From the descriptions, it looks like the gentleman spoke Cantonese. I can identify the names of a number of these in Cantonese (I've probably eaten almost every one of them), but I don't know the English equivalents, unfortunately. In general, "choi" or "choy" indicates that it is a leafy vegetable of some sort. "Gua" inidicates that it is a melon. "dou" indicates that it is a bean. The term "choy sum" is sometimes used in to indicate any number small, leafy vegetable similar to baby bok choy. In standard Chinese mainland mandarin, "choy" would be spelled "cai", but "gua" and "dou" would stay the same, if memory serves me correctly. All bets are off for Taiwanese spellings, but they are rather rare. Based on your phonetic spellings, here are my guesses with the percentage of certainty: Fu Gua: bitter melon (100%) gai choi: Chinese mustard green (100%) gai lan: Chinese broccoli/Chinese kale (100%) cheng dou: long bean of some type, possibly yard long bean (100%) choi go: possibly "gow choy" or Chinese Leek (50%) don gua: possibly "dong gua" or Chinese winter melon (75%) pau gua: possible calabash or bottle gourd (60%) yau choi: possibly green choy sum (50%) san choi: possibly Malabar spinach or Ceylon spinach (60%) dai choi: possibly Napa Valley Cabbage. The name sounds like it means "big vegetable" (25%). What you may wish to do is to get the gentleman to write down the names of the plants and go to your nearest Chinese market and look for the matches. Otherwise, just plant the seeds in the ground and see what comes up! Here is a link that might be useful: Asian vegetable names

bizy Finding termites in your yard or flower beds is not unusual - especially if you put down a nice fresh batch of mulch that they will gladly munch on. If you turn over any large rock in your garden, you are likely to see mites muching away at the mulch around the rock. They key is to determine if they have penetrated into your house. Since your home is fairly new, and assuming they did spray the foundation before it was backfilled, I would be a bit surporsed if they made it into the house in a year. It's not impossible - but unlikely unless your builder buried a big pile of wood near the foundation (not unheard of either). The first thing to do is look for the key signs of the mites - the brown mud tunnels that you will see on the inside walls of your foundation or on wood studs. I don't know what kind of access you have from your basement - you want to check along the foundation walls and at the interface between the wood framing and the foundation. Look around the entire foundation interior perimeter - particularly in places where there would be lot's of moisture. If you can't see from the inside, take a shovel and dig on the outside until you get to the transition point of the foundation top to the first floor joists to see if you can locate the mud tunnels. Swarming of the mites inside the house is also a sign - but it does not sound like you are at that point. If they did make it into the house - then you need to call in professionals who will drill holes and pump pestisides into the infiltrated areas. They will drill through concrete slabs to makes ure they get every possible area around and below the foundation. This can run up in cost pretty quickly. If they did not make it in, then I would call a termite company who should offer perimeter pestiside pumping. It should only cost a few hundred dollars (not 1500) and they will pump the pestiside around the foundation perimeter with holes spaced every few feet. They are basically injecting your soil with pestiside that should leach all the way down the side to the footers to create a barrier. I would then go on line and look for termite traps - which are basically tubes that you stick into the ground with pieces of wood in them. The tubes have large covers with a removable cap that allows bait (dry wood) and poison sticks to be inserted. You check the bait every few weeks and if termites make it in, you replace the wood with a food that contains a delayed poison that the termites will eat and then bring back to the nest. They feed themselves by regurgitating - so when they pass the food around it will kill the termites in the nest, hopefullty getting the queen. We also found termites in our last house - in the flower beds (they had not penetrated). I had heard that a few of our neighbors has some termites that did get into their house - which is what prompted me to take some proactive measures. However - these houses were 6 or 7 years old when they started having termite issues inside the house. I puchased all of my termite kit supplies on line for a few hundfred dollars. It's very easy to drill holes and install the tubes and bait. The pro's wanted thousands to install the same thing I could by on line. best of luck.

Try a search on the cooking forum. This subject has been brought up several times over there. If you can't find what your looking for, post your question on the cooking forum. The people over there, as here, are very helpful.

You don't specify your location but your profile says you're from Texas. You can try Greyhounds Unlimited, they are listed as Dallas, TX. There is a phone number at the bottom of the website. There's another one, Greyhound Adoption League, http://www.greyhoundadoptiontx.org/, they have a phone number too. They are listed as Addison, TX. Or Heart of TX greyhound Adoption, http://www.heartoftexasgreyhounds.com/, San Antonio. Or Greyhound Rescue Austin, http://www.greyhoundrescueaustin.com/ Also, if you've gotten that close to her you could try to get a large trapping crate (buy beg or borrow one), and it it may take a week or so of gradully getting her to eat closer to the crate then put the food inside the crate. Start w/ the crate maybe 10 ft away then a foot closer every day. Keep in mind if she's a retired racer she may be leery of crates so you would need to be patient. We've caught feral cats using a trap and food, it has taken weeks before to get the mother but eventually she went for the food. As we got her closer to the crate we had to withhold food for a couple days to get her hungry enough to make her enter the trap. That was 4 yrs ago, she is now spayed, has a heated house in the winter and eats twice a day. I think she's the most spoiled feral in our neighborhood. Once you have her, I'm sure one of the greyhound groups would take her and rehome her for you. Good luck, what a shame people dump animals like that. Here is a link that might be useful: Greyhounds Unlimited