Taiwan Part 2: Day 1

Back in Taiwan!  Christine's 23rd birthday!  Yay!!!
After being in Japan for a week, it felt really good to arrive in Taipei, someplace a little more comfortable and familiar.
Surprisingly enough, there was more food for me to try here in Taiwan!  We were just about to head out for breakfast/lunch when Christine's roommate announced that she had made the three of us desert and we had to eat it before we left the house.  Tang Yuan- "soup circle."  The outside was a flour paste with a sweetened sesame paste inside- it kinda tasted like caramel- and, of course, it was so good.
Lunch was some traditional Taiwanese fare- drunken chicken with fatty pork, noodles, rice, bittermellon with egg paste, and some sub-par garlic eggplant.  Trying to eat the slippery drunken chicken, I struggled more with the big plastic chopsticks more than I have at any other point in the trip.  This was embarrassing, but I got through it and managed to eat the rest of my meal without any other problems.
I had this with my first mediocre Taiwanese beverage.  Christine ordered it for me without consulting me, and it kinda just tasted like grape juice with "aloe cubes."
From here we went to that cute French bakery right by Christine's house where we had picked up some food in preparation for the Japan trip and indulged in a cannale and a couple macaroons- salted caramel and macha flavored.  They did not disappoint.
Dinner was "lu wei"- "stewed flavor."  So, there's this huge stand with all different kinds of food- noodles, veggies, mushrooms, animal parts- you pick out everything you want, and one person takes your money and passes the food onto the next person who takes all your food out of its packaging and sorting the food in order of how long it will take to cook.  It then goes onto the third person, who chops everything up into the correct sizes, who then passes it onto the final person who cooks all the food in a big vat of boiling tea.  This same person then sauces the food and puts it all on a plate for you to go and eat.  On our plate, there was seaweed, tofu, tofu skin, mushrooms, quail eggs, chicken hearts, chicken liver, pig's blood rice cake, udon and ramen noodles, duck's blood, tarrot gelatin, baby corn and hot dogs.  My favorites were the tofu skin and the pig's blood.  The tofu tasted too much like tofu, and I didn't really like the chicken liver.  The chicken heart was ok if eaten in small bites.
This was washed down with a yummy drink that tasted a lot like that sweetened sesame stuff that we had for breakfast.
Then we came home and had some birthday cupcake, birthday shots, and birthday glee.  Goodnight!