Not so bad after all…

I know a lot of people love going to Taiwan and they praise the street food to the skies and of course, the bubble tea and dessert joints right here in our own country are always packed to the brim. Even in this little town,  there are so many of them around – it has slowed down a bit by now but at one time, you would see them popping up all over like mushrooms after the rain. I am not sure whether those are franchises originating from that island republic or some enterprising local people jumping on the band wagon and setting up their own along those same lines to cash in on the craze.

This…

…at the mega mall where we had the gelato that day is one of them and obviously, it is doing pretty well as it has been around for many years now, probably two or three, at least – as long as the mall has been opened for business.

I have never stepped into the place myself though and I am not even sure if it is one and the same or two separate entities. My girl went once and had the chicken chop from the stall on the left and she was not exactly thrilled by it so after that, she was not all that keen on dropping by there again. That afternoon, however, I insisted on taking a look at the fried stuff stall on the right – the “I Love Yoo!!!” to see what they had.

They had just finished frying the ham chim peng (Chinese five-spice doughnut) and were placing them in the glass case beside the yew tiao or yew cha koi (crullers) and whatever that was in between…

We were not interested in those though but the balls caught our eyes…

…and we decided to buy both flavours to try – sweet potato and yam.

I remember I had something like these when I visited the Cameron Highlands a long time ago and I enjoyed them very much…and if I am not wrong, they make those using sweet potatoes. These, however, were different – it looked like they used mostly sweet potatoes (or yam)…

…and very little flour unlike the Malay counterpart and I must say they were very very nice – not cheap, 5 for over RM3.00…but nice! I certainly wouldn’t mind buying more of those to eat should I happen to drop by the mall again but then again, when the time comes, I may decide to try some of the other things they are selling there instead. I wonder if their curry puffs are any better than the others that I had had…and whether their butterfly bun is anything like our ma ngee or horse’s ears. I think I would want to check those out as well and maybe, some of the rest too.

Incidentally, moving away from the post proper, I am sure everybody knows what this plant…

…is called – the mother-in-law’s tongue! That’s not very flattering, I would say and thankfully, my mother-in-law is very nice and not at all as sharp-tongued, not at all. Anyway, I saw my neighbour planting a few pots of this and I was wondering if he was doing that to keep away the many stray cats in our neighbourhood. They leave their fur, their paw marks, urine, claw scratches on our cars…and the worst thing is that ever so often, I would find headless bodies of rats or birds in my garden – they are deadly predators, those felines! I googled and found out that this plant is, in fact, poisonous to dogs and cats so if you have these in our house as pets, you should make sure you do not plant any of this or if you already have any, perhaps you should get rid of them or give them away. Anybody wants to give me theirs?

P.S.:
Somebody just commented – unfortunately, I have no way of verifying the identity – no blog, no website, no Facebook account so I am afraid I am reluctant to let the comment go through moderation. Anyway, he said, “Cekodok is actually banana. Its [SIC] like deep fried banana bread, not sweet potatoes,” and indeed, when I googled, that is very true – I got all the banana balls. My apologies – that was what my friends over there told me those sweet potato balls were called – we did not have such things here so I did not have the slightest clue what the name was. I have already amended that in the above post nonetheless, even though this cooking blog has it down as “cekodok ubi”. Thank you, whoever you are, for the correction.