FOOD

This is dedicated to John Sr, who should really take a trip out here.

Remedy

This is a ginger tea that I drink copiously when I get sick, which is often. It’s mostly sugar, thick chunks of ginger, and a dried plum? that is common in Chinese medicine. You just take a couple of these, drop them in some boiling water, and enjoy. I believe in this stuff, and will bring LOTS of it home with me when I return to the states. I think a generous bag cost me NT200, or about US$6.30.

Dou Hua Dessert

More ginger. My new favorite dessert: Dou hua in a ginger soup with green beans and soft peanuts. Not sure if its good for a cold, but it’s freaking delicious. Dou hua is made of soy beans, and has a denser texture than tofu. The dou hua is the white stuff you see. It’s not sweet, but everything else in the bowl is. The perfect balance. I really love the use of beans as a sweet ingredient. They must boil the beans in sugared water? A bowl of this will run you about NT35. or about US$1.10.

Pho in Taipei

Here is another good choice, “pudding”:
It’s surprisingly good. Like a jelly-ish version of the western kind. This one was neopolitan flavored, floating in a sweet clear “soup” and I added some red bean tapioca to liven up the texture.

You can get pretty much any kind of food in Taipei. Well, haven’t seen any Ethiopian. I really really miss Ethiopian food. Or decent cheeses. Hmm….anyway, you can get most things… but it’s not always very authentic. Or what I’ve been led to believe is authentic…in Seattle. Hm.

Back to it! Here I am, in front of a not-so-delicious bowl of pho. This place was supposed to be really good, but I have to say, the beef broth was sadly un-beefy. Which is weird, since Taiwan is famous for beef noodle soup, which has a broth that is, no matter where you get it, beefy and delicious.  Here, Nick had banh mi, which he says was the best sandwich he’s had in Taiwan. I believe him.

The most common type of sandwiches here consist of 2 to 4 slices of thin, uber-white bread holding together tasteless corn kernals, something called pork floss, which I can describe as a brown, dusty, stringy, salty “stuff,” and massive amounts of mayonaise. barf. You can also find tuna instead of pork floss. There are other kinds of sandwiches available here that are SO GOOOD. They just feel really unhealthy, being of the burger and mayo variety, and we try not to eat them too often.

Here is one of my favorite soups, especially after oral surgery: In Chinese they call this foolish noodles, because they’re so simple. Noodles in a separate bowl for us to share, and another bowl of plain broth, and some goodies (an egg, a fish ball with pork inside, and these beautiful little noodle envelopes of pork). We pour some soy sauce (not like kikkoman’s) over the noodles, mix them up with some green onion, and alternate bites: noodles, then soup, noodles, soup.

I don’t know what it is about each individual part of this meal, but it works together perfectly, and each part is in itself absolutely delicious. We can’t figure out what it is about the noodles, they’re just noodles, right? But I swear I could just eat them alone, with nothing else. The fish ball is perfect, not at all “fishy” which is really difficult taste to avoid in Taiwan, and the pork mixture inside is perfectly and mysteriously seasoned. The pork envelopes are Nick’s favorite part. The skin is delicate and tasty and the inside is always perfect mild porkiness (no fucking bones/gristle either!). We’ve speculated. Could it be some magic variety of MSG? Or as my friend Christine grew up calling them, Yummy Sprinkles? We won’t accept this theory. It must be something else, we assure ourselves. Enough talk, behold!!

Foolish Noodles

Next up: It’s called Pocari Sweat and it tastes like Gatoraid, but I like to think it’s the sweat of a ridiculously cute little animal called Pocari, that might be something like a Pika. Nick thinks Pocari is the name of a god. (Psh.) Anyway, it’s not very good.

On to more normal fare. These next photos came from a night when Nick’s family was here. My friend Daniel took us to this really great spicy hot pot place. It wasn’t so much spicy as mouth-numbing. It was so delicious.

We'd like to take Rebecca and Jason here

And here’s our table, pre-food.

Snacking before the meal

And the hot pot! Half is spicy aka numbing, half is traditional.

Hmmm hot pot

We needed an extra table

And here is the dipping sauce stuffs:

Cilantro, red pepper, green onions and shaved peanut

An appetizer, spicy peanutty glass noodles

We had an awesome evening, Thank you again, Daniel. : )

Here was our school/family dinner. Teachers attending: Rebecca, Julia, Joyce, Donna, Bonita. Then there was Steve, and our friend Tom.

Sorry if I left anyone out!

Some of our favorite dishes:

A typical table

San Bei Doufu, aka, 3 Cup Tofu

Well, I’m gonna leave it at that for now. There is much more to cover. Like an additional post on street food.

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