New York Botanical Garden’s Edible Garden

This morning, I took the subway to the Bronx and went to the New York Botanical Garden’s opening day of their newest exhibit, Edible Garden. Alejandra from Always Order Dessert put together the event for bloggers and the press and it was an amazing morning and afternoon to be at the garden. The weather was perfect, Dan Barber from Blue Hill gave a funny and educational speech about farming, gardening, and the farm at Stone Barns, and I met a lot of interesting bloggers. Here are pictures from the day – you should definitely stop by the Botanical Gardens some time this summer to see the Edible Garden exhibit!

Getting to the New York Botanical Garden is easy – take the Metro North from Grand Central or the 4 train. I haven’t been to the garden since the Chihuly exhibit back in 2006:

There are exhibits and presentations everyday from the Edible Garden stage – here, the president of the botanical garden is introducing Dan Barber:

The last time I saw Dan Barber was at the USA Network party – I think he’s gotten married since then (or he wasn’t wearing his ring last time!):

After Dan’s talk, we were supposed to have a picnic lunch with the other bloggers – Esther and I couldn’t find them in the cafe, so we took a tram ride around the garden:

There are a ton of colorful flowers blossoming right now:

In the garden, there are all types of fruits and vegetables – here I am in front of the blueberry bushes:

Some eggplant:

The celebrity gardens:

Dan Barber’s garden:

A huge thank you to Alejandra for organizing the event and for preparing the gigantic goodie bag!

Seven Star Caves

The people hosting us in Guilin took us on a detour before dinner so we could see the Seven Star Caves. We only stayed in Guilin for a night, so this was our only opportunity to see the sites. We headed to the park where the caves are located:

They have an albino kangaroo that I really wanted to see, but we didn’t have a chance to stop by the zoo:

We were in the park to see the seven star caves and walked around a bit to take in some of the scenery. Here are some of my favorite pictures from the park:

They had two peacocks in the park that you could take pictures with:

There were also a lot of monkey warnings – I didn’t see any real monkeys, but apparently they are pretty dangerous. Here are some monkey statues:

The first cave we went into:

The seven star caves are about 20 degrees cooler than the outside temperature, so it was a nice break from walking outside in the heat. We went on one of the guided tours and enjoyed the interesting scenery. Here’s the start:

The tour points out interesting stalactites and stalagmites throughout the cave and also installed lights to accentuate the different designs. Here’s the three wise men:

Interesting formations:

This reminded me of the opening of The Lion King – when Simba is presented on that cliff and all of the animals bow down to him:

Me and David:

The caves are also slightly damp and a little musty – can you imagine going there everyday to work in their gift shop?! I think they have internet access though – there were options to buy pictures or get them emailed to you.

Outside, there was a really cool rock that looked like a camel:

After walking around for a little, we had to head back into our car to go to dinner with more people from the local university – pictures tomorrow!

Lunch in Guilin

I can’t seem to find my pictures from my first night in Shanghai so I’m moving onto our trip to Guilin! After staying in Shanghai for two nights and visiting the World Expo, we boarded a flight to Guilin to spend a night there. My mom was invited to speak in Guilin and we were hosted by some locals from Guilin’s university.

Guilin is known for their unique scenery; there are mountains, caves, and rivers all going through Guilin. A professor picked us up from the airport and drove us straight to lunch to meet with a board member from the university and then took us around the city after lunch. We went to this restaurant for lunch:

We had a private room for lunch and our own waitresses (it’s very common for people to do business in restaurants so they have a ton of private dining rooms with their own waitresses, restrooms, and sometimes even small kitchens). We started off with some cold dishes – this one is some type of vegetable that was really fibrous:

And bitter melon:

Bitter melon is supposed to cool your body down so it’s eaten a lot during the summer time, but I’m not a big fan of it.

The restaurant specialized in goose, so they prepared a roasted goose for our table:

Another specialty of the restaurant – shrimp prepared two ways:

They remove the body from the head and prepare them differently; you suck on the head that has been sautéed with hot sauce and then you eat the body that’s been boiled in water.

Spare ribs on top of taro chips:

The taro chips absorbed a lot of the spare ribs flavor but still maintained the crunch from deep frying them – yum!

The waitress brought the fish, which was cut up in a very interesting way:

I always love the cold cuts they bring – the most interesting one had asparagus and other vegetables in between the meat:

Goose liver:

Celery sautéed with ginkgo nuts:

Japanese eggplant with green beans:

Bean sprouts with celery and vinegar:

Veggies:

Shrimp sautéed with celery and hot sauce:

Our table:

For dessert, they brought some perfectly shaped buns:

The buns were filled with sugar and egg yolks – a little too sweet for me, but apparently it’s very popular in Guilin:

After lunch, the professor and our driver took us to our hotel so we could rest for a bit before heading on a tour of the sites. Pictures of the caves tomorrow!

Taiwan Day 10

On Sunday, our last full day in Taiwan, my mom’s students invited me and David out for lunch. It was their last day with my mom as well, so they decided to take all of us out to a restaurant near their university. David and I met up with my mom and her students and went to a nearby Thai restaurant. Here we are with her masters students:

The restaurant is all you can eat, but you order dishes from a menu and they’ll bring it out until you say no more. We ordered the entire menu and then picked out what we liked for seconds. We also got free slushies – I ordered the cherry lemon blueberry:

The waiter continuously brought out food, including:

Green papaya with chili flakes:

Fried chicken with hot sauce:

Beef with chili dipping sauce:

Fish:

Shaved beef tendon:

And duck blood, a first for me:

David had pig’s blood once, as a kid, when he mistook it for tofu in a Chinese lunchbox that my aunt bought for us. The texture is tender like tofu, but had a little salty taste…almost like tasting your own blood, in cube form.

And a lot more food:

After departing from our huge lunch, we finally found a Meet Fresh (after asking multiple people in various convenience stores in our broken Chinese). We ate a large serving of grass jelly with shaved ice and waddled our way back to the train station to meet up with my dad and a professor at NTU.

After my mom finished teaching, we met up with her for our last meal in Taipei. We went to a restaurant close to my dad’s city house, Yin Yee, or Silver Wings. My dad takes company there a lot because they serve traditional Southeastern Chinese food. My mom also invited her sister and her family – here are all of us at dinner:

We started off with my favorite cold appetizer – cabbage with vinegar, bean curd, scallions, and peanuts:

My dad also ordered a pork dish where they press different types of pork together and slice it:

Another appetizer – fresh eel:

Next came a large pressed duck that was served tableside by a waitress:

Each bun was filled with lots of crisp duck skin and duck meat:

Next came the pig’s foot and leg:

The waitress broke apart the foot and leg with a spoon to show how tender it was – there’s a large layer of gelatin before the tender meat:

My dad also ordered noodles for me and David since it was our birthdays; traditionally, you eat long noodles on your birthday for longevity and you can’t cut them when you’re serving the noodles!

For dessert, my dad ordered Chinese style crepes that are fried and filled with red bean:

They were really delicious, even though I was so excited to eat them that I accidentally burnt my tongue on them! My dad was going to pay for dinner, but my cousin ended up treating all of us for a wonderful last meal in Taipei.

After dinner, it was pouring rain, but it was our last night in Taipei so we decided to get some more dessert. We kept telling my mom about Meet Fresh, but everytime we found one, she was teaching her students, so my dad took us to a place by his house that served comparable shaved ice. My mom ordered shaved ice with taro balls, red beans and mochi, topped with condensed milk:

In his effort to recreate the Meet Fresh shaved ice, my brother ordered a shaved ice with grass jelly, mochi, taro balls, yam balls and red beans, topped with condensed milk.

We walked around the area one last time and then got into cabs to head back to our hotel. My dad bought us a birthday cake and everyone sang happy birthday to us before we blew out our candles:

The cakes in Taiwan are so delicious; this cakes layers were: cake, whipped cream, taro paste, more cake, more whipped cream, PUDDING, more whipped cream, and then taro with whipped cream and fresh fruits:

YUM YUM YUM!

On Monday, my dad met us at the airport at 5 AM, had breakfast with us, and then bid us adieu! We flew to Shanghai to go to the World Expo, then to Guilin to see the caves, and then to Chongqing. We had a wonderful time in Taipei and I might go back soon for school!

Taiwan Day 9

On Saturday, my aunt picked us up to meet up with my cousin at a sushi restaurant, Mitsui. Mitsui is a really popular place right now because it was in the papers a little bit ago; the last president, Chen Shui-Bian, was very corrupt and his son used to discuss insider trading operations at Mitsui. Reporters went to the restaurant and photographed Chen Sui-Bian’s son there and also realized that they have really good food at reasonable prices, so people started flocking to the restaurant:

We arrived when they first opened and were prepping for lunch:

The restaurant is probably one of the trendier restaurants I’ve visited in Taipei; they have a younger staff, everyone speaks English, and their tableware is a lot edgier than the traditional stuff I’ve seen at other restaurants:

Eric has been to the restaurant numerous times and suggested that we order the lunch special. It’s about $40 USD per person, but he assured us that it was a lot of food and it was definitely the best deal. We started off with lots of sashimi:

Every piece of fish was delicious, especially the fatty tuna and the mackerel (our favorites!). The fresh scallop also had an amazingly creamy texture that David and I both enjoyed.

Next came our salad:

The Japanese mountain yam was my favorite; it’s slightly sticky but very crunchy and light. They also have a special dressing that’s a little spicy.

Next came a large order of Dungeness crab:

The crab meat was steamed in salt water and also came with a side of cracked almonds that were plump and a little chewy – the first time I’ve ever eaten those types of almonds (they didn’t have much taste, but were very fun to squish)

Next came an order of pan fried fish:

Then our soft-shelled crab:

I was able to eat two orders of the crab because David gave me his (yay!) The sauce was creamy and almost tasted a little smokey (like my mom’s red pepper dip).

Next, the waitress brought along our soup:

And the seafood and vegetables to put in our soup:

The waitress delicately placed everything in the soup and served us:

And then they brought along more food! Steak that was grilled and placed on a tobacco leaf:

For dessert, we had the option between red bean soup and green tea ice cream. David and I went with the ice cream:

And Eric went with the red bean soup:

The three of us with our desserts:

After our wonderful lunch with Eric, we parted ways and went back to our hotel to wait for my mom to finish teaching. Eric picked me up later that night to go to the night market to pick up some last minute gifts and to walk around. We also went to YoFroyo:

The menu is pretty straightforward but has suggestions for topping combos:

Eric ordered a medium green tea frozen yogurt with mochi, jelly, and red bean:

It only cost $2USD! It’s super popular in Taipei (I think it’s the only YoFroyo store in the city but I could be mistaken) and it was really good, especially with the jelly and red bean. AND THERE WAS NO HOLE!

Eric took me to a store that sold tons of different types of candy so I could buy some:

And then we went to a bakery to buy more mochi and other sweets. Right now, cupcakes are pretty fashionable:

Their baked goods are so much more beautiful (and tasty) compared to the ones you find in the US! Here are some beautiful birthday cakes:

The bakery we went to also sold a lot of different types of bread – the baker even won a contest: Best bread in Taiwan! Here are some of his salty creations:

After walking through the bakery and picking up lots of goodies, we met up with my dad. My dad spent the evening at a television studio because he was on a guest panel – I actually flipped through the channels before meeting up with my cousin and saw him on TV discussing his research! Apparently he’s quite the celebrity in Taiwan and goes on television ALL THE TIME! Since he spent the evening doing a live taping, he hadn’t eaten dinner and we decided to get some soup at this restaurant:

We ordered the seafood ramen, which came with lots of abalone and lamb:

After eating dinner, my dad dropped me off at home and we started packing – only one more day in Taiwan!