Friday, July 22, 2011

June Food Post

{In which I am horribly late with the food post}

Yikes. I seem to take longer and longer with these food posts each month! How can July be almost over already?? Sigh.

Anyway, here are photos I like of stuff I ate last month:

This is a mini 粽子 (zongzi). At least that's what I thought it was, until my coworkers told me it's a fake one, because what's inside isn't glutinous rice.


This is the real one, from when my coworker James brought some for everyone in honor of 端午節 (Dragon Boat Festival):
There's a photo of how a zongzi looks unwrapped in my first food post, if you're wondering what's on the inside.

The cake on the left is when I went to Artco Cafe with Phoebe. I had fun talking with her at John's favorite cafe in the world

On the right is a lychee. Omg Taiwanese fruits are soooooo delicious! Awesome perk of living in the tropics. :)
小籠包! From Miramar's Hoja, not 鼎泰豐, but still good.
Did you know that there's a specific way you have to unwrap these seaweed-wrapped-rice-triangle things? There's one layer of plastic on the outside and another layer between the seaweed and rice, to keep the seaweed from going soft. If you don't unwrap these correctly, you'd get a mouthful of plastic unless you unwrap the seaweed to remove it!
Also, 7-11 has these awesome blue plastic nets they give you in lieu of plastic bags. These blue things look like flat square sheets of paper until you put something in the middle and pull up the sides. Really clever.
Fried tofu from dinner with Patrick in Taipei.
Pork cutlets from dinner with Sandy and Anna in Hsinchu.
Ooh, now we get to the good stuff. Diane's friend Renee had a piano recital in Taipei (she is an amazing pianist! I enjoyed the recital so much. Loved the trio pieces!) and her mom treated her friends to dinner at 陶板屋 afterward. The food was great (well, most of it) and I enjoyed chatting with Renee, her brother Simon, and Renee's Taiwanese friends.
This was the appetizer, which I didn't get to choose (there's a set menu and for most courses you can choose what you want). Mushroom. Ew. But Simon said that the pepper masked the mushroom taste, so I gave it a shot. And it wasn't as bad as I'd expected, since I couldn't taste the mushroom too much. I still didn't finish all of it, though. And then the waiter asked me if there was something wrong with it. I had to assure him I just didn't like mushroom. (Also, Diane, Renee told me you like mushrooms now? WHAT HAPPENED?! I still think stuffed mushrooms are gross...)
Omg, the salad and dessert were soooo good! Definitely my favorite courses. The salad was seafood plus fruit, which sounds kind of weird but I loved it, and so did Renee. The dessert was milk pudding with red bean and green tea sauce. It was wayyy better than the mint chocolate cake Renee chose (we got kind of competitive with comparing the foods we chose, haha).
This is the main course Renee ordered. Those are fried garlic chips. It ended up being too well-done for Renee, despite the long discussion she had with the waitress while ordering. Renee wanted pink but not bloody, and asked for 7, but the waitress recommended 8 (in Taiwan, rareness is on a 1-10 scale, with 10 being well-done). The waitress did offer to bring a new plate, which Renee declined because she was full. But then the waitress brought her a sample anyway. Which we ate for her, haha (it was kind of bloody though).
This is the main course I ordered. Fish and beef. And a fried leaf! (I didn't order for the fried leaf. It was a surprise, but a cool one.)
There were other courses, too, but not all of them photographed well. After dinner we all rated each of our dishes, as well as the service, atmosphere, etc. on the survey they gave us. It was interesting to see what everyone put, especially the picky people (*cough* Simon *cough*). Then we went to a tea shop for drinks and card games. We had such a blast laughing all night. (Photos to come!)
Drinks from the tea shop, as well as fries. Actually, the fries are from when I hung out with Jimmy. We went to a ton of fish stores because he wanted to buy one for his aquarium, then went to a tea shop afterwards, where Patrick joined us. One of these days I'll post those photos, too.
Hope you like the photos, and have a great weekend!
with love,
linda

14 comments:

  1.  I love the food pictures!  I've never been to Taiwan but it looks like it might be worth it just to go try out the food. 

    ReplyDelete
  2. so jealous you got to hang out and eat good food with renee aldksgjaklrjealrkjlekajhkla. also, how much money do you usually spend on a meal in taiwan?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hahaha YES you should definitely come :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. lol hanging out with her and her brother made me miss hanging out with YOU!
    i soooo wish you were there too :) gosh how come you're not jealous of HER
    for getting to hang out with someone as awesome as me??? pshhhhhhh. ummm as
    for meals... i don't know... depends? why?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hehe thanks! Can't wait to show off the awesome food we ate together in next
    month's post. :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. These foods look so delicious, Linda! 

    ReplyDelete
  7. I like mushrooms a lot. But, if I had to choose between Linda and mushrooms as an accompaniment to dinner, the choice would be clear.

    ReplyDelete
  8. aww, how sweet! :D thanks brian, i knew you'd have the good taste to choose me :)

    ReplyDelete
  9. Oh, I was going to say mushrooms totally win.

    (dangit, the punchline is 2 weeks late.)

    ReplyDelete
  10. so... you're admitting you have terrible taste? lol

    ReplyDelete