Today is the Dragon Boat Festival. I got up early and went to DaAn Sports Center to exercise for one and a half hours. On my way back to HsinDian, I stopped by the street vendor on JiangGuo Road, and bought three chayotes, one for NT$ 5 dollars. I feel good living in XingDian because of the reasonable price of vegetables and fruits.
At noon, we had zongzi for lunch. I didn't wrap any zongzi, and I don't know how. I had four zongzi as gifts, three from my farmer friend, one from Wheatland Care Center.
For Taiwanese, there is a ongoing battle between “North vs. South zongzi”. As I was brought up in the south, I am used to the southern zongzi wrapped with green bamboo leaves. The rice is raw before the zongzi is boiled in water. It’s stickier and keeps the natural flavors of the fillings. The Northern zongzi uses yellow bamboo shoot shells. The rice is fried first before the zongzi is steamed. It’s more seasoned and chewy.
Both Northern and Southern Taiwanese zongzi are delicious, but I like Chinese HuZhou zongzi better, because my mother used to wrap many of them on the Dragon Boat Festival, salty ones with meat and sweet ones with redbean paste. I also like Vietnamese zongzi wrapped with banana leaves.
After lunch, I took a nap for 45 minutes, then I rode my bike to the Yes Life shopping mall, walked across the street to the Carrefour to buy three bottles of caffè latte for NT$72 dollar, I didn't spend money, because I had more than a thousand points in my carrefour card. I need to use up all the points before it is expired in August.
On my way home, I bought a bag of dried shrimps for NT$100 dollars to cook with three chayotes I bought this morning. That's how my mother used to cook the chayotes. I shall try to make chilled chayote salad and chayote pancake in the future. I once had delicious chayote salad at the famous Ren He Yuan Yunnan Restaurant on ZhongShan North Road in Taipei.
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