Foodie Paradise

The first time I started taking photographs of food was probably when I was in Taiwan for my holidays more than a year ago. It was also my first time discovering the power of digital cameras. And so off I went snapping happily at everything I saw. Many photos, I had to admit, turned out pretty disastrously. To further prove my amateurish skills with the camera, I took the photos at such low resolution that I cannot develop some of the really nice ones when I came back to Singapore.

I definitely think my photography skills have improved since then. Well…perhaps, since every time I looked at those photos that I’d taken on my computer, the number of shaky ones always proves to be more than those that turned out nicely. =\

This sudden inspiration to “exhibit” the first photos of food that I had taken came when I randomly came across this blog on travelling in Taiwan. This lovely blog reminded me so much about my holiday back in Taiwan! How I wish I’m back in Taiwan again this hols.

The food that left the deepest memory in me was 臭豆腐. I ate my first 臭豆腐 the first day I touched down at Taipei. Funnily, I never felt that they were smelly when I was eating them. (My mum was actually standing one foot away from me when I was eating them.) In fact, I quite like eating 臭豆腐. However, few days later, when I was at some of their famous street markets, I walked past food stalls emitting this really terrible stench, only to be told by my mum in an incredulous expression that those “stench” were from what I ate few days before. Well….

Thus with such fond memories of my travel in Taiwan, and also since it’s the first place where I started taking photos of food, I finally picked out some photos that I feel are passable to be shown on this blog, after looking through the big database of photos on my Taiwan trip (about 200 of them??).

At a “ah-hem” Hello Kitty Cafe at Dan Shui in Taipei:

A photo of wild boar meat taken when I was in Wu Lai:

To my dear friends who knows the “significance” of this photo, please refrain from commenting on it here. =P

When I was in Taiwan, I also stayed over at my relatives’ place for five days. The Taiwanese were such warm and gracious hosts that we felt so overwhelmed by their friendliness, and I had great fun staying over at their place. Oh yes, and fail not to mention the feast they served us everyday.

Yam porridge

The food there tasted really delicious, and I still miss the food there ’til today. They are really great cooks. However, sheepishly, I’ll have to say the food are also atrociously fattening. Being courteous guests and also due to the warm nature of Chinese hosts who will always ask you to 多吃 (eat more), I tried eating more of the rice and vegetables, and tried to touch the meat as sparingly as possible.

On my fourth day there, while I was busy traipsing the countryside in a borrowed bicycle, my mum made a discovery but she kept mum about it when I came back for dinner. I was puzzled why my mum didn’t take the rice during dinner. It was only after dinner, my mum had a chance to tell me that when she was helping out with the preparation of dinner, she realised that quite a bit of oil was poured in when they were cooking the rice so that the rice is “smoother and more delicious”.

Thankfully, that was my last dinner there since we were leaving the next day. I gained 3kg in my 5 days there. -_-’

Just some little anecdotes from my Taiwan travel, and it is not representative of the food they served in Taiwan. I did enjoy my stay with my relatives a lot and they did cooked up really delicious meals for us and took us to lots of nice places to eat, and I still misses those places now. Just…I guess being a woman, weight is still…a sensitive issue.