To go grocery shopping in Abu Dhabi, in the UAE, is to enter a strange and exotic world.

In the prepared foods area, where tikka this that or the other can be had, as well as Arabic rice, pulao rice, biryani rice, various sorts of grilled lamb …

In the deli area, there are other strange and unusual options. All the Mediterranean items: Hummus, stuffed grape leaves, tabouleh, babaghanoush …

But the weirdest part of a big market in this part of the world is over in produce.

To wit:

Vellery from Oman. (Perhaps misspelled, because I can’t find it on the web.)

Huge tapioca roots from Sri Lanka.

Lady’s fingers from India. Basically okra, apparently.

Bitter green gourd from Oman.

Tender palm nut from India. (I can’t find a photo, but they looked like acorns on steroids; enormous.)

Ash gourd from Oman.

Marrow from the UAE (little zucchini squash)

Pomelo from China.

And, the most bizarre (apparently) edible thing I saw today …

Banana blossoms from Oman.

Most of these I look at … and wonder what would make a person think they might be edible.

Bitter  gourd, for instance. Its outer covering looks like crocodile skin, and it’s long and … green. And apparently bitter. Oh, yes, let me have some of that, please.

The banana blossoms (if I got the sign overhead correctly associated with the huge and hairy fruit below) can be about 18 inches long. I saw an East Asian guy buying one, and I wondered “what do you do with that?” Peel it? Mash it? Stab it to make sure it’s dead and then boil it, maybe?

That’s what the produce section here is like. Some of the American staples, like apples and oranges and carrots, but lots and lots of exotic stuff nearly unknown in the States. Or Europe, from what I can tell.

The interesting thing about the produce part of the Lulu’s “hypermarket” I go to is … that the fruits and veggies area is the place most likely to be packed by people. Poking at stuff, hefting it, squeezing … checking to see if it’s ripe, I guess. Ripe for what, however, I don’t know.

The subcontinenters, particularly the Indians, many of whom are vegetarians, often buy enormous quantities of fruits and, especially, vegetables. Of course. They will roll by with a monster shopping cart overflowing with bagged and bizarre vegetables, many of them peppers, I think, and you wonder if they have friends waiting outside to help them carry that stuff home.

Sometimes it’s fun just to walk down one of the four aisles of stuff and read the names of the stuff, and from whence it came. “Baby pappaya from Thailand.” Etc.

I remember eating dragon fruit quite often, in Beijing, at the 2008 Olympics, and liking it well enough. But to see how a dragon fruit is encased, in nature, is to think that trying to eat one might cause wounds.

So, imagine a whole area of a supermarket packed with exotic stuff like that. Exotic to me, anyway.

Usually I just walk right past these things and buy what I know (bananas, please; no banana blossoms) … and ignore the rest.

But sometimes, like today, I stop and look and just shake my head. Amazing stuff.

Apparently, I hadn’t gotten out enough, before I got here.