Lunchbox Special

I know....it looks innocent from the outside. It even looks like it might be good, a tasty little snack for our six hour train ride that we were culinarily unprepared for. Soo...we fell for it, hunger won out over common sense. We got on the train to go back home at 10:30 and didn't grab lunch before we got on. All we had was a snack-size package of Oreos and the crumbs from the bottom of the Doritos bag from the trip up...oh...and two caramel apples we bought from some ladies at a street stand in the night market the night before. Not exactly lunch fare. That and we'd all had so much junk that day and the night before that no one even wanted the rest of the Oreos. (Okay, so Brian ate them all....that's why we couldn't include them in the menu.) Anyway, we saw the lunch cart coming toward us...and all of the Taiwanese passengers seemed to be pretty excited about it...and our only prospect of eating was another five hours away...so we decided to get some authentic Taiwanese train lunchbox. You know, there is something here that we're starting to learn. Everything...and I do mean everything...is like playing the Taiwanese lottery. Sometimes you get lucky....and other times you don't.

Let's just say that Madison and I decided that this time we didn't get lucky. What you are seeing here even still doesn't look that bad I guess, let me explain. That is a deep fat fried pork chop covered in....uh...something, a chunk of deep fat fried fish....skin, bones and all, and a hunk of mystery tofu....mmmmmmmm, along with delicious (used loosely) steamed(?) spinach(?), a hunk of yellow....uh...vegetable(?), all on a bed of white rice. The rice that wasn't under the mystery tofu or whole fish was pretty good. Brian ate the pork chop...Madi had one or two bites of rice before she made a gagging face and refused to eat anything else we offered her....well, except for the previously offered and refused Oreos...which for some reason, now seemed pretty good to her. Yummmmmmyyyyy!