Day 3 continued - Foodies before foodies were cool

I am very concerned I am going to come back from Taiwan transformed into a huge porker.  Surprisingly I think the best food is not in the city, but actually in the rural town my dad is from. Even when I was little I heard my relatives and my dad talk about food the way I now hear food critics talk about it.  They are so intense about food, even their breakfast is a full meal with food you usually think about as dinner food, shown in an out-of-focus photo below.

Since my relatives on my dad's side are farmers, breakfast is a very important meal for them, so that probably explains why this breakfast is ridonculous. The white stuff in the middle is one of my favorite dishes and it not available in any form in the US. The dish is shiao bai shuin, or bamboo shoots that have been infiltrated by fungus. It sounds sort of unappetizing, but it is super tender and crispy. Starting from the left, the rest is stewed fish, pan-fried pork loin, a kind of spicy Asian vegetable, and stir-fried noodles.

My relatives in Shetou farm guava, longan (dragon eye), pineapple, and lychee among other fruits, so they are definitely the best at picking delicious fruits. My parents have been telling me about this one fruit called shijia, which translates into Buddha head, since I was small, but I had never had it.  My dad had first introduced it to my mom when they were just leaving for the US, and she has been longing for it ever since.  My dad bought a frozen one in New York City in the 1970s, but he said it just wasn't the same.  The season is a very brief time in late September, so my parents haven't eaten it since they moved to the US.  They were so excited to finally eat it after all these years! My uncles had purposefully saved a bunch of them for us to eat, and we stuffed our mouths with them.

Doesn't the shijia look like this?

The one that does not look like the others is a bala in Taiwanese, or guava. The shijia do sort of look like a Buddha's hair, I think. Apparently in English it is called sugar apple, which we discovered via Google. (Wikipedia says Taiwan has new hybrid varieties, but the picture and the ones we ate are the normal kind). You don't eat the skin, and the meat inside is white with almond-sized black seeds in the middle of each chunk of meat.  It is both mushy and chewy and is extremely sweet with a nice fragrant smell.

In another happy fruit story, when we were leaving the village I walked down the street and ran into my oldest uncle.  He speaks mostly Taiwanese so it's hard for us to communicate, but eventually I figured out he was trying to give me a bunch of longan. It's customary to try to refuse gifts in order not to seem greedy or rude, and I also didn't want a whole ton of longan, so I tried to refuse, but he was very persistent. Eventually I tried to win by running down the street, but my uncle chased me down and now I have about three pounds of longan.