Ever since Ko Yu-fen (柯裕棻) began her serialized column “Good Weather” in Fountain (新活水), the magazine edited by Huang Li-chun (黃麗群), I’ve been keeping up with it like a little fangirl. Ah, two writers I love happen to be good friends, and on top of that there’s this fascinating editor/writer relationship between them. So good, so very good!
I’d been busy lately and hadn’t opened Fountain’s site in a while. Just now, I cheerfully clicked into the newest piece, “Clear Skies, Day After Day”, and found her listing off these foods:
Curry made with local spices, served over Chihshang rice. A whole baked zucchini with a seafood chowder. Freshly fried mahi-mahi delivered straight from Hsinkang. Fresh-pressed sugarcane green tea. Freshly brewed red oolong bubble tea. Handmade tofu skin. Milk bread made with milk delivered straight from Chulu Ranch.
H… help, I’m starving. And there’s another food attack waiting further down:
Hair still dripping wet, straight out of the pool and onto the scooter, circling the downtown in search of scallion pancakes and a fried chicken place.
Okay, I can’t take it anymore. I’m so hungry. Time to go cook a midnight snack!
As it happened, there were some rice cakes in the fridge that I’d bought a while back. I cut them into pieces, turned on the stove, and was about to pan-fry them when Sam said, “Why not use the air fryer?” That sounded like a brilliant idea. The air fryer makes so many foods taste great, so surely rice cakes would be no exception?
Well. Even though the temperature wasn’t high and the time wasn’t long, the rice cakes came out of the fryer dry and hard. Boo hoo, so strange. Everyone else’s rice cakes can be air-fried, and just these ones can’t? So Sam, with a repentant expression, searched and found a fancy Japanese mochi that costs twice as much as the ones we had, and I furiously placed the order. It’s definitely the rice cakes’ fault, not any person’s fault (ahem, the secret to a long marriage).
Conclusion: don’t read food writing before bed, and certainly not this piece by Ko Yu-fen.
NB: This article was first published in Chinese on 08/30/26. It was later translated with assistance from AI tools, edited by me, and published in English on 09/09/26.