TAIWAN DAY 4: A DAY OF NONSTOP EATING

Our fourth day in Taiwan was much more like the Taiwan I remember from my last trip. In that we ate so much, we never got hungry. And yet we continued to eat. For breakfast, Cathy and I visited Olympia Bakery. It's just 2 blocks from my Grandma's house and we've been going to it forever (it has been open since 1950). These type of places are why I love Taiwan- you can get freshly baked bread and great food for cheap starting early in the morning. So here's Cathy picking up stuff from the hot bar:
Here's a shot of different breads, fresh from the oven.
And here's an assortment of dim sum items. Unfortunately I feared that nearly everything had pork in it, so I just got a shrimp dumpling for myself.
Meanwhile, this is what breakfast would look like on a daily basis. We'd go out and pick up stuff, someone would prepare fruit and other items at home, and we'd all sit down to eat together. (Whoever happened to be staying at my Grandma's house that day. There was never less than 10 of us- I think we hit a max of 15 one night. But that's ok. My Grandma's house is 5 stories and was designed for the big family. It even has its own elevator) Here are my buns in the foreground, and a bowl of peanut soup. Cathy insisted that I include her favorite sandwiches in this pic- they're on the bottom right.
After breakfast, we visited my cousin's house, and before you knew it, it was time for lunch. So there's this Buddhist tradition that the immediate family members of a grieving family must be vegetarian for a certain number of days, so we had quite a few veggie friendly meals in Taiwan. Luckily, with its large Buddhist population, Taiwan is a great place to be a vegetarian. Actually, if we had vegetarian food and restaurants like this in the states, I'd probably be having vegetarian meals far more often. So 15 of us (all family members- remember, I have a gigantic family) headed out to a really good vegetarian buffet called Evergreen. It was truly massive, with a ton of different stuff. And it had to be a good place if all those monks were dining there (seriously, there were 2 tables of them). Here's a listing of stuff available:

Various cold dishes, including seaweed salad and sushi
Here's my first plate:
You could also order handrolls: (that seemed to be a popular thing at buffets in Taiwan)Here's make your own cold sesame noodleAnd my second plate of food:
There was also a gigantic assortment of dessert. But I picked up a plate of fruit, and some ice cream, of course.After our large afternoon lunch, my sisters and I decided to rest by getting foot baths and Thai massages. It was the first Thai massage I've ever gotten, and I gotta say, my God does it hurt. They twist and press you and squeeze you!!! I won't be doing that again any time soon. And after that strenuous afternoon we met up with 3 of my cousins so that we could all head off to the Shihlin night market for some shopping and dining.

Now the good thing about my family is that we all love food. And my cousins always know the best places to eat. We started off at a small food stand selling fried chicken pieces. Here's my cousin doing the ordering
And my little sis and other cousin sampling the chicken pieces. They were really good. Hot, crunchy and a little spicy. We ran out of them pretty quickly, but there'd be a lot more to eat! So we made our way to Shihlin night market, which is just a crazy place to be, with food vendors, thousands of people and vendors selling anything you can imagine. We decided to hit the "food court" first, which is really a bunch of stalls selling lots of different food all bunched together under one roof. Again, my cousins knew where to take us, so we started off at a stall specializing in fried fish cakes. Here's a helpful little picture menu (well, how helpful is it when you can't read it? I guess you could always be adventurous and point). If you noticed on them menu, there's barely anything above 60 NT and at 30NT=$1, that means everything here is below $2. Here's one shot of the market areaAnd a picture of our orderThe two plates of fish cakes are in front. They were warm and yummy with the slightly hot and sweet red sauce. In back, you'll see a plate of stinky tofu (no, I didn't eat any) and my cousin also ordered a bowl of duck's blood soup (which I also avoided).

Here's a video of us walking to the next stall.


We saw this really long line for some giant fried chicken cutlets, and a long line always means a good thing. So of course, we got in line to order one. Here's a video of the line, with my sis and cousin starting it off.

Here's a picture of the actual stall. The workers scrambled to keep up with the line and finally, we were able to obtain our chicken cutlet. It cost only 50 NT (under 2 dollars), and the exterior was crispy, but really, it was mostly breading and a very very thinly pounded chicken breast (albeit, an entire breast).And now for a listing of stall that we saw and/or ate at.

While we waited for our chicken cutlets, my cousins had grabbed a seat at another stall and started eating bowls of spicy dumpling.We walked by a stall selling my little sister's favorite egg cakes:

Then we stopped for shaved ice. The shaved ice place my cousins wanted to take us was jammed packed with a line out the door, so we went to another one a couple feet down. Here's mine.
I decided to try something new- corn, but I wasn't expecting canned creamed corn to show up on my ice. I gave it a nibble and then avoided it altogether. I just eat my ice with soft cooked peanuts instead.

By this time we were all stuffed, and I was done for the night, but not my cousins. On our way to the subway, we saw a stall selling different type of snails.My cousin grabbed a corn dog.And the last stop was a stall selling these fried pockets. They were smashed and wrapped in a thin pancake. They didn't actually eat them right there, they were for later.So clearly, it was a very busy day of eating. We didn't have another day like this in Taiwan, and that was a relief. It's fun to do it once in a while, but really, it's not the best feeling to be stuffed full all day. The pics from Shihlin are only a small handful of the sheer number of stalls that are there. It's crowded, loud and overwhelming, but definitely worth wading through all the people. (Plus, I bought 3 knock off Toki Doki bags!)