Amelia Freidline, Copy Editor And now, a word from your foreign correspondent.
I recently spent five days visiting friends in Taichung, Taiwan, in the west-central part of the island.
It was my first trip to Asia, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, other than some unusual sights, sounds and smells, not to mention tastes.
During the weeks leading up to my departure, my friend Kim would text me from Taiwan mentioning some new discovery she wanted to show me when I arrived.
“I can’t wait to show you the markets!” she said once. One great aspect of the fresh produce industry is it gives you something to investigate wherever you go, whether you’re in the Far East or the Black Hills of South Dakota.
But back to Taiwan.
My first Asian produce adventure occurred at a birthday party for my friends’ 2-year-old son, where a plate of fresh fruit included slices of something bright pink that turned out to guava.
Aside from not knowing whether I was supposed to eat the seeds or pull them out, my introduction to the fruit was a good one — nothing too alarming or unusual there, I thought.
Familiar tastes quickly went by the wayside as I tried everything from sea vegetable salad to seaweed sandwich wraps.
Amelia FreidlineVegetable stalls at a Taiwanese dusk market sold items such as turnips, carrots, corn, cauliflower, cabbage, two-foot-long green beans, Asian eggplant and a variety of Asian melons. Taiwanese tend to eat their vegetables cooked rather than fresh, my friends said, so, aside from some lettuce with my seaweed and cabbage salad with Japanese fried chicken, most of the vegetables I had — carrots, corn, baby bok choy — were steamed, sauteed or pickled.
I did, however, see a McDonald’s advertisement for a Mexican-inspired chicken sandwich featuring fresh jalapeños.
Talk about cross-cultural exchange.
Fruit, on the other hand, is eaten fresh in abundance and often as dessert instead of pastries or baked goods.
One afternoon we went to a “dusk market,” where people stop by on their way home from work to pick up produce, meat and whatever else they might need for dinner.
As we rubbed elbows with the other shoppers and dodged out of the path of countless motor scooters, I was amazed to see persimmons almost the size of grapefruit alongside apples, pomegranates, asian pears and grapes bigger than any I remembered seeing in American grocery stores.
Humorously enough, though, the pomegranates and grapes were from the U.S., and the kiwifruit also on display sported Zespri stickers.
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