Strawberries and bananas

I've been seriously craving some homemade sweet treats. Here are a couple that, if I were a baker or other kind of dessert-maker, I would have already jumped on making:

Strawberry Shortcake, via Homerunballerina

Magnolia's recipe for Banana Pudding, via Cupcakes and Cashmere

Delicious food

"i love having delicious food within 50 feet at all times. i love taiwan."

A friend of mine posted this as his Facebook status today. He must be in Taiwan! Anyway, it happens to be pertinent to my post today, which is about... food! I had some exposure to Taiwanese food growing up with a best friend with a Taiwanese mom who happens to be an awesome cook, and I love it. We spent quite a bit of time hunting out the best/most popular restaurants and had a lot of fun doing it! This topic will probably span a couple of posts.

We ate at a restaurant called Modern Toilet. It's famous mostly for its novelty. The food is served in miniature toilets (both Western-style and squat/Chinese-style) and, yes, poop is pretty central to the theme, too.

This is a picture of the table next to ours.

This is a picture of the bathroom sink. Yes, sink.

Eifeh's food. There was a little poop-shaped lid covering one of her dishes that was removed for the picture. Also, there was a little fire inside the toilet that kept the food warm... and made the soup inside the toilet bubble.

I drank my orange calpis out of a urinal-shaped glass.

Our entrees all came with chocolate ice cream served in a squat toilet-shaped dish.

We ate a famous restaurant called Din Tai Fung. There are three locations in Hong Kong, Taipei, and Los Angeles. There was a pretty sizable crowd waiting outside, but we were told it's pretty much always like that.

Mmm... I love pickled cucumbers in chili oil. Ridiculously good.

Sauteed vegetables.

The regular dumplings they're famous for

Sweet buns filled with sesame. I keep those little dental picks/flossers in my purse for foods like this! Sesame seeds everywhere. But so worth it!

We also had some really awesome, cheap teppanyaki at a place really close to Eifeh's apartment. Can't find it for $3 in the states!

We had some ridiculously awesome Korean hot pot. We kept the spicy side full the whole time. They give you two hours to eat, and we used up every last minute! Amazing, amazing.

Dessert buffet at the hot pot restaurant! Miniature cakes, fresh guava, pineapple, and passion fruit, and MILK PUDDING. Love, love milk pudding. We also had ice cream (not pictured).

Lots of people look down on visiting American chain restaurants in foreign countries, but I go only for any unique desserts they may have. I'd been told that KFC had awesome egg tarts and they were so right. Amazing! Wish they had them here!

McDonald's in different countries/states always have interesting flavors of pies. We had some blueberry pies here that Eifeh and I had a lot when we were in Taiwan before. Also, I think they fry them there, as opposed to baking them. Thailand had pineapple pies. Hawaii had macapuno pies. You get the picture.

We went to eat sushi for Dan's birthday.

Stinky tofu. That's really how it's translated and commonly known in the states. It's fermented and you can smell it from a block away. Matt hated the smell and likened it to a "loaded baby's diaper." Dan responded that it tastes like it smells, but it's one of Eifeh's favorite foods. Definitely not a favorite of mine, though.

Tiger beer is so good! It's a Singaporian beer. We finished a second one after this.

Sashimi! The one on the right was my favorite, but I don't know what it was! Whatever it was: freakishly good. Mmm.

Clams cooked hot-pot style in a garlic soup.

Radish cakes! Yum yum.

I've always really liked Asian style cakes. They're much lighter and fluffier than most cakes we eat in the U.S. This was a white cake with strawberries, pictured with the most useless eating utensil any of us have ever seen.

Dark chocolate, orange, and mint Kit Kats!

France and New Orleans

Aside from my weekend being crammed with tests and studying, it's been a fun week so far! Much more social than any other recent weeks.

On Tuesday, Matt, my friend Melanie, my roommates, Bryan and Ralph, and I went to a little French restaurant downtown. So many good options down there, but I'd never been to this place before.

We had some Lindemans Framboise beer, which is Belgian and raspberry-flavored. I've had the peach before but never the raspberry. It's good, but don't expect it to taste like beer!

Melanie, Matt, and I had never tried escargot before (Ralph and Bryan had), so we decided to order some!

Garlic fries. A m a z i n g .

Melanie with her snail!

I ordered French Onion soup as a starter. Always good. Mmm. I ordered the Linguine Pomadoro for my entree. Later that night, we all went back to the apartment and played board games. Apples to Apples and Outburst. Hilarious.

Wednesday night, Matt and I went to a really popular local New-Orleans-inspired restaurant (an hour long wait for two on a Wednesday after the dinner rush?! Crazy, but worth it). You eat seafood with your hands that you have seasoned and spiced to your liking out of plastic bags on tables covered in wax paper. And you get bibs!

Our crawfish and corn. So much work to get the meat out of crawfish and ridiculously messy, but so yummy!

We also ordered King Crab legs and gumbo, and all of it was amazing. Oh my god, I'm practically drooling thinking about it.