night market!

[jinian]

After a hard day zoning out as I worked on my poster at the lab, I called marzipan_pig and hattifattener to see if they wanted to go the UW Taiwanese Student Association's Night Market with me. The fine signs saying things like FOOD and EAT around the campus for the last week had done their work, especially after oyceter said she was sorry she'd missed her local one. I hadn't actually reached Wim, so I was happy to see him show up while Mme. Marzipan and I were eating our first round of treats: pork shu mai for me, sesame balls and sweet grass jelly drink (!) for her. The signs were accurate; pretty much all you could buy was food, and that by way of tickets sold in the student union building, though there were a couple of games to play and free live music. I wound up eating: crispy chicken flavored with ginger and maybe cilantro, apple cider pop, and herb tea eggs, plus some of Wim's sarsparilla pop and seaweed-like noodles, then another sesame ball for the road. The lines were prohibitive by about 6:30, so we gave up partway through standing in one of them and expended all our tickets when we got to the front in the interests of not having to do that again.

I imagine proper night markets as having more vendors and a wider variety of things to buy, but as a little student festival this was pretty fun and no doubt helpful to my efforts at developing a racial identity (big hulking white chick). And tasty! I just wish I'd been able to try all the different foods.

Comments

[hattifattener]

Also: What kind of audience is even harder to get worked up than a bunch of Seattlites? A bunch of Asian Seattlites, apparently.

[oyceter]

Ohhhh, so hungry now! Grass jelly! The iced kind is tasty, but it's even better when hot, because then it sort of melts and they put in sweet beans and chewy pearls.

Wah, miss Taiwan now.

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

What IS it? We couldn't really figure it out. I thought it tasted like how grass would taste if I were a cow, like, it was delicate and sweet and good and I enjoyed it. I couldn't really tell what it was made out of though. Thanks for encouraging missy Kylee to go so that I got to go with her!

[oyceter]

Um. I'm not sure what it is exactly, but it's a type of gelatin made from some herb thing (ergo the grassiness). I am guessing that because it is May, you guys had the kind where they chopped the jelly into teeny cubes and put it in some juice/liquid also flavored with the herb. Or maybe it's what's leftover after they make it, or something.

The hot kind (which I adore) is made entirely from the jelly, but it's hot, so it melts and is liquidy. Except it gets more and more solid the more it cools, so there's this great stage where it's juuuuust starting to coalesce and you can slurp at it. And people usually put sweet beans and chewy pearls and chewy other things inside, and you sprinkle peanuts on top, and it is toasty hot and awesome.

Also, the best part is, grass jelly is supposed to be Good for You somehow as well!