Fun

Taiwan travel

Petanque in Taiwan!

Completely by luck, I passed this sign by the entrance to a seaside almost-beach. There was a little sand but mostly coral. No swimming signs were posted. No people were around at all, so I couldn’t ask anybody who played and when. I did find this article via Google, about a field built right in Taipei. Doesn’t say where, though. I found another site that says a club with six members plays in Da-an park, which is not far from where I’m staying.

Ah, well. I didn’t bring my manly steel balls so I couldn’t play anyway.

What? You don’t know about Petanque? Incredible! Remind me to tell you about it when I return, or search for an earlier article.

Taiwan Market

This is from a food market. The man is selling two kinds of tofu-kan and some peanuts. The tofu-kan here is the best you can have anywhere. It’s smooth and creamy, but not soupy. Delicious. Peanuts are everywhere. Hai and bai, or black and white. The black ones are actually look the same as regular but have a purple skin around the nut. Peanut snacks that are made into a crumbly interior coated with a hard shell are my favorite. The Hakka people make a kind that is very small, bite size. You can’t stop eating them. And I haven’t.

Taiwan Market

I’m dying to have the pork that’s in the middle pan. It makes my mouth water every time I walk by.

Taiwan Market

The meat for sale here is displayed a little differently. This is all pig meat. My favorite, and the most popular in Taiwan.

Taiwan Oyster Omlette

This was the end of today’s lunch. Pork blood soup and an oyster omelette. The pork blood soup is a thin base of ginger and garlic with, of course, green onion. The blood is in small bite size pieces. Perfectly silky and just a hint of saltiness.

Oyster omelettes are famous. They start by frying half a dozen oysters, then pouring over a rice batter. An egg is then broken on top and a bok choy-like vegetable is shredded all over everything. After a while, the whole thing is flipped and put on a plate with the red sauce, which is very sweet and just a hint of pepperiness. I prefer mine spicy, so you see the red and yellow jar or hot sauce, which is unbelievably good. I have it every morning with my dumplings. It’s smoky, has little beans that are salty, and is very spicy. I haven’t tasted anything like it in the United States. My last trip here I brought back two jars, which they made up for me at my breakfast place.

Once I have some time, I’ll try and describe the food in better detail and explain why it is among the world’s best.

Categories: Fun

5 replies »

  1. If the pork on the middle tray is there every time you walk past, I wouldn’t touch it if I were you.
    A more detailed description? Hmmm.
    We call pigs blood black pudding in England. It’s a Yorkshire delicacy.

    From Gourmet.com “A Banquet of Bugs.”:

    “…but according to David Gracer, you’d be much better off savoring a caterpillar or katydid. Gracer is a professor of English at the Community College of Rhode Island in Providence and his website advocates entomophagy as an environmentally sound dietary option. “If cows and pigs are the SUVs of the food world, then bugs are its bicycles,” he said, citing a 2006 report by the United Nations that calls the livestock sector one of the most serious environmental problems on earth, responsible for more greenhouse-gas emissions than transportation worldwide. “Harvesting insects is ecological; they’re low in fat, and they’re comparable sources of protein,” Gracer enthused. “Bugs are also downright tasty!”

    With this is mind, the centipede kebabs looked marginally more appealing. Sliding one off the skewer with my teeth was cringe-inducing, though, as the insect’s little legs tickled my lips. Crunch, crunch! I was surprised to discover it wasn’t all that different from eating a soft-shell crab—sort of a slightly salty combination of crackly crust and a moist, gooey center, but with an earthy aftertaste similar to a portobello mushroom. Crunch, crunch, crunch. Yes, it was something like a funky Frito.”

    So you see, pigs and cows are the SUVs of the food world, and those bugatarians at the United Nations are going to ban chocolate and have us eating insects!
    That’s it,I’m off to Mars.

  2. It is odd, that in poorer countrys beautiful girls work is all kinds of work from serving the food stall to running a company. But in Europe at least, the beautiful girls are almost completely absent from the food stall kind of jobs. Odd?

    I will have to give you credit for noticing the poork though, I think I would have focused on the girl 😉

  3. I’m always wary of black peanuts here in the US. There is a fungus that grows on peanuts that produces aflatoxin, one of the most potent carcinogens known and classically associated with liver malignancies.

    I still eat a bunch of peanuts. Just not ones that are black. Mycotoxins — yet another unadvertised benefit of natural foods. Skip the fungicide, reap the excess malignancies!

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