Oishi!

Last night I went over to Jeb & Gum's place for dinner. The Japanese teacher (let's call her Wasabi- she has quite a spicy side) from Jeb's other school wanted to learn to cook, so she and I both hung out in the kitchen with Gum.



I'm not sure I actually learned how to cook anything. Mostly I did a lot of chopping of herbs. I tried to jot down some notes about how to cook everything but that was futile. For the Panang Curry my notes say "oil, prik-gang panang, fry chili paste, add coconut milk, thicken, add beef - cook, add coconut milk, add basil leaves - pork soup flavoring, brown sugar, salt-kem, ahjinimoto (a Japanese seasoning of some sort), brown sugar, mancoot leaves, sweet peppers"... I have a feeling that's not quite going to get the job done when I get home. =P


Gum was just doing what most cooks do in the kitchen. Throw in a bit of this and that, taste, a little more of this... there's no recipe, no measuring cups, she just knows how to do it. I'm more of a baker than a cook, but I'll do some experimenting when I get home.


I will say that I was AMAZED by her ability to make a Thai feast using a fairly modest amount of counter space and one electric wok. She even timed it out well, first chop all the ingredients, then cook the meat for the pork salad (moo yam) and let it cool before starting the curry. Mix together the ingredients for the omelet (kai jeaow) while the curry is cooking. Plate the curry & start the omelet, then mix together the salad. It took a few minutes to get everything on the table.. but it was well worth the wait.

The reason men come to Thailand.

We had a lot of fun, it was so hilarious... three girls with three different native languages all cooking together. Through the basic Thanglish being used, I learned the Thai words for "salty" "sweet" and "garbage" and was pleased that I could understand when Wasabi kept saying "I'm hungry, I want to eat!!!". My favorite expression of the evening (and new diet motto) was something Gum kept saying ... I'll never get it right but something like "Gin gadai, you die, gin mai di."- "Eat whatever, when you're dead - you can't eat." My second favorite expression of the evening was "Oishi" (Japanese for 'delicious') which we all exclaimed repeatedly.

kai jeaow goong

I had intended to get a nice picture of the table all set, but completely forgot in my eagerness to start chowing down. There were six of us (the boys, naturally, stayed upstairs drinking while the girls cooked) and the meal was thoroughly enjoyed by all.

Oishi!

TAG: Code Sweet Chili Sauce

Learning to read all over again.

Now that I'm more or less settled into a routine with teaching, I've been trying to spend a couple of minutes here and there studying Thai. I have a couple books, but they're only moderately helpful. What's worked the best so far is finding what I'm trying to say in my phrase book, then asking the office staff how to actually say it. Then I experiment. The staff have been more than patient with me. In particular, the cleaning lady has been really friendly, chatting with me (in English) while she works, and playing along as I try to say things like "Have you eaten?" "Yes, I already ate." in Thai (it's a small talk greeting like "How's it going.").


On Monday through Thursday I teach a class half an hour away from the school, and there's a man who drives me. He speaks more English than I do Thai... but really not that much. So I've been experimenting with him as well... digging individual words out of my phrase book like "fon" (rain) and pointing to the dark skies off in the distance. He'll correct me..."Thailand speak - foon tok" then it's another ten minutes in silence. But the trip is still proving to be productive. I studied a couple of the letters using a learn Thai website... and now I look at signs & license plates trying to pick out the letters I know. I was irrationally delighted when I saw the letters Kgor and Mor together and figured out that they stood for Kilometers. Most of the road signs have English translations... which actually isn't helpful in getting me to associate the letter with the sound. But in the case of signs with city names - it's really helpful because the English is really just a transliteration of the Thai word. So... slowly slowly slowly I'm picking up a new letter here and there.


Today Big's two daughters came into the school and were just hanging out in the teacher's room. They were playing on the white board and practicing their English with me. So I turned it around and had them look at my letters as I wrote them - and they corrected me. One of the girls was doing math with arabic numbers, but I had her check my Thai numerals and teach me the words for hundred and thousand. They also taught me how to write "chicken" or more actuately, how to read it... one more step to being able to feed myself!!


That's the big adventure for today. I only had two classes today - one of which I bombed. =/ But I had time to go to Tesco Lotus (the big supermarket/everything store) for lunch and ate something approaching a grilled cheese sandwich. I don't have to work this weekend, so I plan to go to Ban Phe tomorrow. Not quite sure what I'll end up doing on Sunday though.


I need some friends here. =/


TAG - Code Watermelon.