Adventures of Cooking in a Thai Kitchen

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I wake up every morning to roosters crowing and the dawn light coming gently into my bedroom. Outside there is a coconut tree, a vegetable garden with some kind of vegetable that may or may not have an English name and a cute row enclave of homes with some of the other English teachers. This is very likely because only English teachers can afford the rent which is pretty high, about $150. We are paying for luxuries like hot water and a kitchen! I am dying to get my hands on a ripe coconut so far I’ve cracked open only one that had fallen and it was very green on the outside and very brown on the inside. Not very appetizing…

My house delights me everyday. Last night I began exploring the kitchen and made a pretty successful Italian dinner. I am the only person from my program that I know with an actual kitchen. This was pretty exciting as I have eaten Thai food almost exclusively since I got here. I invited my new friend Angel over and he laughed at me as I went through a few trials and errors cooking in my new kitchen. First, EVERYTHING here is packaged in 18 baggies, rubber bands wrapped another 18 times so that I can very rarely get to my food without some serious effort. All my new sauces have one of those plastic tabs inside the lid where you pull it to unseal it. I tried 3, ALL of which managed to tear off without actually opening anything. So I sat digging knives into condiment bottles. Opening the salt package I pulled a little too violently and it spilled all over my nice new kitchen floor. I have only one burner, one pan which I just purchased and no strainer. I figure it adds adventure to the experience but I’m not sure I’d call it relaxing. Just to add to the adventure, Angel suddenly gets very excited as he finds a friend on our floor. There in the center of my kitchen, that I am wandering around in with bare feet, is a scorpion. Luckily, it was on it’s last leg as Angel is attempting to check it out by picking it up by the tail. I can’t imagine that was a good idea. I later find out this size scorpion is extremely poisonous and could very well have killed us if we were stung.

Regardless of the adventure or maybe because of it, the pasta was very good for being made from tomato paste. The salad dressing came out beautifully, Angel was actually drinking it. Going to the store they have one type of vinegar. It is white and pure and needs a lot of doctoring to make into anything edible for a salad. My salad dressing had white vinegar, soy oil, shitake mushroom sauce, chili sauce, soy sauce, orange juice, lime, chili, salt and pepper. I am very excited that it was in the least bit edible.

Next week is Thanksgiving and I’m hosting a Thanksgiving feast…. I have no idea how I am going to pull this off but I think it might have been a little ambitious as the guest list keeps growing Of course it is meant to be pot luck like… but I always get carried away. Also, it might be just a bit expensive. It will be worth it just the same.

To top off the evening last night, my friend passed out on my bed apparently in food coma. Being a kind soul I end up letting him stay. In the morning, other teachers at my school walk by as he is leaving my house. I, embarrassed give a stumbling excuse which managed to perfectly top off the incriminating evidence. So now they have some nice unfounded gossip about me. Oh well Mai Pen Rai right?

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