A Little Taiwanese Cuisine (on pictures of food)

    Now that I am getting used to the cuisine here and it is no longer a novelty, I chuckle when I think back at some of things that used to disgust or surprise me.  Yesterday Chris and I dined at our regular hole in the wall, steak noodle shop, and saw a small rat, about the size of my open hand, also dining just underneath the outdoor kitchen.  (Basically it's a stand where they cook their food but it's right outside on the street).
   Chris: "Oh, there's a rat."
   Me: "Ew, where?" (Chris points)
   Me: "Oh, it's kinda small."
Then we both went back to our food and kept eating.  Of course it bothers us, but not like how it was before, where a rat would be cause for us to stop eating our food or at least contemplate it.  Now, it's cause for us to not contemplate it, so that we can keep eating... unless maybe a ginormous rat scurried across the table...
   Oh, but I digress, it's almost always not at all like this, most of the restaurants we go to are clean enough to keep the rats invisible.  If anything, it's our fault, Chris and I are still in frugal travel mode, despite the fact that we've been here for almost eight months now, and we are for some reason drawn to the hole in the wall restaurants because it usually means it's cheap.  I can think of multiple times in our travels where we've eaten some sort of weird dish or bowl of soup and it very well could've been a rat itself. 
   Okay I keep digressing, so on with the food of Taiwan.
   Even though when I first got here, and at times even now, I order by basically closing my eyes and pointing at the menu, the Taiwanese fare is hardly intimidating.  I never felt too nervous about questionable foods because it would usually look acceptable, and most of the time tasty.
   Of course, I miss a good old fashioned burger, with a real hamburger bun, or huge pizza slices from Lampost or Giampettro's with dripping cheese (mmmmmm...), or (drool) a carne asada burrito with extra guac... but I actually like the food here for the most part.  Living in a rural town, there isn't a whole lot of variety in my opinion, but I think it's because of my American taste where American food really means a little bit of everything ffrom every culture. So for me, noodles are noodles and rice is rice.  Doesn't matter that it has a different sauce or a different cut of meat, if I eat a noodle dish for lunch and then another noodle dish for dinner, I feel like I've just eaten noodles twice in one day.  But I'm getting used to the idea of concentrating less on the rice and noodles part and focusing on the broth or the other stuff.
   The food here is good, and because of the very strong Chinese influence, I've found that you can cook and eat a lot of things you would've previously never imagined as food.  It keeps things interesting.

   So here's some pictures of food that I've taken:

Every morning, a truck comes around our neighborhood selling food, one morning it woke us up, and Chris went down to check it out and brought back this. He says, "I got dumplings."  I opened it, "No, Chris, you got stinky tofu".  (This is the third time that we've accidentally ordered it.)  I ate one.  Chris ate them all.

Tofu, chicken parts, other weird stuff. 

Steak noodle dish.  It comes on a sizzling hot plate and it's delicious.  

Fresh chicken, like really fresh

   Night markets are a HUGE part of the Taiwanese culture.  Every town, big or small will have at least one night market.  If not once a week, then every day.  Night markets are great fun and the majority of it consists of a plethora of food stands that serve a good snack or meal.

Deep fried squid on a stick

BBQ chicken wings on a stick.  Notice the grill, it's the back of a car, very trendy.

Spicy sea... snails? You get a bag of of them and basically you just suck out the inside.  It's actually good, especially when you're walking around the streets with a beer, which I still can't get enough of because of strict liquor laws back home... 

Deep fried milk balls, or something.

I forget, but I like the dogs on the chair.

Deliciously cheap sushi

Omelet style dishes

More stinky tofu. Stinky tofu soup, or fried stinky tofu

Lots of restaurants, there's over a hundred of them crammed together in a very small area at this night market.

Oyster omelet

   I have more pictures, I just have to find them, I'll make another food post sometime soon.  Hope you're hungry!