Cook. I can cook. I'm the cookingest damn thing you ever saw.

Today I made hamburgers. the grocery stores rarely have hamburger buns, so we had to make them on dinner rolls, which actually look neater in the photo anyway. Also, lettuce, tomato, and the like are not the freshest in Asia, so we pretty much do without. I was planning on getting some tomatoes, but they were incredibly old looking, and very small. Nice veggies include potatoes, carrots, and zuchini. We cooked them up with some parsley, which added a pretty color more than it really did flavor. Thanks to my wonderful parents graciously sending BBQ sauce with their latest package, we got to enjoy the burgers like we made them on a grill.The following day we got Japanese food from a stand that we eat at a lot. They do a really good, authentic (according to people who have been there, not including me), katsu curry. It is basically a savory curry, usually served with pork. I get mine with chicken, but either way, you bread it up, deep fry it, and stick it with some gooey curry and some fresh Japanese rice. While we're on the subject, Japanese rice is quite different. Think the rice you get with sushi. It's got bigger grains, and it's usually a lot stickier and softer.
Also served with a cabbage salad. It's covered with something like thousand island, which I avoid in general, but sometimes can be good.

Breakfast food

So with all the food around this city, from street vendors, to fast food, to Burger King delivery, you would think that I would never get to cook, but... not true! I happen to make my way to 7-11 at least once a week and pick up some cooking supplies.
We now have a stove-top, which is sweet quite frankly. I am now discovering the wonderful world of things like pancakes, fried eggs, hamburgers, and the occasional piece of toast (no toaster, of course).
Though most of our diet has been switched over to the Asian dishes around us, we still, naturally, like to make some good ol' fatty American food. Today it was scrambled eggs and bacon slapped between a couple of bread slices. Yum.
For dinner we usually try to eat light, especially after a lunch like the above...
So, I had some instant noodles. Nothing to write home about, unless you have a food blog. Mama is the most common brand, and it comes in lots of flavors. Think ramen noodles, on crack. There are about 4 different packets of spice, sauce, crumbs inside the cup. It also includes chili paste.

Japanese-Thai

Oishi is a Thai restaurant and brand name that is everywhere. It is supposed to be Japanese-sounding, and it actually had me fooled for a long time that it was from Japan. So they sell food in 7-11, tea, and have lots of places to eat, like sushi bars and noodle joints. We like to go to Oishi Ramen on the 3rd floor of the mall near our apartment. It's cheap, and we can walk there. What more can you ask for?

So this is the tom yuum noodle soup. It is spicy with egg noodles. Normally, tom yaam doesn't have noodles in it, but I appreciated it. It also has slices of slow-cooked pork, cap mushrooms, and some sprouts. The broth was spicy and sour.

We also like gyoza, a Japanese dumpling with pork. You can pan fry them, but I think these ones were baked. The outside is crispy and a bit chewy, and they drizzle it with a sweet seseame sauce. Yum!

For lunch I will often get food from Soi 1 where I work, and bring it home for Marc and I. This time I stopped at a food market and got kao moo daeng. It means 'red pork', which is decidedly baconish, which, naturally, I like. It think it's from cooking it with some kind of sweet marinade. It also comes with crispy pork, which is literally a thick slab of bacon that is deep fried, then cut into cubes. Generally you eat it with plain rice, covered in a sweet and savory sauce, like in the photo.

Tastes Like Chicken

Garlic. Deep-fried. Spicy. Crispy.
Thai fried chicken goes so far beyond any kind of chicken you have experienced. The best stuff is breaded with a thick rice-flour and sesame seeds, and deep fried in a huge wok. Some more creative vendors like to throw in some herbs, other pan fry some whole garlic cloves to serve on the side. We like to dump the crispy, golden garlic right over the top and smash it in with the rice.

Speaking of, this is a good time to get a plug in for sticky rice. Unless rice is a main part of your diet, chances are you don't know a ton about it. Turns out, I don't know a ton about it either, but god knows I know what I like, so how about I just tell you about that? In Thailand, you can get two basic kinds of rice: "Kao pow" (plain rice), or "Kao ne'ow" (sticky rice). Plain rice is just what it sounds like. It's soft, fluffy, steamed rice. It goes with anything strong and spicy. I can generally eat about 3 pounds of it in one sitting which tends to be dangerous.

Sticky rice is also very yummy, and a bit harder to overdose on. It is harder and chewier than plain rice, and this is because of the higher glucose content, making it fattier and more delicious. Thai hill-billies and I like to ball it up with our bare hands and dip it into whatever kind of sauce is nearby.



Cute.... but baaad...

Thai Food chain

Today we ate food from a Thai food chain called J. J. Kitchen. It's mediocre at best, but I like their green curry. It kind of looks like a bowl of green water, so I didn't put a picture up here, but I love to eat it with plain rice. Marc's yellow curry was much more photogenic, so that is what you see here. It wasn't very spicy, but really flavorful. Also eaten with plain rice, as you can see. It is my opinion that anything strong that can be eaten with rice is worth a feature on this site.

We also got some satay. It is sticks of pork marinated in something yellow. They aren't spicy, but you dip it in a sauce. The peanut sauce this time pretty much tasted like peanut butter, which, I like peanut butter a lot, but usually not on my pork. If the sauce is good, it is less peanut buttery, and more just peanut. The other dip option is vinegar with cucumber, onion, cilantro, and chilis. This one is yummy simply because it's hot!

More Favorites

This afternoon I was slightly naughty. I saw ice-cream being sold on the street, and I got it, before I had even eaten my lunch!
Thai ice-cream is usually a little icey and coconut flavored. It sometimes has chunks of hard flour candy, or piece of fruit in it. Also, you usually eat it with a blob of sticky rice in the middle of the two scoops. If you're feeling really frisky you can put some seed or peanuts over the top. Oh yea, and it costs $.30.


For lunch we had pad thai from a place really close to us. They do the best pad thai I've found in the city. I get it "lek, gup goong laat bang" (small, with shrimp and the crispy-fried-yummy-stuff). Best with lots of chili powder and lime.

After dinner, Marc cut up a Phuket Pineapple. Apparently, this is not a normal pineapple. It is more sweet, and the outside is a formidable opponent, which is why Marc cuts it up.

Something Special

Today we saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It was good, kind of don't want to get into it. But, more importantly, let's talk about what I ate!

The pizza is from a place where we go sometimes. It's about a 25 minute walk from our place, or we can take the train. This particular variety has apple, mozzarella, and gorganzola. Yikes, it was pungent.

A German place that we like called Bier Otto: We had German beer and pretzels with grainy mustard.
Marc chopb beer. (to like)

First Meal: Lunch and dinner are the same

I have decided to have a blog. Seems like the trendy thing to do, so, I am naturally inclined against it. However, since I just can't get enough of delicious treats, I thought I'd share my life like this. Explanations are going to be at a minimum, to be honest, so if you want details, just have to ask!


So I had class today at the Soi 1 office, so I grabbed a quick lunch to take home afterwards. This is an Isaan dish called larb moo. It's basically ground pork, and its cooked with some water is a small pot with chilis, cilantro, some fish sauce, onion, and some other herbs. This one was actually a bit too spicy for me, to the point where I actually couldn't finish it. Thais usually eat it with sticky rice, but I prefer the plain rice. I also picked up some veggie spring rolls from a street vendor on my way back to the train.

For dinner, we got food from one of our favorite places. It's called Polo Chicken. They serve Isaan food in all it's glory.

This is called kaw moo yeung. It is pork (moo), sliced thinly. You usually dip it in a sweet and spicy sauce. Marc's favorite.

I love laarb so much, I didn't mind having it for lunch and dinner. The laarb from Polo is much better than the street laarb, and the price is about the same (about $1 on the street, versus about $1.40). This time I opted to eat it with sticky rice.
This is one of my very favs, though Marc isn't as big a fan as I am. Also, if you ask a Thai person what his or her favorite food is, 90% of the time the answer is SOM TAM. Som tam is a papaya salad. It includes graan papaya (the white-looking strips), tomato, lots of lime juice, little shrimps, green beans, and, of course, lots of Thai chilis. This is also part of Isaan food, and you eat it with sticky rice.
Yummy! It was soo good!