Itinerary: Be a home body. Research the organic food/grocery store environment.
I guess I didn’t realize just how tired I’ve been from all the running around we’ve been doing. With Fleur gone, I have no energy to move. The kids woke up at 9 and 10am respectively this morning. It threw our whole routine off and we ended up staying home all day.
The kids spent the day studying and I spent the day researching, shopping, and napping.
My conclusion, after jumping around websites is that, if you want real organic food, you pay US prices. For example, many of the eggs say they’re pastured or humane. But they may be using GMO feed. Many of the vegetables will say it’s 無毒. But this is not the same as organic or almost organic.
The 主婦聯盟 co-op will say that the organic label doesn’t mean as much here. It’s the individual farmers. There are so many little farmers here and so much individual advertising. But for a consumer it is time consuming to research each brand so having that label still helps.
Another thing I learned is that people add beta carotene in chicken feed to get that lovely reddish color you tend to see in organic egg yolk.
So yeah, if you want 無毒 food or organic food, (who wants poisonous food anyway? I don’t get that label), you can go to Santa Cruz, Orange Market, Yogi House, or Cotton Field Health Store 棉花田. Many of these sell processed food and not many actual fresh fruit or vegetable.
More than anything, grocery shopping seems daunting right now with homeschooling added in, no car, and living in the mountains. So I’m just trying to find a place where I can order online and get delivery. But with so many recent typhoons, a lot of the crops were damaged.
For all I know, we may just end up going to RT Mart every week. It’s got everything and the guava I got there was so delicious! Speaking of RT Mart, my landlord says it’s like Carrefour, but everything is just a little bit cheaper.
So a summary of how things have been now that we’ve been here a week?
We’ve been running around hard for a month in Japan and Korea, it’s nice not moving every few days. A few days ago, when I went shopping with Fleur and walked around the 師大 area, I realized that is the Taipei I was missing and familiar with; the crowd, stores after stores of food, all within walking distance.
Technically, we’re only a bus ride away and it’s probably faster than walking, but psychologically it’s far. On the other hand, we have an amazing view of the city and actually see greenery. That was the one thing I missed after 3 months here the last time. Our apartment is huge and bigger than my house in the U.S. So it’s a good place to stay at, a bit of home in a foreign country.
I also realized, walking through 大安 district, that as much as I love the idea of traveling and discovering new places, I’m also very much a creature of habit. Right now, we’ve got our home routine settled after a week of shopping and some must do’s and eats checked out (night market, amusement park, etc). After I find that 1-2 favorite neighborhood restaurants and where to buy things we need, and sign the kids up for some classes and playdates, I think I will finally start feeling like 新店 is our temporary home.
