Food vendor

I think the pearls are a nice touch

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Most important meal of the day

My breakfast of choice has always been dry cereal. I love cereal. Unfortunately, and fortunately, cereal is in short supply here. I say fortunately because it has forced us to try some new things (good for Jeremiah who isn't in love with plain dry cereal like I am).  We both love these new things. As a result breakfast has recently become one of my favorite meals.

This first one we have had at home, but it took awhile before we found some we knew were not filled with meat: the steamed bun. There is a corner shop that sells them a block away from us and is on our way to school. As a bonus they also have fresh warm soy milk (dòu jiāng). I'm not sure what that other thing on the plate is called, but it was deep fried, greasy and delicious. Add some cinnamon sugar it would have been a churro.

The other breakfast item I have fallen in love with is turnip cake, or lo bao gao. It is made out of shredded daikon, rice flour and water - no turnip as the name indicates. It is pan fried, with plenty of oil, to make it a little crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Sometimes it has a sauce on it, sometimes it comes plain in a bag. This website shows it being made at home: http://hsustyle.travellerspoint.com/29/.

Picture from here

Here is what it looks like when you buy it at the store:

At home I've been making it thinner to cook it faster:

I have to try to limit my consumption of these good foods as they can't be very healthy for you, but at least they are super cheap.  Not sure I will be able to go back to dry cheerios.

Night market dessert

We're always up for trying something new. The last trip to the night market we tried a dessert of sorts. Desserts and candies have been a toss up so far. Some are good, but nothing oozing with sugary sweetness like home. These things we had at the market are not something I would probably have again, but I'm glad we gave it a go.

Our chef holding the wooden cone the dessert is briefly steamed in.

Starts as a powder; the base is white and then either brown or black is sprinkled on top. He then steamed it for a minute and popped it out of the wooden cone.

The final product. The brown ones tasted like peanut, the black ones like ash.

Later that night I ate a handful of the swedish fish we brought back from christmas. Much better.

more about food

confession - we eat out a lot here. and by a lot, i mean... maybe 5 nights a week. i'm pretty sure i'd eat out 7 nights a week if allison let me. not that we can defend going out that much, especially after cooking so much at home, but i'll try. as vegans, the food here is super cheap. actually, most food is cheap, but the vegetables are cheaper. currently, you can get about 33 new taiwanese dollars (NT$) for 1 US$, which helps (i think... not sure how that works). also, our kitchen is really small and narrow and we don't have an oven. ok, i know those were weak points, but the food is reallllly good.

we live really close to three or four restaurants. there is a thai place, with an english menu, near us called thai yun (first one on the page) that has great water spinach, spicy green beans (best ever), fried tofu with garlic piled on top, and some fried cabbage that allison loves. the only thing holding this back from being our "cheers" is that they can't speaking english, so they don't know our name. right next door to that, there is a japanese place (see: stanky tofu experience) with an english speaking waiter who helps us out. this place has silken tofu, which isn't allison's favorite, but quite a few vegetable options. i think the best part about this one is the atmosphere (pictures later). a couple restaurants down, there is a vegetarian dumpling place (that are boiled, not fried). we'll get to the fried goodness in a second) we had our friend's girlfriend (who speaks/reads chinese) translate the whole menu for us, so we're able to order anything we want. 10 dumplings = US$ 1.33, which is crazy. allison usually gets wonton soup with it and we usually end up spending around $5 for dinner and lunch the next day. my favorite thing about this place is the lady/owner/cook there pretends like i can understand chinese. if it isn't charades, then i don't want to play. she likes to speak chinese a million words a minute to me and then repeat a world 10 times, trying to get the point across. accidentally ordered sauteed and boiled water spinach at the same time. she really didn't want me to get it, but i did she was right. i should learn chinese. in addition to those three restaurants, there are about 10 small little street food carts that are along the side of the road within three or blocks both directions of us. i usually go to one owned by a brother and sister that is amazing. all of it is fried, so we try not to eat there too often (but it is so good, so i go too often). they have fried tofu, gelatin fries, sweet potatoes (sprinkled with strawberry-y sugar), rice brats, broccoli, green beans, corn on the cob... yes, fried, and a lot of other meaty items that scare me. i usually have them smother mine in their chili powder stuff and allison opts for a sweet kind of sprinkled stuff. lately, i've brought the brother, who is around my age, a beer and he has a big smile on his face and then gives me a bunch of stuff for free. i've been using google translator on my phone to tell them things and asking questions, but it is pretty funny because they can't reply back to me.

also... about ten minutes away from us, we've been hitting up indian food once a week. we're currently addicted to a place called little india moslem restaurant. they have five or six veg dishes and each one comes with naan and rice. everything tastes great and we usually get some to take for lunch the next day. another place, a little closer to us, is a place called loving hut which is a chain of restaurants throughout the world with pretty cheap set meals. other than that, we're looking forward to trying spring natural vegetarian restaurant in the next couple of weeks. anyone that is reading this in taiwan know if any other good places to go?

since there are no resources for vegan restaurants in taichung (that are in english) i'm going to start a review blog of the places we go to and try to go to a new one each week or month. i'll plan on posting a few pictures of the places i've mentioned here once i get it going. i'll probably get that going this week and will post the link.  hopefully it will kind of look like stumptown vegans food review site, but we all know it won't.

few random pictures.

sign shop in taichung (looks fun, right virgil?)

morning traffic

rest stop sighting on the way to taipei for volleyball

still love our car

(and spending $75 on gas per month instead of $375)

Stinky tofu round 2

Jeremiah tried stinky tofu again, this time on purpose, at a little market. I stayed away - once was good for me.

Made fresh to order

He made a good go at it, eating a good majority. When the sauce ran out though, he couldn't eat any more.

tiny little stories and a more pics than you actually want (or need)

um... what is it and how much do i owe you? and thanks for overcharging me.

-taxi cab confessional-
on friday we got rearended in a taxi. sitting at the light, showing allison something on her iphone (yes, i use it anytime i can get my paws on it) and then we were both moving in slow-mo towards the front of the cab, both not knowing what was happening. then we slammed back into our seats. for a split second i thought it was one of the biggest earthquakes ever (like, dinosaur killer earthquake), but it just ended up being an 18 year old kids with three of his friends. he was extremely apologetic, and kept grabbing my arm saying "my fault, my fault." our cab driver did the cab driver type thing and hopped out of the car, grabbing his neck. if he were playing charades, we would have been yelling, "fake neck injury! i got it, fake neck injury!!!" they exchanged information (and money, i think), and then we left. i wanted to say, "um... what if my back is broken tomorrow, who do i get money from?" but i knew it was pointless. just to make myself feel better, i took a picture of the cab driver's license plate. oh, and he charged us $120 NT instead of the $140 NT he should have. he was so kind to us.

-ikea with two ladies-

getting on the HSR (and representing nossa familia. if you're in portland, support a local business and try their coffee. it is great. it ages well too, right jason?)

allison and i headed up to ikea with one of our (swanky) friends from school on the HSR. that thing is fast. the only problem is, that you're going so fast, you go under a tunnel every three seconds, so it disrupts anything you're trying to upload or send. we left at 10:00am and got back at 6pm, but it felt like we spent three days there. i think we ended up walking through it twice because we didn't know where we were, but we did end up getting a few things and we're having it delivered for $90 US. when we had lunch there, it took us five minutes to find a table, but we ended up getting a huuuge table with a few extra seats. we played a little game called, "scare as many taiwanese people as we can" by asking if they wanted to sit at our table with us. most of them would shake their heads no, and continue to keep looking. eventually we ended up finding a desperate family of three. we made inappropriate jokes (not about them) until we realized the kids probably spoke english and were translating exactly what we were saying to their mommy. oh yeah, also, we were waiting for the elevator and some lil old granny is hanging out waiting and just let a huge burp rip, wiped her mouth, and boarded the elevator. we died.

one of allison's new shirts

-fun at fengjia-
we hit up fengjia night market on friday (supposedly the biggest one on the island), and had a great time. we bought three shirts, all really cheap. it was kind of weird (and gross) seeing every part of any animal ever. the innards of some of the fowls are pretty gross and whole squid on a stick make the stomach turn. we don't even know if we were in the main part of the night market, but it was still really crowded and you had someone touching you from all sides, so it felt like we experienced a night market (and a whole lot more!). we're hoping to go to the one near us this saturday if all goes as planned.

doesn't quite do it justice, but there were lot of people there

potato-ish scalliony cakes

drinks

heading home

-extras-

• hoping to play ultimate frisbee tuesdays and fridays (yes, i'm using bullets)
• started running more than 2 miles every other day
• allison joined a gym (california fitness!)
• i hate hdmi (sound just stopped working)
• went and watched a friend run the duathlon (which, up until now, i thought was spelled dual-ath-a-lon for some reason). and by watch, i mean, hang out with allison and his wife and wish we'd eaten breakfast and that they'd give us one of those damn ice concoctions and then watch him entertain us with jumps, waves, and ballet moves during transitions and at the finish line.
  
• waking up at 4:00am to watch the beavs play psu (fortunately, not the nittany lions this year) this sunday (my time) and will be rooting for the broncos on the blue turf this thursday as they take on the ucks
  
• took part in an online draft during lunch break. good times.

-random pictures-

taichung at night

street at night

underground sidewalk (formerly called a tunnel)

for all you dog lovers out there

alright. back to watching allison play mario kart wiiiiiiii.

ps i'll be watching you