What is that smell?

Okay, so in my last posting I was boasting about all of the amazing tofu products that one can find in Taiwan, I had not yet come across one preparation that maybe a little less than amazing. We were eating in a pretty upscale Chinese restaurant, enjoying our after church Sunday lunch, when all of a sudden we smelled poop! Avery's and my first thought was that Ayo, our four year old, had had an accident, so I found myself pulling at the back of her pants trying to find the offending source. Despite Ayo's protestations, "I didn't do it, I didn't do it," the smell was so like horse manure, we were convinced that such an accident had surely happened. When no accident could be found, and Ayo was now indignantly glaring at us both, Avery and I concluded that someone must have stepped in dog excrement and tracked it into the restaurant. We called over a waitress so that we could inform her of our conclusion, hoping that she would come up with a socially acceptable way to find the offending pair of shoes and remedy the situation. You can imagine our surprise when she simply began to laugh out load and point to the food on the table next to us, as we expressed our concern/distress at the ever growing stench. "Stinky tofu, stinky tofu" she exclaimed, thus identifying the source of the smell. There at the table next to us was a very normal appearing family of four digging into a plate of tofu cubes. Our first encounter with the highly recommended Taiwanese delicacy "stenching tofu", also known as stinky tofu, proved to be such an assault to our olfactory senses that none of us could ever imagine even sampling it. We'll let you know if that changes as many of our Taiwanese friends insist that it is a gastronomical delight not to be missed.