I Found My Heaven In Taipei

So far everybody who met my daughter always amaze at how sweet she is. Never cries, at the most just whimper. She can play alone for a long time and then fell asleep on her own. She always so happy when I gave her a bath and drinking milk is never a problem. My mother in law is also one of the person who is so amaze at how easy it is for her to care for her newest grand daughter. So naturally she wants to show of La La to her family and today she wants to take all of us to her oldest sister's home in new downtown Taipei where the tallest building located, the Taipei 101. Around that area is completely surrounded with malls. Even Mitsukoshi has 4 malls next to each other. Warner Bros has one building too. There is also the famous all you can eat Jagoya restaurant is there. Then today I saw the all you can eat Thai restaurant but we did not go there today. But first before we went to that area, we stopped at Richard's aunt's home then dropped off my mother in law, Kai Kai, Rong-Rong ( Richard's niece ), then La La too who fell asleep within minutes she was there and did not wake up until we have to carry her back to the car to go home which makes the aunt's family loves her dearly for being such a sweet child. She slept at the aunt's room alone while Kai Kai plays with his cousins noisily outside the room. The aunt also likes Kai Kai who behaved very well ( because I already warned him to behave! ).

The aunt also gave me her home-made fermented black bean for cooking in a big plastic jar. I wish she can teach him how to make it so I don't have to buy fermented black bean anymore since the home-made one taste way more superior than the store-bought one. But, not too worry, someday she will teach me when she has all the ingredients first. There are so many skills that I can learn from my mother in law family or friends. They made everything by themselves, even sesame oil. I got one bottle before through my mother in law and I love it! It is so fragrant! More than even the most expensive Japanese sesame oil that I can buy in Vancouver.

Anyway...

Richard and me walked a couple blocks from the aunt's home to a new Eslite bookstore building.





This book store is not only selling book, it also sells expensive clothing, toys, home furnishing, make ups, all you can eat Thai restaurant that I mention previously, an amazing food court and then it also has many ( to my delight! ) specialty food stores.


Pic: Moving shoes racks in Eslite Bookstore.

I found French maccaroon cookies and I bought a box of them with several different flavors. They looks so beautiful! Glistening like jewel on the surface! Then I bought this sweet Japanese rice crackers that has gold coloring on it! I wish I can try everything because they all looks too pretty to eat actually! Too bad that I am not allowed to take pictures while in there!!! To make it even worse, my camera ( Nikon D70 ) is way too conspicuous too hide.


Pic: Beard Papa's Cream Puff and the Japanese rice crackers


Pic: Before and after further tasting research.


Pic: The pink one is strawberry with black pepper ( tasty! ) and the white one is white chocolate.

But... I manage to take a couple of picture on the most important part of all. I found their cooking book area !!! When I saw that room, I am in HEAVEN !!!

They have so many selection of cooking book in any type of cuisine. This time I concentrate more on Asian cooking book that is more like an encyclopedia. Not easy to find one like that. For example I bought a book about Asian style bakery and I found one that has so many different type of common Asian bread/cookies/cakes/pastry. Even thought the book is in Chinese, I still buy it because I think it is important. Plus this book has all the step-by step pictures for every recipe. It will be Richard's job to translate it for me in the future.

I bought about 10 books today not because I try to keep it into minimum, but because I already own so many books that it's getting harder and harder to find a book that has different recipes in it.

I told Richard to go ahead just leave me there for an hour so I can browse the books alone. When he return an hour later, I only go through about 30% of the books there even though I already skim the books that interest me only! It's just too many books!

So Richard left me again for about half an hour. Then when he return I still only manage to finish 50% of the books there. I think I really need to go back there again!

This are the pictures of the cooking book area:



Pic : The table in the middle of room is where they have a weekly cooking show every Saturday and Sunday. How cool is that?





We also ate at the cafe next to that recipe book area. for 500NT, or maybe around US$15, this is what I get:

Salami and assorted meat platter
Pumpkin soup
Choices of: Spaghetti bolognese, spaghetti with creamy wild mushroom ( my choice) or Linguine with green pesto and baked clams ( Richard's choice )
Eslite cheesecake and chocolate cookie called Biscutti
Choices of hediard tea or lavazza coffee. I chose coffee mocha. While Richard chose the 4 fruits tea instead of coffee like me.

Even though the food is pretty good but we wish we ate in the food court area instead after we saw how much more fun it was to eat in the food court! Well... Richard promise me that there will be a next time!






I also saw a very nice bakery. They sells a lot of Taiwanese style bread but with a twist. Not only they taste a lot better than the normal bakery, they are so huge! Then they like to play with color too, I saw a black ciabatta made with bamboo ashes! then black baguette made with squid ink! Since they offered taster on almost all of the bread, I took the advantage by sampeling all of them. Interesting enough I couldn't taste any different between normal ciabatta/baguette with the black one that they sold. I love their milk bread because they are so tender. Since I can sample a lot of their bread, I decide not to buy them yet, instead I bought 2 boxes of Beard Papa's Cream Puffs

Now, let me show you what I bought from Elite bookstore, here are they, my new darlings ...



NOTE: for information on what to do in Taipei, you can visit this SITE

For photos of Eslite Bookstore, you can visit this flicker site.