Photos by MJ Klein
As you know, we’ve imported all the articles from Bushman’s Asian Food Blog into the main blog. So, we’re still posting about food and dining, but not to a separate blog. Warning: FOOD PHOTOS!
These are Hui-chen’s famous meatballs. Read on to see what else she cooked.
Photos by MJ Klein & Hui-chen Meals featured: Grilled homestyle hamburgers; teppanyaki.
UPDATE: November 2, 2007: Here is a photo of the bread type that I talk about in this article. Notice that there are seven slices:
Download this article in PDF format
The other evening I told Hui-chen that I felt like eating hamburgers for dinner. Funny, but she rarely asks me if I want to eat hamburgers, which is strange considering that a full-blown Taiwanese stereotype about Americans is that we only eat hamburgers. I’ve been to places with new Taiwanese friends who in all honesty, apologized to me because there were no hamburgers available on the menu where we were eating! Other times I have had Taiwanese friends celebrate my return to Taiwan by going to McDonald’s and bringing back bags of their inedible garbage, thinking that I would be pleased with their selection of American food (I pretended to be). I didn’t eat that crap in the US, so why would I eat it here?
Forget about McDonald’s! On this occasion, I decided to show Hui-chen how we would make hamburgers at home when I lived in New Hampshire. Hui-chen went to the store and procured some ingredients (while I got the grill going) and then I combined them in a bowl as shown here:
The only thing left to do now is to grill them.
While the grill was still heating up, Hui-chen grilled a few Chinese sausages because these really do come out better when the heat is low. They burn easily.
In the meantime I decided to try taking a few shots in near-total darkness using my Nikon SB-800 flash on the D80.
This is the monstrosity of a building that’s across the street from us. I was astonished at how well the SB-800 lit up the scene!
That gave me confidence to try something even more ambitious:
Wow, hard to believe but even this shot is usable! So now I really wanna see what this thing can do, so, I shot this scene:
Here is what happened: Directly over the word “here” at the beginning of this sentence is part of my house reflecting the full power of the flash back. Naturally, that part is totally washed out. Next is the house across the street on the left side. Then further out you can see that the light from the flash illuminated the windows on the buildings on the next block! Notice the car reflectors too. Even though the distant portion of the shot is not usable, I’m officially impressed!
So, I wonder if I could take any useful photos at night in near-total darkness from the 4th floor balcony? I did some street level zoomed shots using the Sigma lens:
This shot is pretty convincing evidence that I could successfully photograph something on the street at night using my flash. The exif data is available for all these photos by clicking on them and selecting the link from the flickr photo page.
So now that I’m done playing around, let’s get back to the burger business!
Notice any difference in these 2 hamburgers? I made the one on the left. Hui-chen made the one on the right.
One thing that I need to explain about Taiwan is about our weird sliced bread. Not only do you have to ask for “toast” and you will actually see “sliced toast” on the bread packaging (no one told Taiwanese that the bread must be toasted in order for it to be called “toast”) but the size is weird too. It’s like an A3 sized piece or something. Take a look and you’ll see what I mean: (more…)
Photos by MJ Klein & Hui-chen
WARNING! This post contains photographs of food! It is also the longest blog post I have ever created, with more photos than any other, ever! You have been warned!
Our good friend Andres invited Hui-chen and I to visit a cabin owned by his cousin Becky’s family. Well, they are all the same family but you know what I mean. We jumped at the chance to spend some time in the beautiful Taiwan countryside in Miaoli. Let’s start off with a video that I put together to set the mood.
Now for the details!
On the way we noticed that the bing lang girls wear skimpier outfits than they do in Hukou!
This is the view from the front porch of the cabin. Simply gorgeous! (more…)
Photos by MJ Klein & Hui-chen
When this old world starts a getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face
I’ll climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space
On the roof, it’s peaceful as can be
And there the world below don’t bother me, no, no
The Drifters, 1968 (I personally knew Mr. Bill Pinkney who recently passed away).
We love our rooftop cabana. It’s a great place to escape the heat and catch some air and relax with a cool drink. We like to cook up there and invite friends over to relax and enjoy the sights from 5 stories up.
Today, Hui-chen and I spent several hours “up on the roof” and I took lots of photos this time. After all I wouldn’t want to be accused of making it all up!
The only drawback is the amount of stuff that I have to carry up there every time we want to hang out on the roof. The floor below is our “party room” with all of the stuff we use on the roof. The good part of it that I get exercise hauling the stuff upstairs.
Michael Turton wrote an article about our wedding that is so great, I don’t think I need to write one myself! He was there of course, and was our photographer. I have him to thank for over 800 photos of the event.
I would however like to add this video to the record of events. In the opening scene you can clearly hear Michael talking to Hui-chen’s cousin, telling him that I should be compelled to sing a song. I want to go on record and publicly thank Michael for that because it ended up being the hightlight of the evening (according to Hui-chen’s mom’s friends).
The best part of this video is hearing Hui-chen’s cousin singing along while he is shooting the video! Its priceless!
Enjoy!
Hui-chen decided to cook some Taiwanese style food, after being in
Thailand for awhile. I really do miss her excellent cooking when we
travel. So, after spending some time at the local market we brought
some items back to the Sabua Resort and she went to work!
Using the 3 burner gas stove, this is Hui-chen cooking Taiwanese style wok fried cabbage with tomatoes. On the right is some of her famous stew.
Hui-chen dishing the fried cabbage.
Now, for the stew!
Checking on the stew (yeah, I know these are not in chronological order!).
Here she is, with a smile on her face, dishing out the excellent home made stew, with local Thai beef.
Here is the complete meal (rice not shown), including some local grilled chicken purchased at the market, and Suntory Red whisky. Excellent!
powered by performancing firefox
Photos by MJ Klein
Hui-chen and I visited Laos for a few days. We’ve blogged on Laos before and this time we wanted to do something very different from the last couple of visits. So, we decided to go to the small village of Ban Na, about 60 KM east of Vientiane, the capital city. All of the shots in this article and many more, are available on my Flickr photo album entitled Ban Na Village, Laos. We recommend that you take a look at the photo album because we couldn’t possibly show you all the photos in this article.
Our story begins with Mr. Somboon, shown here with Hui-chen. The village of Ban Na is a very small, traditional village. One of the village leaders, and the head of the elephant ecotourist program has a mobile phone and the number is published on the internet. Normally, someone who wanted to go to Ban Na would contact a travel agent and book a tour. Hui-chen and I dislike those tours (we are travelers, not tourists) so we decided to contact and travel to the village, directly. Mr. Somboon called the published telephone number for us and speaking Lao, he arranged everything! He made it very simple. Mr. Somboon runs the Heuan Lao Guesthouse N17.95713 E102.61861 and we spent several days there, both before and after our visit to Ban Na.
Our good friend, Mr. Michael Turton joined us today to hunt a geocache. We planned on another cookout later in the day after the hunt.
UPDATE: Check out geocacher blogger Tadpole’s article on us here.
A beautiful area in Yong An. No matter what, it was a cool place to be today.
We were looking in a thicket because the GPS indicated that the cache was very close by. This looked like a good place to hide the cache.
More hunting in the deep thicket.
After some time searching, i decrypted the final clue on the geocache description sheet.
That led us to this tree. I hope that I am not giving too much away, but all this information is available online anyway.
There is it! Michael Turton was the first one to actually spot it. He said “does this look like a funny place for a rock to be?”
Bushman and Michael Turton pose with the geocache and my Garmin eTrex Vista-C Taiwanese version.
GPS with the geocache.
Contents of the geocache.
Out: the travel bug, top. In: a “rosette” casting. I work in the castings business and I always have unusual items like that. I am going to take the travel bug out of Taiwan in a couple of weeks. UPDATE: at the request of the travel bug owner, I have deleted this photo. Apparently, dishonest people might try to claim that they found it by using the serial number which could be clearly seen in my photo. That never would have occured to me, because of not only being dishonest, but also an incredibly stupid thing to do since the whereabouts could easily be confirmed by the next geocacher. Oh well.
Hui-chen, Michael and I pose at the geocache site.
One of the most important aspects of geocaching is to hide the geocache when you are finished. We packed everything up properly and then hid it where the owner had originally placed it. After that, we left to explore some other sites in the Yong An area.
Nearby are some of the wind generators that I have blogged on before. Michael Turton is also very interested in these machines so we went for a closeup look at them.
Unfortunately, while backing up along one of those impossibly narrow roads with no guardrails, Michael’s van slipped off the road and rolled onto a grassy marsh.
No one was hurt. But for a few moments, things were tense! I was in the passenger side and literally hanging over Michael, who was still seated in the driver’s seat. My seatbelt held me in position (and kept me from crushing Michael!). I opened the passenger door and Michael climbed out over me. I was deathly worried about my Hui-chen who was riding in the back seat. She hadn’t been wearing her seatbelt, but had grabbed the handle above the sliding door. She was standing up inside the van and was unhurt. I saw some smoke and told Michael that I was concerned about a fire and us not being able to get out in time. He couldn’t open the sliding door for Hui-chen to climb out of, so he ran around the back and opened the hatch. Hui-chen (and eventually I) walked out, unscathed.
The cooler! Oh man, all of our food for the cookout was in that cooler, not to mention the grill and everything else was scattered about. Not to worry though, this is Taiwan….
Michael goes back in to retrieve something from his vehicle.
“It could have been a lot worse.”
This is the tow truck operator that Michael called. One never knows how skilled someone may or may not be in Taiwan because no one is honest about their capabilities. Often, men brag about being able to do something, when in reality they can’t do shit.
This guy went to work right away, beginning with an assessment of the situation and a plan for recovering the vehicle. Once approved by Michael, he went to work.
He began by moving the vehicle away from the embankment. First he moved the rear end of the vehicle out. Here we see him setting up to move the front.
I’ve never seen anyone use logging hooks to capture the holes in wheel rims before, but this is how he moved the vehicle.
Then the tow operator rigged it up for the next operation….
Which was to flip the vehicle over! Notice how low the wheels suck into the ground. The soft ground really saved Michael’s van from more serious damage.
The two operator used a boom and 4 lifting straps….
And, demonstrating skill like I have never before seen, he set Michael’s van down on the road so gingerly, that I commented “he could diaper a baby with that crane!” I was very impressed with this man.
Up on the tow truck, the next stop was the gas station, where the tow operator demonstrated genuine concern for the condition of the vehicle. We added motor oil and water, which had leaked out due to it being on its side.
We were able to drive away. Those damn Japanese can build a car!
TheNHBushman.com is using WP-Gravatar
Todds last blog post..Daily...