Food I

The culture and ritual of food is rich. Some of the simple things (from the top):

1. Soup is almost standard with every meal, and it's generally served at the end. Soup is usually a simple dish, with broth and some kind of fairly whole meat. In this case a whole chicken.

2. Mwa Ji - they make a lot of things out of rice. This pre-meal snack is rice, pulverized to form a sticky ball, which is served in one lump and cut up into smaller bite-sized pieces by using the chop sticks as make shift scissors. Then the individual morsels are rolled in a sugary/powdery mixture and eaten with chopsticks, one by one. This is a traditional Hakka (historic ethnicity of the island) treat that is similar to subtly sweet partially cooked bread dough (soft and chewy).

3. Greens have been one of my favorites, consistently. Like soup, greens are an almost given at any meal, served in some form or fashion, but usually very simply prepared, presumably cooked in a wok with oil, garlic, and possible a small amount of other ingredients. But usually just greens. (From what I can tell they use a wide variety of greens for these dishes, including kohlrabi, spinach, cabbage, and others.)

4. Lobo Gao - a square patty of minced white carrot. (I suspect that what they call white carrot might actually be Daikon Radish, but I haven't dug into that any more to see if I'm right. perhaps there really is something that is a white carrot that grows here.) Not sure how this dish is prepared (maybe steamed and then quickly pan fried), but it's a delicious treat. Our first experience with Lobo Gao was at Modern and Smiley's house on day 1, for breakfast. I've had it for a non-breakfast too, later, and enjoyed it just as much the second time.