We had the good fortune of an invite to a Moon Festival tradition that's specific to Taiwan: a family/friend BBQ.Ryley's Chinese tutor, Teacher Sandra (in the Zebra shirt), invited us to join her family on Saturday evening for a BBQ at their home. Her parents own a small home-improvement shop on the ground level of their home and they have a large garage that was perfect for keeping everyone sheltered from the supposed Typhoon rains that never came (school and work were even officially called off on Saturday).
It was so interesting to see how barbequing is done Taiwanese style:
The grills are little and people sit around them and put their own skewers on the rack over the coals. The entire evening centers around grilling your food, skewer by skewer. The guy in the red shirt is a family friend who Sandra said, with a smile, that they always invite because he's a butcher and brings great meat :) We brought some marinated salmon to share--not exactly skewer-friendly, but they made a foil bed for it to cook on and it worked just fine. We also were so proud of ourselves for bringing a box of moon cakes (pineapples cakes, in this case) and successfully navigated the cultural dance of refusal and acceptance of a gift. Yay for us!
On the plate Sandra is holding, there is a bowl full of clams and mushrooms that were grilled in a little aluminum pan as well as some roasted bamboo that was grilled with its natural "skewer" and which you just peel the outer husk off to eat--loved it!
Here are Ben and Ryley loading up their skewers with sausages and fish balls. We loaded up a few skewers on our own at the beginning, but Sandra's hospitable mother soon took over, constantly bringing us new things to eat. It was hard to say no to anything, but hard to eat it all at the same time. I had to do one discrete spit-into-a-napkin-and-throw-away move, but that was all.
My plate was always about this full. It made it for a tough balancing act as kids would drop off their glasses for me to hold too. See the cute shrimp? We are getting good at beheading them.
Teacher Sandra has an amazingly big family: an older brother, Edward--who is an engineer and who Ben enjoyed talking with, she's #2, then her sister who had to work and couldn't come, then twin sisters. All the unmarried children, including Sandra, still live at home along with the grandparents.
Here is Theo still strapped in, allowing everyone to eat in peace for the first part of the evening. When his "all done" squawks could no longer be ignored, we entered a new phase of the evening called "follow Theo's every move to make sure he doesn't die running into the street, grilling his hand, ingesting rocks or other garage items, or fall from the scooter he insisted on climbing." It was tiring.
Theo did have the company of 2 other toddlers: Edward's son and Sandra's sister's son/daughter. Not sure on that one. These children were infinitely more subdued in their 2-year-old adventures. It was a comfort to have them there, however, because everyone seemed pretty relaxed with Theo's antics and attentive to his needed blockades at any given moment. This little guy, named Xiao Le, showed Theo a fun chair stacking game...Theo joined in for a few moments, then moved on to more interesting and destructive pursuits. Sighh.
Theo's affectionate hugs for this little one were not particularly warmly received. But it sure made the adults laugh :)
Here is Sandra's hospitable mother who we couldn't talk with at all with but who was so sweet and even sent us home with a couple 3-ft-long squashes!
And finally...we can't forget the popular roasted squid. We were so full at this point that Julien was the only one to take a bite and the rest got sent home with us in a doggy bag :)
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