雪蛤膏 hasma

kind of random, but this post has been inside my head for the past few weeks.
growing up chinese, there are a few things you learn about food:
never question what it is or why you're eating it. because inevitably, you don't get a straight answer to what you're eating, and you're always told it's good for you - replenishes moisture/nutrients of some kind. (or whatever you happen to be lacking, smart chinese remedies)

the other day i was at a bubble tea/dessert shop, and as we looked at the picture of a dessert double boiled in sugar-water (the same chinese words for 'dessert'), nicely presented inside a coconut shell, with an orchid flower adorning the side and everything looked pretty & appertizing. then i noticed they had put the english word of what it is on the picture; it's something i've eaten every few months (especially in winter) all my life...

as trained by the thousands of years of chinese culture, i've never questioned WHAT it is. i only know my mom soaks a bunch of this stuff (which i JUST found out is called 'hasma' in english) and it looked like dried oyster pieces until the overnight watery bath - the next day everything is puffy and white, cotton-like looking but with more 'pull'; and i'd help my mom pick out the spotty 'dirt like' pieces that had gotten stuck in this stuff. once cleaned, then my mom takes it and performs some magical cooking techniques until the dessert is made and we'd eat it for whatever good it's supposed to do in my body.

so i was very excited after all these years to slap an english name to this mysterious stuff i've grown up with all my life...
only to find that according to wiki, i've been eating hasma "dried fallopian tubes of the hermaphrodite frog"!!! does my mom KNOW what exactly this is??? had she known all along? or maybe she just thought it's a certain part of a 'snow frog' or something without knowing the details. maybe she's just like every other crafty chinese mom, knowing better, saying less...

now that sounds so disgusting. but i swear to you when you cook it into a dessert and you don't know what it is, it doesn't TASTE disgusting.



still, sometimes i think: ewwwwww