Sticky Grey Balls

Different dialect groups have distinctly different flavours, food wise that is. Having grown up pretty much eating cantonese food or at least cantonese like food, I was a little taken aback with the different types of foods different dialect groups eat. Seriously. Its stuff I've never even seen before. Went to A's mum's place yesterday for dinner and they had this strange yam thing that I stupidly guessed was chestnut. Didn't quite know what else to say when A's mother asked me if I knew what it was... I couldn't possibly have said icky looking sticky grey balls? When she told me it was yam, I tried to act nonchalant with little success I think. I had this look that screamed "really? you have got to be joking...". I tried rather unsucessfully to mask that look with the reserved yet expressive of mild surprise comment, "Oh really? How interesting..." Food, in all its glorious forms, is really an acquired taste. For the record, I didn't like those sticky grey balls.