Progressive Dinner, Beitou Market-Style 漸進式的晚餐

Since we've chosen not to buy (and store) an artificial tree, we decided the only way to hang ornaments was to string them up. Somewhere. Mark stretched some speaker wire between hooks that he screwed into a couple of the bits of wood in the house, but we still had to get something with which to hang the ornaments themselves. Yarn would be just the thing. Sure. In Beitou 北投? Hey, let's go take a look!



We grabbed our jackets and headed out. We followed the bus route until we happened upon--you guessed it--a yarn store!! Awesome. We found some pretty white yarn, paid our NT$30 (not even a buck), pocketed the yarn and headed back out to the street.

Hey, it's almost dinnertime, we're hungry and...look! There's food! First stop, a lady's stand where Ping ordered two...um...two...I don't know...something on a stick. (Ping says: "It's pork blood sweet rice stick." "NOW she tells me!" says Mark.) All Mark knows is that it's almost black, rolled in peanut powder and cilantro with some spicy sauce. It's chewy and good! Mark likes it. Ping tells him that last time they had these he announced that was something he wouldn't need to try again. Ah, how his taste buds have changed since!

While we were out, we went to the Beitou market which is really a street and several alleys where all the vendors set up. It's an awesome way to eat dinner: grazing your way from one stand to another. Follow your nose to your next entree! We had a "crepe" （可麗餅）with smoked chicken, salad and corn in it--YUMMY! They fold it up into a sort of "V" shape which is kind of tricky to eat, but it's all worth it! Then we shared a couple of spicy meat/veggie deep-fried dumpling thingies (couldn't tell you what they were called, either!) and then shared a wonderful dessert called a "cartwheel cake." （車輪餅） Since it has no spokes, it actually looks more like a rail car wheel, but it's yummy nonetheless.

Part of the fun is watching them make your food. Imagine a griddle with holes like a shallow muffin tin in four rows of ten. The college-age kid squirts a set amount of batter into the top two rows and then takes a thick dowel and swirls it around inside each cup, pushing just enough batter out of the cup to form a ring around the rim. When these have nearly baked, he spoons different fillings inside the inner row of them--red bean paste, peanut powder, "milk paste," or butter--and squirts a little batter around the rims of the outer row for gluing. Then he sticks what looks like a sharpened screwdriver into each one in the outer row and pops it up, placing it like a little hat on top of a filled one and lets their "glue" bake a bit. Then he pops up one of the glued-together things, which now looks like a waffle colored hockey puck with a thin ring around the middle, drops it into a paper bag and hands it to you. All this for NT$12 each (about 36 cents)! While those were baking, he started a second set in the other two rows. Oh, man, it's good! We'll have to go back and try all of his other flavors now. :)


The hardest part about eating in Taiwan is that there is SO much to try, especially on a street like this, that you simply can't get it all in. You have to pace yourself. We try. The good news is that after we were done, we could stroll along a stone-paved walkway by the hot-spring fed creek, enjoying the lovely evening weather. We went up the hill past the beautiful Christmas displays in the hotel lobbies, crossed the bridge and came back down the other side in the light of the streetlamps. It was a very romantic and wonderful way to walk off some of that wonderful street vendor fare!

Here's hoping your holiday season is bright and warm with love from and for those all around you! Cheers, and Bon Appetit from Beitou!