Yum!

Rather than regaling you with another tale of a fine Asian dining experience, today I will show you what a great ambassador I am for Western cuisine. This picture was taken at a cook out that John and I threw last month. We (mostly John) bought a slab of pork, marinated it, and made many, many kabobs using an assortment of veggies. Granted, the Taiwanese style of grilling out one ups the American tradition in terms of sheer volume consumed - these things are basically 2 to 3 hours of straight eating. They also have us beat in the fuel dept: all Taiwanese use the Webber style grill and they ONLY use "natural" charcoal. You cannot buy briquettes in Taiwan.

However, I believe American style grilling wins by virtue of the simple fact that we grill more than just meat. In Taiwan, grilling out is very popular, but the whole experience is just eating one kind of meat after another. Our party was good fun, and Jake got everyone to play a very fun Panamanian game in which two people race lemons across the ground using a second lemon that hangs from your belt inside a stocking.

So besides showing our Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese friends what American grilling (well, American with middle eastern influence I guess) is all about, we had fun identifying what type of food my burned toast qualified as. My Korean friend Kuai Fan saw me take it off the grill and asked me if this was "American style toast". So now we have the ongoing joke of MeiGuoTooSuh ie: American Toast. Yum!