Food, Food and More Food

We knew we liked Thai food, but had no idea what it would be like to be able to eat Thai every day if we wanted to.  Da cooks dinner for us each Monday/Wednesday/Friday.  She has been cooking yummy curries, soups and salads and supplying us with fresh fruits each day that she comes (see photo from left: pomelo, papaya, jack fruit, dragon fruit, watermelon).  We have been enjoying Dragon fruit, mango, papaya, bananas, rambutans, doku, watermelon, pomelo and pineapple just to name a few.  Da buys our fruits and veggies at the local market.  Quite often she brings home from the market things that we have never seen before - "Try Madam!"  She brought home a couple of desserts yesterday that were wrapped in banana leaves.  One was gelatinous with coconut in the center.  I really like that one. Another was sweet sticky rice with banana in the center.  The Thai definitely know how to make their desserts. 

When Da isn't cooking for us, we can cook ourselves (heaven forbid) or go outside the gates of the community and eat for 20 baht or 30B each (33B = $1.00). Everywhere, you can find carts with food being prepared.  And of course, David likes to try it all.  Today we were at Chattachuk, a HUGE market downtown (20 acres of over 20,000 stalls of whatever you can imagine and a few things you can't image), and David saw something someone was eating and asked where he could get some.  We ended up finding and eating at the same place.  We had some sort of curry with potatoes and chicken, some type of sweet sausage, and some spicy fried up pork and sweet spicy tofu.  Oh yeah, we forgot to tell you that you need to tell the Thai people how spicy you want your food.  Ped means medium spicy.  Of course, this is in Thai terms which could mean very spicy to you.  Ped maak means very spicy which means you might as well just peel off your tongue when you're done eating until you get used to it.  Then mais ped means no spice.  This could mean little spice or no spice depending on the person you are speaking to.


David loves to buy food off the carts.  When he goes downtown on his own, he always stops at the toast cart.  He was walking by one day and the lady said, "Only 6 baht."  He said, "I'll try anything for 6 baht."  Now his travels downtown always include a stop at the BBQ toast cart.

Later at the market, we walked down an aisle/alley and people were getting bowls of shaved ice where some sweetened liquid (we think coconut milk and honey) was poured on it and then you could add something from the 30ish bowls of different items to end up making some slushy, refreshing snack (see the tall guy checking it out?).  Of the 30 bowls, I could only identify the contents of one - lychee.  There was a bowl of black gelatinous clumps, slimy green things that looked like worms and what we think are the bubbles in bubble tea. And of course, David didn't want to put anything on the ice that we already knew what it was.  We still don't know exactly what we ate or how to even ask someone about it again (because the sign was in Thai), but it was yummy.


Another thing to know about the Thai and their eating habits is that they eat six or seven times a day.  That is why there are so many carts everywhere all the time.  You can't go a block without seeing ten carts.  If there is one cart, there is another cart nearby.  And if that isn't enough, there are carts that drive through the neighborhoods (baans) trying to sell their food by speaking through a loudspeaker system.  If you go out and eat family style, the polite thing to do is to put small quantities on your plate, never heaping servings.  The Thai eat with large spoons, using their forks to push the food onto their spoons.  I've rarely seen a knife.


We look forward to the many more "culinary" adventures we will have in Thailand.