“Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.”

Good news folks, it looks like my plan to try out Veganism for three months is back on track. Today, I tried tofu, once again, and, for whatever reason, I liked it this time. Of course this tofu happened to be served with duck eggs and sprinkled with dried pork shavings, so that might negate some of the vegetarianism of the dish. But, even so, I choose to see this as a minor victory. One small step for me, one giant leap for animal kind, or something like that. Anyway, this tofu dish was rather unusual by western standards. It was made up of tofu and duck eggs, drizzled with teriyaki sauce, and sprinkled with fried, dry, pork shavings. (Oh, and on an aside, that block of tofu only costs $9 NTD, that's 25 cents people.)

Here is what it looks like sans the pork and teryaki 

Now, here is the funny thing about those eggs: They are made with horse urine. Or, at least, that is the common misperception. They are actually duck eggs that are wrapped in plastic wrap and soaked in a brine of salt, calcium hydroxide, and sodium carbonate for ten days then aged for several weeks. The brine preserves the eggs and gives them their strange coloring. Apparently, the brine also smells like horse pee, so people thought that the eggs were made with it. (I found all of this out on Wikipedia, my uncle just said that they were made with horse pee to freak me and my cousin's out). Faced with such an interesting food, I did the adventurous thing and tried it. Turns out, that horse pee eggs, as they are sometimes called, taste really good. Here is what they look like on the inside:

Century egg or Horse Pee egg

I am deciding that maybe I should just drop all pretenses and turn this into a food blog, because that is the primary subject of nearly all of my posts. I try to not make every blog about food, but there are just too many interesting things to eat here. Besides, my uncle told me, that in Asian culture, eating is a big deal. Asians love to eat, and with food like this, who can blame them. I guess they are a bit like the French in that respect. So, it is my executive decision to honor the local culture and dedicate this entire post to food. 

A few days ago, my aunt and uncle and I went to this hip little dumpling shop called Wu Wha Ma Dumpling House, (I feel like a dweeb using the word "hip" as an adjective, but bear with me). Anyway, the dumpling shop was great. Almost all of the food was incredibly inexpensive, and they had free soup and tea. My uncle said that sometimes he goes in and buys a bowl of noodles and has soup and tea with it for free, and that lunch only costs him $60 NTD, ($2 U.S.). It is crazy how cheap everything is. Oh, and here is what a measly $60 NTD gets you:

$2 bowl of noodles

In case the picture doesn't convey how big the bowl is, it's about 8 inches in diameter and about 4 inches tall.  It's a ridiculously large bowl. So, on top of that, you can get this interesting soup for free:

 It has what the Chinese call "little rice" in it, and it tastes a lot like porridge. I feel like it would make good breakfast fare. We also ordered this bread to go with the meal:

It kind of tastes like pizza dough, but that is just a rough comparison. Do you all remember my post that talked about things that are difficult to eat with chopsticks? Well, this tops the list. It is impolite to eat with your fingers here, so you eat everything with chopsticks. EVERYTHING. Normally, if you don't have the dexterity to pick something up with the chop sticks, then you can just stab the food and eat it off of the stick. This bread though, is not made of a material that can easily be stabbed. So, you must pick it up. Unfortunately, its shape and general flatness makes picking it up a challenge as well; and when I say challenge, I mean that if there was a game show that revolved around seeing who can pick these up the fastest, it would make for some pretty good T.V. By the way, if such a show ever comes into existence  can I go on the record as having thought of the idea first? In all seriousness though, picking these little triangles of goodness was difficult. That is to say nothing of taking a bite of one once you manage to balance it precariously between your two chopsticks. I managed eventually, but there is a steep learning curve to this. The children here must have excellent fine motor skills. This dish cost about $1 U.S. 

...And what is a dumpling house without dumplings?

They were incredible! They cost about $3 U.S., and they are cooked in this bamboo steamer. They have pork inside AND soup. Now,I have no idea how they get soup into dumplings, but I really don't care, because they are just too good. This soup, however, constituted another small chopstick difficulty. To eat them, you have to pick up the dumpling with your chop stick, (no stabbing with this one either, unless you want to wear the soup), then, you dip it in this:

Its soy sauce with Julianned ginger 

Then, holding the dumpling over your soup spoon, you take a bite of the top of the dumpling. While you bite the dumpling, you have to slurp up the soup that is inside. It is challenging, hence the spoon. Once you have gotten rid of all of the soup, then you can eat it as you normally would. Despite its challenges, these dumplings are amazing, and, if you are ever in the neighborhood, I recommend them wholeheartedly.

Another occurrence a few days ago, was that my cousin celebrated his 17th birthday. We got him a Taiwanese style cake from the bakery down the street, and, for those of you who don't know, Taiwanese style cakes are ranked second in the world, right below French cakes. Needless to say, I was curious to see what the cake would be like.

Looks good, doesn't it. I can tell you that it tasted just as good as it looked. As for being the best in the world...well I haven't traveled enough yet to be able to tell you for sure. When I find out, I will let you know. 

On that sweet note, I will leave you for tonight, and may sugar plums dance in your dreams, (whatever sugar plums are).