"Snooty?... Snotty?

It’s now the time on the posts to talk about some rather difficult subject matter for some of you – foreign foods. However, I promise to only have a couple of things that could even be considered gross, mostly just interesting stuff.

We’ll start with the potential gross, found on the day I got to walk around. We were with one of our coworkers who’s actually spent some time in Taiwan before and even speaks fluent Mandarin (not too common for white folks). He took us down some smaller side streets into a local neighborhood’s market. There were all sorts of foods, but the most interesting for us Americanos was the butcher stall.

It might look bad from the pic, but honestly, everything looked really clean and the meat very fresh (of course it was, it was chopped up right there!).

The next interesting Asian food is something I only know as “honey lemon”. This was sitting in the fridge at our tradeshow booth on the first day. Not having had lunch, I needed something, so I grabbed it.

Now, the first thing you need to know is that a lot of drinks come in small containers with foil lids. You simply punch into the lid with a CapriSun-like straw and have at it (for me, this is always funny to see when grown men drink out of these). I punched this drink twice, once for an air hole and once to drink through. As I punched the first hole and retracted the straw, a small gooey glob came up, almost in slow-motion, with the straw. I didn’t think much of it at the time, maybe it was just really cold? Well, as soon as I got to drinking, I knew why it was gloopey; the drink was basically a thin version of Jell-O. However, the taste was quite agreeable and once I had a few mouthfuls, it was no big deal… almost surreal to be sucking down honey-lemon Jell-O in the middle of Taiwan. It was so much fun in fact, I had one of my old SRAM coworkers give one a go when he stopped by the booth. We soon dubbed the drink “snot-tea” or a “loogie in a cup”.

Even water comes in the dinky foil-topped cups. No "Big Gulps" here.

Next up is something a little more on the gross side, it’s known as the “Century Egg”. Here it is up close and personal:

It doesn’t taste nearly as bad as it looks. It seems as though the white of the egg has taken on an almost translucent appearance, and that lavely green hue. The yolk has turned equally as tempting, but in a much darker color. Again, unless it’s a dare (which it was not for me), I wouldn’t pick this egg as an appetizer; I’d probably choose a creamed or pickled herring instead. The taste is pretty egg like, but with a weird aftertaste that I would say American palettes are not used to.

The final installment on the food front is another interesting pick known in Asia as “dragon fruit”. Here is a picture of the opened fruit, with the skin still on:

Looks pretty exotic, huh? It has a bright, waxy pink and green skin and is about the size of an egg-shaped orange/grapefruit. Strangely enough, I had seen it only a week or so before on one of those travel food TV shows. At the time I thought, “Ooh, that would be cool to find while I’m in Taipei.” Little did I know it would be served everyday at the hotel’s breakfast buffet. The little black seeds seem to be akin to the ones found in Kiwi fruit. In fact, it tastes a bit like it as well, but I have to say, after having both side-by-side each day, I like Kiwi better.

The only thing I did not try, but def could have is called "stinky tofu". If I understand it correctly, it's something like a stinky cheese. It's left to mold, usually has a fuzz on top, and smells to high heaven (esp when walking in the "night market"... more on that later). I'm told it actually tastes good, prob like the good flavors from stinky cheeses.

And not for nothing, but does anyone recognize the admittedly vague quote in the subject line?