Strange Food in Taiwan!

Taiwan was quite an experience. The American chain 7-11 is very popular out there, so we felt quite safe going in there for drinks and snacks. What I was not prepared for was the awful smell!!

In Taiwan they love boiled eggs, cooked in a really pungent 'brown water'. So every 7-11 has vats of brown bubbling water containing stinking boiled eggs!!

The eggs are treated as an on the go snack and people were just fishing them out and bagging them up, much like we might buy a hot dog.  It certainly made the shops very different to the 7-11 store in USA and Hong Kong!!!

Another delicacy is the aptly named 'Stinky Tofu' One evening we went to Shillin Night Market, it was a fantastic vibrant place with lots of interesting stalls and street food. We decided to eat out and choose whatever took our fancy. One thing that didn't was stinky tofu. It is the vilest smelling food in the whole wide world, how people actually eat it is beyond me. The tofu is marinated in brine made from fermented milk, They add all sorts of other stuff according to their own particular secret method. The closest I can come to describing the smell is a cross between week old spilt milk that has been festering in a warm car and sewage. It is vile.

It doesn't even look appetising !!I was glad to get out of close contact with that.

We did manage to find some lovely food and some very nice stall holders.

Sweet potatoes were big!, the potato balls were served with powdered peanut and cinnamon sugar. They were lovely.

Tom had an omelette kind of thing, he really enjoyed it and the lady was lovely, so he went back for another one!! 

We had a smoothie made to order to include whatever fruit we wanted!! I was surprised at just how many plastic bags were used, the smoothie was already in a cup but they put it in a bag as well!

Once we had finished our wandering around we spotted a stall selling toffee covered fruit. We decided to give it a go.

The skewers looked delicious, like our traditional toffee apples. It was a bit hard to understand exactly what was under the toffee. We did manage to identify, strawberries, plums, pears and grapes. We decided to go for strawberry.

They were very nice! Carl was a bit quicker to eat his and when he got to the very last fruit he had a bit of a surprise, it was a tomato!!! We all had a tomato! I love tomatoes, but I couldn't bring myself to eat it covered in toffee!

So my useful tip of the day - don't go near stinky tofu and be suspicious of toffee covered fruit!!!

Have a lovely week.