Not to rub your nose in it or anything, but the DH and I are in a regular pistachio heaven here in China!
Our stash of “happy nuts”
We buy our pistachios from a vendor on our street. She has a stand directly across from the old lady vegetable sellers I blogged about a few days ago. Along with pistachios, she sells walnuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, peanuts, raisins and a few other nuts that we have not yet identified. The Chinese call pistachios “happy nuts.”
Wide selection of seeds & nuts
We stop by the stand about once a week to stock up. The vendor knows us quite well and is always ready to fill up a bag with pistachios or raisins. I am not 100% sure where these pistachios come from, but we figure Iran since the Chinese don’t grow pistachios, yet. Not that I am a connoisseur, but they do seem to be high quality. I know that pistachios are expensive back in the west. Here, not so much, at least for us expats. We usually buy 1 jin at a time. A jin is a traditional unit of weight equal to about 1.1 pound. In the supermarket and street markets, food is sold using jin. It’s actually easier for me to think in jin than in kilos, so I don’t mind.
Pistachios on the scale
Our bag of pistachios (1 jin/1.1 pound) cost us 35RMB or $5.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m very envious and maybe a tad bit depressed knowing that you can buy a whole pound of Happy Nuts for only $5. Here in Iceland (which was somehow ironically ranked “Happiest Nation in the World” by Guardian UK in 2006) that same $5 will only buy you a tiny snack bag (the total quantity fits in the palm of your hand) of not-so-fresh and not-so-happy Happy Nuts.
Jessica’s last blog post..Me No Speak Icelandic
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go back to a world where $5 will only you buy you a sad little bag of not so fresh pistachios! Especially since the DH and I have developed quite a habit!
Hands down my #1 reason for never leaving China – pistachios!
I never ate pistachios back home, perhaps because they were too expensive for me to bother giving them the chance they soooo deserved. However, an old roommate here in China got me hooked on them, and happy nuts have become an essential part of my diet.
I find that prices in China tend not to come with a preface of cost – a cost for cost’s sake. The artificially inflated costs of some things in N. America irritates me to no end now.
Nuts and seeds are a good example, produce another.
Food in general is definitely what’s keeping me here! Both the pleasure of buying produce & dry goods at reasonable prices and the outstanding restaurants.
You know I hadn’t really thought about the “cost for cost’s sake” that is included in N. American prices. I am always overwhelmed when grocery shopping back home. Everything is outrageously priced.