More food...and Art

On Friday, we decided it was time to stray from Taiwanese food and find something a bit different. Not having had Indian food for months now, we figured that would be a good choice. Our dinner journey landed us at Mayur Indian Kitchen in the Xinyi district. It was a small place with nan hanging in the window and a few tables on the sidewalk in front. All of the customers at the time were Indian, so we knew instantly that we had made a good choice, or at least hoped so. Our order, consisting of samosas, dal, and chicken tandoori masala, was very satisfying- success!

Photos courtesy of Mayur Indian Kitchen's facebook. (We were too busy stuffing our faces to get any)

For desert, we headed back to the Eslite mall near the City Hall MRT station to grab a crepe. Travis got red bean and vanilla gelato, and I had banana and vanilla gelato. This was the first time either of us had had a crepe, so we are no experts in the area. However, the crepe was delicate, and the ice cream delicious.

banana crepe

red bean crepe

This weekend, we ran out of fruit for our oatmeal. So, we headed to the market and found one of the biggest mangoes yet. This thing was huge, and of course, juicy and delicious.

We have been making milk tea to put in our oatmeal. Yes, I know- strange. However, we have a constant supple of green tea and accidently purchased powdered milk mistaking it as smoothie powder. Powdered milk is very popular here and takes up several isles at the grocery store. Unlike in the US, there are many choices; whole, skim, milk with added nutrients, etc. Since there aren't many cow farms here, powdered milk is a common substitute for fresh. Otherwise, milk and beef products are shipped in from Australia and  New Zealand. Another common milk product is flavored milk. So far, we've seen malt, chocolate, apple, papaya, watermelon, strawberry, mixed fruit, and taro. One morning, we were out of tea so I stepped next door, to Family Mart, and got some apple milk. It was delicious. At this point in time, we hadn't discovered taro milk. Because the apple milk and oatmeal went over so well, we decided to get some more. Upon browsing the shelves we noticed this:

This taro milk tastes just like a pearl milk tea drink and was even better than the apple flavor. Too bad they don't have this stuff back home!

We also picked up some taro tofu pudding, a special treat from Singapore. Also even better when eaten with taro milk.

Saturday, we went to the Taipei Museum of Modern Art. The first exhibit was very interesting; a collection of technology that had recently won awards in Taiwan for their innovative qualities. Unfortunately, the museum did not allow photographs. They did, however, allow guests to touch the items in the exhibit. There was also a projected screen which was controlled by moving one's hand a few inches from the surface of the projected image. Pretty cool! On display, they had a voice controlled robot monkey, new phones and laptops, the smallest electronics fans I have ever seen, a remote controlled submarine with a camera on front, folding bicycles, and sound equipment. The rest of the museum had modern art from Asia and an Exhibit titled "Destroy Design" which was a European collection of various "art" pieces from the sixties.

prettiest taro cakes we've seen so far! Also the most expensive...