Chickity china the chinese chicken
We went to a Chinese meat market yesterday, and I don't mean the regular kind:
I mean the kind where you buy groceries:
(I hope no one gets upset that I am ganking photos left and right. I do have a camera...I am just the type of girl that rolls with whatever fits in her pocket, and the camera doesn't.)
The vegetables were AWESOME. From what I understand, it's all local produce, and I'm crossing my fingers that it might be organic. It is definitely a lot cheaper than the local grocery store, and definitely looks a lot fresher, too. You just tell the laoban what you want--or just point and do some excited motions to make it obvious that a kilo of green beans would just set your world on fire--and he or she will sort them out, often times offering you the best ones and tossing the bruised or aging bits in a box in the back. It's really a beautiful thing to see tables just laden with every kind of fresh vegetable you could think of.
I only saw one fruit stall in the market we frequent, and I have to confess that I splurged on a bag of American seedless grapes. They were cheap, and oh so sweet and tempting. I almost ate a big bag of them in one day. The local grapes are tasty, but the seeds are annoying and the skin is tough and bitter, so I'll spend a few extra kuai on grapes that pop like little candies in my mouth.
The meat was a different story. I had a list of things I wanted which should have set me up for the week: I hate going to the store/market to buy groceries because it's a hassle at the end of a long work day. Ultimately, however, Beau was already giggling with embarrassment when he saw me filling up our IKEA bags with vegetables, but he has no idea how much we eat in a week (including our present roomie). I ended up buying fish for dinner last night by asking the fish vendor which kind was the tastiest, as I had absolutely no idea what I was looking at. She weighed two flat ones and her assistant gutted them while Beau rolled his eyes. By the time it came for me to pick out a chicken--head, legs, and feet still firmly attached--I had to send him away to find some bell peppers because he wouldn't have been happy watching them prepare the chicken for me. That consisted of chopping off the head and legs, clipping the toe nails, and stuffing it all inside the cavity of the carcass. The bagged it up for me and the whole thing cost about US$6.
Now, I managed to steam some fish and veggies which resulted in a very tasty, very colorful, and very healthy dinner last night using a recipe from about.com. Basically, you can put whatever on it or in it that you like, and the whole process takes about 15 minutes if you put the water on at the same time you cut up a few veggies. I am going to have a bigger problem with the chicken, however. A chicken carcass is quite intimidating. I did manage to roast a chicken in my toaster oven a few months ago, and it was so delicious, so moist, so fragrant...the whole apartment smelled like Christmas from the Little House on the Prairie or something. But yeah, since we're back to square one in Shanghai and we don't have a toaster oven, I don't know what I am going to do, maybe this.
If you're looking for cooking advice...I think everything should be steamed. It's so easy, so fast, so delicious, so colorful, so tasty, and so healthy. Just cut up a bunch of veggies and some meat, throw them on the steamer, and then toss on some ready-made spice mix or some Asian salad dressing (make it yourself if you have a few extra minutes) and it's awesome and healthy. I love it.
Anyway, that's my story, but there's another one with a lot more lovely pictures at http://www.squidoo.com/chinese-wet-market.
On "Modern Toilet," a Restaurant
First, just note that I added a new link under "Blogs I Like" to a blog I found on the Taiwan Bloggers blog roll. Haochr.blogspot.com seems like a very good way to learn about some of the awesome food you can find in Taipei. Honestly, the food here is fantastic and inexpensive, and even in Chungli you have your choice of cuisine (except the local Indian restaurant owner is a bit kooky and I don't know anyone that is brave enough to go there after the first time). Anyway, I have some stuff to do in Taipei tomorrow morning and I really want to try to have dinner at this Forker's place mentioned because the picture of the burger looked pretty enticing.As for eating in Chungli, I came across this amazing place called Modern Toilet a few months ago when my buddies were visiting from the States in June. I worked in that neighborhood near the train station for two years and I had never seen it until that day, so I guess it's new, and there are apparently franchises all over Taiwan. The theme is, believe it or not, toilets. The whole place is decorated like a bathroom, the seats are literally toilets with their lids down, the food is served steaming hot in small ceramic toilets and the chef's recommendations are indicated on the menu with little steaming piles of poop. You can purchase ashtrays in pink and blue that look like little "squatty-potties" decorated with smiling cartooned feces.
I need a moment, even though I am the one that went here. WHAT THE F@CK?! I still don't get it, and I live here. People here somehow think mixing toilets and dinner is acceptable/funny/cute. I dragged Marc in there bitching and moaning because he thought it was so gross, and it definitely was creepy. I am glad I went, just to see what it was like and get some pictures. Overall, the food was not great, there were about half a dozen items listed on the menu that they didn't actually have, and I found a monstrously long hair in my kimchi hotpot, which actually did induce some gagging on my part as well. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a great place to have dinner, but if you want to weird out your folks when they come to visit or take some stupid photos of you and your friends eating black pepper pork out of a toilet, this is definitely the place to do it.
Harvest Time, you're no good for me!
Down the street from my house is a little sub shop called Harvest Time. Think Subway. There aren't many options for legitimate Western food in Zhongli, so Harvest Time always has a lot of foreigners during lunch and dinner time trying to get something besides dumplings, noodles or really disappointing Taiwanese-style salad with corn, Thousand-Island dressing, and candy sprinkles. When you've fallen into the tuna-melt rut that I have, it's not the healthiest option for a meal, especially a few nights a week.What really, really gets to me is the stinginess with the fixings. We are talking, quite literally, two little round slices of pickle on a six-inch sub. I opted to go without tomatoes tonight so I could indulge in a little extra pickle, and I got four little round slices of pickle. I forgot to ask for extra hot peppers, so I only got two of those.
I know this place is making obnoxious amounts of money. I know for a fact because stupid people like me will pay NT$40 for a sandwich at 8:00 in the morning when tuna croissants are being served for breakfast, and then we will pay NT$90 for THE SAME SANDWICH at noon when it's time for lunch. On Monday, I actually asked the woman not to put egg on my croissant.
"You want like a sub then?"
"Yeah, sure," I conceded, not realizing that by asking her NOT to put the nasty little piece of microwaved egg on my croissant, she was actually obligated to charge me NT$90,the full lunch price, for a damn breakfast sandwich.
How can they get away with this? Because their sandwiches are so yummy, and the closest competition they have a) is ten minutes down the road and b) put sauerkraut on my mango chicken sandwich last time I went there.