog about congee yesterday, and today i decided i must try and make some. this grocers also has shrink-wrapped bbq red pork - how cool is that? - so i will add that to the congee, together with some fried shallots, shredded bok choy and oyster mushrooms. to serve with, i have marinated some chicken wings in a spicy mix of lemon, pepper, ketchap manis, honey and garlic and stuff... because, to quote imani, 'there ain't no thing like a chicken-wing'.