Keep your pants on

ALRIGHT. I am making my shameful return to blogging after a flagrant mis-management of posts. I am a little lacing in the photo department right now. On a related note... am I the only one who is a little repetitive when it comes to meals? After I photographed my most common meals (see blog posts 1-10), I started to realize that is about all I eat. Of course, I do buy the occasional ice-cream sandwich from 7-11, but nothing to write home about. So I have taken to photographing food where ever I go. It may be true that I did not eat that food at that moment, but it is likely that I have eaten it in the past, so I figure it still counts.

Sometimes Marc and I go to Chinatown. It's a little far away, and a pain to get to, so we pretty much only go when I want to shop. There are vendors that sell tons of things, and there is also a lot of food.

This is a snapshot of the huge bags of dried fruit that one woman was selling. It looks like we have strips of ginger, plums, apricots, a few kinds of grapes (now raisins, heh), and at the bottom something that looks likes black eggs. Not entirely impossible in Chinatown, but unlikely.

Pheuak Kaeng Buat

This is a Thai dessert that I try to have whenever I come across it. Problem is that I don't come across it as often as I'd like. I sometimes see a woman selling what I think might be this, but her cart has all sorts of jars and boxes of lots of kinds of ingredients, which just reminds me how poorly I speak Thai. Even of the words that I do know and are able to recognize, my pronunciation of said words render them practically useless.

So you probably want to know what the icky-looking black stuff is. It's taro. Most everyone has heard of it, yet few people have eaten it. I know I personally avoided the stuff as long as I could. BUT, like most things, when you drench it in naturally sweet coconut milk and pop it in the microwave, it tastes pretty damn nice. The photo above (the only photo I have ever used in this blog that was not actually taken by me because my one photo of this food turned out all yellowy and bad, beyond photoshop bad), it shows the taro in huge pieces, which looks nice in a picture, but I think it is usually served in little chunks.

Veg

While working on our Burmese visas (a process that took Marc and me to the embassy more times than I like to think about), we ate a few times at the absolute best Indian place in the city. I have been to Hamali Cha Cha, and the Indian street food by Chinatown, yes yes. I've even had some of the crap they call Indian near Nana, but this is the real deal.

Every dish is perfection. This one had a dal, which is always wonderful, and a few more that are consistently great as well. The bread is always piping hot and the rice is always fresh. Marc can even get his tea there, but I'll have a Coke, thank you.

My sandwich was one of their sweet specials. Every day it's different, and it's always the cheapest thing on the menu. This one was kind of like a spicy savory sandwich, plus cucumbers. I know, sounds weird, but tastes spectacular.

The last thing about this place, all vegetarian. Fills you up but won't slow you down. I don't remember what that's from, but it seems pretty appropriate here.

The Bad Stuff

So I have done some posts about street food in Thailand, and other places. I love eating food made and sold on the street, because it is often times very telling of a culture, it's cheap, and it's usually super yummy.

HOWEVER... I want to make it quite clear that not all street food is created equal. Both my poor husband and I have ended up pretty sick from intestinal infections due to eating the nasty stuff. In 2 years living in Bangkok, and about another 6 months total traveling around the region, we have each gotten sick only once, and Marc's was bad enough to stick him in the hospital for a day.

It is important to look at the things you are going to be putting inside your body (nah,... really?!).
Avoid places that look like they don't clean the dishes, look like the food has been there for 5 days, or just general uncleanliness.

These places that serve food (if you can believe it) are located at the end of my street. It makes me feel lucky to know that I can afford to not eat here.

Sweet Meats

A lot of Thai street food, in addition to being deserts, is snacks. A favorite is simply grilled sweet meats; chicken, beef and pork. Here I'm pretty sure we're looking at chicken, though pork is deceptive and often shows up when you predict chicken. Often, the vendor likes to snaz it up by adding some chilies, pineapple or cherry tomatoes. Some people just eat them alone, or you can get a little bag of sticky rice to go with.

Thai Sweets

So I kind of had this thing going on where, it had been so long since I posted anything, so I didn't want to post again until it was like something really great. To be honest, I don't really have any magnificent wonderment stored up. Then I realized that I'd have to just put one foot in front of the other and get posting again.

Above you can see one of my favorite snacks. I wish I knew the name in Thai, but I don't. Inside, it is sticky rice and coconut milk. A lot of Thai sweets are made of these basic 2 ingredients. Some add things, some do not.

For this one, there is usually either a strip of banana or a few taro beans. I like it both ways. It's just wrapped in some kind of leaf so it doesn't burn, and slow roasted.

When you peel the leaf off, its actually quite slick from the oils in the sticky rice. That also ensures that the inside doesn't stick to the wrapper. One of these little puppies sets you back about $.15.

Street food

If you're in a hurry and don't want to make for a street vendor to make soup, or salad, or some kind of meat dish, most places sell what I call "tub food", not to be confused with tubgirl, of course.
Tub food is basically made in bulk, and presented in rectangular tin tubs. There is no 'list of ingredients' on these tubs, naturally, but if you look closely you can usually figure out the 3 important aspects of it:
Q: What kind of meat is it? A: Fish, chicken, pork, beef, squid
Q: Is it full of bones A: Likely
Q: Is the acid from the chilies going to disintegrate my tongue? A: Let's hope not.The one I picked out today was a pretty good choice. It is fish balls, which is better than whole fish, because I don't think anyone cleans the fish before chopping it into chunks and throwing it in. Fish balls are just ground fish meat, rolled together. Here I could actually see palm prints in them from where someone smashed them in their hands before cooking. Yummy. In this one there are also mini eggplants, which I have really grown to like.

Another street food you can try, if you're not as brave as me, is just having a nice refreshing bottle of orange juice or a fresh coconut. If you can wake the guy up, that is

Sorry for the skipping out on this info. This is the honey grilled chicken from Cabbages and Condoms on Soi 12. The money from the restaurant goes to HIV/AIDS prevention and education. When my parents come in November, this is one place that we will be sure to hit.
Our food is guaranteed not to cause pregnancy.