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Photos by MJ Klein - Attention: FOOD PHOTOS!

UPDATE: I’ve added some video to the end of the article.

It was another great weekend in Taiwan.  The weather let up on us a bit and it got something approaching cooler.  So, when Becky invited us up to their cabin in Miaoli, well we knew it was a great time in the making!

The ride up was spectacular as we took the mountain road that comes up behind the cabin.  We brought our friend Ed with us and he’s very well traveled.  His comment is that he’d never been on a road like that one before and the mountain view was one of the top things he’s ever seen.  We agree!  Taiwan is incredible but you have to get out of Taipei to find out.

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Food and other photos by MJ Klein

It’s been awhile since we had an article featuring food and last weekend had a lot of it!  So now we’re going to show you some of the dishes that we enjoyed!  You have been warned!

Hui-chen and I met some geocachers in Taichung for an event.  We’re Taiwanese so naturally the first thing on the agenda was lunch!

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Photos by MJ Klein - A Few Food Photos….

The Carolina Theatre hosted a nice program for Veterans of World War II, featuring the film The Longest Day, on June 6, 2008. June 6th is better known as “D-Day.” From Wikipedia:

“D-Day is a term often used in military parlance to denote the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated. “D-Day” often represents a variable, designating the day upon which some significant event will occur or has occurred; see Military designation of days and hours for similar terms. The initial D in D-Day has had various meanings in the past, while more recently it has obtained the connotation of “Day” itself, thereby creating the phrase “Day-Day”, or “Day of Days”.^[1]“

So even though D-Day is a generic term used in Military Science as time variable, D-Day term has since become synonymous with the invasion of Normandy. Wikipedia has more:

“Normandy Landings were the first operations of the Allied Powers‘ invasion of Normandy, also known as Operation Neptune and Operation Overlord, during World War II. D-Day for the operation, postponed 24 hours, became June 6, 1944, H-Hour was 6:30 am. The assault was conducted in two phases: an air assault landing of American and British airborne divisions shortly after midnight, and an amphibious landing of Allied infantry and armoured divisions on the coast of France commencing at 06:30 British Double Summer Time. It required the transport of soldiers and materiel from England and Wales by troop carrying aeroplanes and ships, the assault landings, air support, naval interdiction of the English Channel and naval fire-support. There were also subsidiary operations to distract the Kriegsmarine and prevent its interference in the landing areas.^[1]“

Everyone thought that Dad would like to see this program. The only problem with taking Dad was the fact that it conflicted with Elliot’s High School graduation. After deliberation, my sister felt that we should take Dad to the movie and I agreed.

L to R: Janet (sister), Dad, Elliot (Janet’s son) and Wanda (Dad’s wife)

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Photos by MJ Klein and Hui-chen - ATTENTION: FOOD PHOTOS!

This series is a bit out of order.  It doesn’t really matter because we did write about some things just as they occurred, such as our 2 trips to Cabela’s.  So, to set the timeline straight, now would be when we went on the road trip up to West (by God) Virginia and to Cabela’s.

After we returned to North Carolina, Hui-chen and I relaxed for awhile before my brother John arrived from Florida.  Hui-chen decided to make some more Taiwanese style food, since we were really missing home.

This is Hui-chen’s famous stew, with pork and vegetables.  It’s as good as it looks and even better!

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Photos by MJ Klein  Caution: Food Photos!

As most of you know by now, Hui-chen and I went back to the USA for about 3 weeks. The reason for this trip will become apparent in future parts of this series. In Part One, I want to introduce you to a few people and places.

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Photos by MJ Klein

While here in the US I was itching to try some cooking experiments that hopefully would lead to a new dish (for me). I love cooking and recipe sites, but when I am experimenting I like to try things on my own instead of downloading a recipe from someone else. This kind of cooking is different than trying to cook something already known. Here is a photograph of the pre-cooked experiment:

Pictured above is a whole chicken that I’ve coated. The main ingredient of this dish is peanut butter.

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Photos by MJ Klein - Attention: Food Photos!

The weather has been great for the past few days so we decided (of course!) to have a party up on our roof! We invited Andres and his family along with his friend and co-worker Rich. We had a great time with good company and good food.

I have been wanting to build some kind of an outdoor cooking table for some time. I wanted one that could hold a Dutch oven and also a grill and do everything I needed to do in connection with cooking outdoors on the roof. So, I went to B&Q and bought some stuff, and spend a few hours on Friday putting it all together. Take a look at what I built:

This is the far end of the roof at the back of the house. This is the cooking table that I made from ordinary shelfing materials you can buy in Taiwan. We also picked up the small black grill in the left corner. It’s basically a copy of a tried and true US design.

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Photos by MJ Klein

We residents of Hukou are fortunate enough to have our very own Tea Master - our good friend Mr. Gan. Hui-chen and I visited Mr. Gan’s shop in downtown Hukou and interviewed him about his history, family and profession.

Hukou’s very own Tea Master, Mr. Gan, pouring tea for guests in his shop

Mr. Gan’s early career was with a bottled gas company. He used to deliver gas bottles himself, and he proudly proclaims that the gas bottles never touched his shirt because he didn’t want to cause laundry problems for his wife. This required considerable strength and effort to accomplish. The gas company for which he worked eventually merged with another gas company and to this day he is still a stock holder. The appeal of delivering gas soon wore off, and Mr. Gan began to investigate the inner workings of the Taiwan tea business.
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Photos by Huang Shao Mao, Hui-chen and MJ Klein

This article has it all - music, drinking, food, and babes!

Introduction

I am producing the Fong band’s new recording sessions. This is the first production gig I’ve had in Taiwan, and I hope to get more. I’ve really missed producing and it felt great to get back into the studio, although these days “the studio” is a lot different from the 2″ analog tape and huge mixing consoles I’m used to.

In the past, given my considerable experience, I sometimes have performed on records that I’ve produced. This is nothing unusual, and in the case of the Fong band sessions, I played the backing guitar parts, mainly because it would be faster and much more consistient. It remains to be seen whether either of the two guitar players will add some parts to the recording, but at this writing, I personally played all the guitar parts. Needless to say, I won’t be doing any singing on these records because the songs are in the Thai language. I’m sure that I could learn the phonetic pronunciation and fake it but there isn’t any need for me to do so. These guys can sing quite well and we used 3 of them in a “gang vocal” configuration that you’ll see later (with photos taken from video stills).

So I hope you enjoy this article about what we did over the weekend. I enjoyed doing all these things for sure!

Bryan Chen, owner and engineer of Wellrick Studio

It was a weekend full of music and fun. It all started out on Friday (which was a holiday here in Taiwan). First, it was guitars, guitars, Burns and VOX mayhem and more guitars!

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Food Photos by MJ Klein

I know it’s been awhile since we showed you any homestyle Taiwanese cooking. So, we’re going to make up for that right now! Hui-chen’s sister Hui-ling and her son were visiting. The sisters decided to do some cooking, so they made a ton of dumplings, including wontons.

Without any further delay, let’s get right into the photos!

This is the base meat, consisting of ground pork and spices.

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