I chuckle when I talk to my friend Amy who is spending the semester in Thailand. She told me once that she - the one who likes trying new foods and adventure - often finds herself opting for "the usual" when eating out. She actually has something that can be considered "the usual," something not usual for her.
I thought about this, and I thought it really makes sense. When there is so much outside of your control, it is nice to have something that is regular, something that you can control or at least know what to expect.
I find myself doing this with dumplings here in Taiwan. A bag of frozen dumplings from the grocery store is easy to prepare and it's filling. At restaurants where the menu is a list of bewildering and mysterious characters, it is nice to know where I can find a bowl of cheap but filling dumplings or wanton soup.
The other day I found a new restaurant and decided to try it out. They advertised beef noodle soup, a favorite food in Taiwanese restaurants. I decided to break out of my norm and order a bowl of the said soup. On the menu I recognized Beef Soup accompanied with other characters that I didn't bother observing or trying to understand. When the bowl came, to my surprise, it was full of beef broth with pork dumplings. They were tasty, but I was still eating dumplings
Today I went to the main station for buses, subways, trains, and the High Speed Rail. Inside there is a plethora of restaurants with incredible variety of choices. Here I intended to buy myself lunch. After buying a small dessert I walked around, decided there were simply too many choices, and returned home to cook for myself here.
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