Cooking Tour

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Today we were picked up and taken on our cooking tour...alone. Nobody else had signed up, so we hopped in the "bus" as she called it, and selected our six dishes for the day as seen below:

Breakfast

• Padthai
  
• Fried Rice
  
• Stir fried pumpkin
  
• Chicken basil
  
  Appetizer
  
• Fried spring rolls
  
• Rice noodle rolls
  
• Fish cakes
  
• Chicken satay
  
  Soup or Salad
  
• Tom Yum Gung
  
• Chicken soup
  
• Papaya salad
  
• Fruits salad
  
  Curry
  
• Green curry
  
• Red curry
  
• Massaman curry
  
• Yellow curry
  
  Stir fried
  
• Chicken cashew nuts
  
• Stir fried yellow curry
  
• Stir fried vegetables
  
• Sweet & Sour vegetables
  
  Dessert
  
• Sticky rice mango
  
• Banana coconut milk
  
• Black rice pudding
  
• Fried bananas
  

She first took us to a market where she showed us some ingredients and then sent us on our way to wander around while she did the shopping for the day.

I think it would have been a lot more fun had there been a big group of people because here we were just sort of waiting for whatever was to come next. It was fun to cook in the woks though, because the food cooked really quickly. For our main dish, we made a huge fire in the wok with onions and water to get a nice smoky flavor going before adding the chicken.

I thought the fried bananas were pretty delicious and I wish I had still been hungry at the end to enjoy them. The fried rolls were good too.

We finished early and they took us to the Women's Correctional Institution because the German couple from yesterday had told us that they give massages there as part of their rehabilitation. They weren't the cheapest massages, but the women were really sweet and the place was air conditioned and clean.

Have to get to the post office before it closes!

Technical Details

* There is no toilet paper in most bathrooms; they use a bucket of water to wash themselves clean that sits next to the sometimes elevated squatter
* The red trucks serve as their buses inside Chiang Mai
* not really news, but the tour people ripped us off with the price of bus tickets...hopefully we can get a refund and then buy them cheaper elsewhere

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Photos

Katherine
written in Thai underneath

Fruit
Red AND yellow watermelon!

Fruit
no idea what it's called

Yum
chicken blood

Machine
extracts the coconut jiuice

Chop chop
our preparation station

#1
HIs first dish

#1
My first dish

woks
our cooking spots

#2
steamed spring rolls

#2
fried rolls

#3
soup

Mighty fire
oil + water + onions = large flames

ummm
some sort of fruit that we dipped in a salt/red pepper mix

#6
dessert

#6
dessert...fried bananas

Bathroom
example of the water next to the toilet for rinsing