This Taiwanese food-themed deck of playing cards is my favorite souvenir from Taiwan (plus here's a map and list of the foods in the deck)
Note: I currently live in Norway, but I lived in Taipei from August 2014 to June 2015 and am slowly making my way through writing posts about my time there.
- I CAN ALMOST TASTE IT.
I have a habit of alternating periods of eating food with periods of not eating food. During the fallow periods, I tend to think stuff like this:
I'm hungry for fried chicken bits, or fried dumplings, or bian dang, or sheng jiang bao, or scallion pancakes, or dou hua, or gua bao, or lu rou fan, or one of many other cheap foods easily found in Taiwan.
When I lived in Taipei, the situation played out like so:
[Roams around the neighborhood for a few minutes until desired food is found. Exchanges a pittance for food. Devours food because it is delicious. Takes convenience for granted. Sticks a little gold star next to "Feed Self" on my mental to-do list.]
Now that I live in Bergen, it goes a bit differently:
[Looks up recipes online. Whittles the recipes down to those that look feasible considering my low aptitude for cooking. Picks a scallion pancake recipe that looks promising and, more importantly, unambitious. Watches YouTube videos with tips and techniques on how to make scallion pancakes. Gains false confidence that five minutes of watching YouTube videos has magically imbued me with the skills of a decades-old street vendor. A few hours and eight scallion pancakes later, feels bloated with subpar scallion pancakes and disappointment. Gold stars shrivel up and die.]
In conclusion, trying is for suckers and there is no such thing as magic.
- Taiwanese Snacks Poker Cards by Miin Gift (最靡台灣小吃撲克牌)
Thankfully, I bought this deck of Taiwanese food-themed playing cards from Miin Gift to get me through such trying times. The cards feature 52 photos of some of Taiwan's most famous xiǎo chī (小吃), snack-sized dishes including noodles, dumplings, soups, desserts, and more. Many of these dishes originally come from China, while some are distinctly Taiwanese and combine a variety of influences. If you don't know anything about Taiwanese food, the deck is a nice intro to some of Taiwan's most popular foods with the added bonus of being a deck of cards (or it's a deck of cards that happens to be covered in photos of food—either way, it's awesome). If you're already familiar with Taiwanese food, you might feel compelled to do what I do and flip through the deck when you're feeling nostalgic or hungry. Suddenly the warm memories of Taipei come flooding back, like eating tiers of soup dumplings with my friends at Golden Chicken Garden. Or chugging a tall cup of iced milk tea on a broiling summer day to replenish my continuously sweat-weeping body. Or passing through a stagnant fart-cloud of stinky tofu while walking through a night market. Cherished memories, every one.
