Daxi Self-Cooking Bus: Pairing Local Ingredients to Create Delicious Dishes

"Boss, do you sell spring roll wrappers at the market?" This was not a scene of a mother shopping at the vegetable market, but of the "Self-Cooking Bus," made up of teachers and students from Food and Farming Education, arriving at Daxi's century-old Central Market in search of the ingredients they had in mind.

"Food and Farming Education" is a teaching team formed by faculty from the College of Liberal Arts, College of Social Sciences, College of Science, College of Engineering, and College of Bioresources and Agriculture at National Taiwan University. Through interdisciplinary courses in urban and rural settings, they hope to re-examine the value of agriculture from the perspective of the humanities and social sciences, and to rethink the relationships between humans and nature, humans and food, and humans and society.

The "Self-Cooking Bus" is a workshop held by Food and Farming Education for the second year, hoping to bring students to Daxi in Taoyuan to learn about local culture and local agricultural produce, and to further reflect on issues such as the food journey from farm to table and food autonomy. In addition to students enrolled in the course, faculty and students interested in the activity were also allowed to sign up.

After the meal, students evaluated one another and the teachers conducted a professional review. The spring rolls from East Group A and the fennel dumplings from West Group A won the Popularity Award, while the final Judges' Award went to the Southern Army for its chive pork rolls and tomato stuffed with sweet potato mash. The winners received a bottle of millet wine from the Sa'owac tribe.

(The original article was published in Food-Nourishing City ∙ Humanities and Farming Education, and the original authors are Xie Xuan and Yang Yatang.)