Taiwan Day 1 – Where the food adventure begins
After a long and uneventful plane ride, we landed early in the morning at Taipei international. Amy and I were picked up by my uncle, his wife (who was super excited that we brought her a suitcase of clothes), and my grandma.
I hadn’t realized how green Taiwan was. On previous trips home from the airport, I had always been asleep or traveling at night with the fambam, so I really enjoyed the scenery as we passed by swampy farms and rolling hills of trees. It reminded me a lot of the highways of Seattle, but with an extremely different set of foliage.
We dropped off our luggage at the apartment, quickly set up in one of the Japanese style rooms (my grandma thought it funny that Amy and I didn’t want our own rooms), and immediately began our foodie adventure. We started with breakfast at my grandma’s, where we enjoyed skewers of chicken hearts, intestines, wings, and stinky tofu with duck blood. It sounds pretty weird now that I’m writing it out, but we enjoyed the cold meal (the way it’s supposed to be) and went to the farmer’s market with the grandma.
Of course, Amy and I were super excited about all the different stalls there. It’s a little off putting, seeing flies buzz around animal parts and sliced fruit, but on the other hand, it’s pretty cool to see clams peeking out if their shells and fish still flopping on the ice. Everything is super cheap and fresh (and much better than in the US, as my grandma constantly reminds us). Along with produce, there were stalls selling tofu, fishcakes, and all sorts of cooked and raw goodies. We came back with a bundle of fruits to snack on along with groceries that my grandma wanted to use to cook with. Her mantra seemed to be that we should eat all the things that we can’t have in ‘murica.
By this time we were feeling the effects of that lovely jet lag, and took a nap on full stomachs. We woke up in time for lunch and some hot pot goodness. Hot pot here is about the same price as back home, but the ingredients that they give you are (obviously) better. We had a lot of fun mixing up spicy concoctions at the sauce bar, worked our way through bowls and plates of meat, veggies, and fish cakes, and ended with scoops of milk and mango flavored ice cream.
In an attempt to walk off some of the weight in our tummies, we wandered around the streets of Sanchong. There were your typical food vendors and clothing stores, banks and English learning centers. We had some fun wandering around a bookstore (with a dedicated computer science section, including a book on how to land an overseas job with LinkedIn) where we picked up some fantastic 3D and emoticon stickers. We also came upon an arcade that had way too many crane machines. A genre of games that seemed to be pretty popular was a DJing game. There were several versions, all of which required fast reflexes and too much tapping. It was pretty cool watching people play, and I guess these people took their DJing pretty seriously because some shirts definitely came off.
We ended the day with a home cooked meal from ze grandma and some very hyper cousins. Jet lag meant it was shleppy time after that.
Food learnings of the day
When preparing large intestines
* To clean properly, wash first with flour and water
* Scrub in rice wine
* Rinse and dry, store
Recipe for tofu wrapped cabbage
* Sliver up them turkey or ham meat
* Wash mini lettuce/cabbage (napa)
* Rub leaves with salt, sandwich meat between
* Roll leaf and meat sandwich in tofu skin
* Steam and serve :)!