Going Domestic

for small monkeys, obviously

  wee bananas 
  Originally uploaded by goingdomestic

These wee little bananas are a staple at Thai grocery stores and produce stalls, as far as I can tell. They taste like a regular North American garden variety banana, though I think that their flesh is tad yellower. I love bananas, but I don't buy them as often here as I did in Canada - they ripen faster than I can eat them in this climate!

This week I've been good about freezing what we can't eat - I have one tub of mashed bananas awaiting reincarnation as banana bread, and two more tubs of sliced frozen banana for smoothies (frozen fruit is way to go for smoothies - much better than ice cubes). I've run out of storage containers now ...

the great potato mix-up

These Potato Kugel Bites weren't really what I was intending to make for dinner this evening. The recipe and accompanying photo in the magazine that I'd admired last week was different - baked on a cookie sheet, not in a muffin pan. They're still good, though.

I guess I should have cut the recipe out when I'd found it, instead of thinking that I'd somehow be able to find it again amid my stack of magazines. This happens to be all the time - I'll see a recipe, think "I must make that! It looks really good!" but I will forget about it, or lose track of it, for a really long time.

Things I Miss

• Cream of Mushroom soup - hardly a nutritional star, but handy to have in the pantry for last-minute casseroles and such.
• Graham wafers - I didn't feel really guilty about allowing Madeline a couple as snack, and how am I going to make cheesecake with graham wafer crumbs?
• Big boxes of cereal - we're going through a small box of Special K each week!
• Perogies - I guess I'll have to make them from scratch if I want any to eat.
• Vanilla yogurt - my favourite for smoothies and breakfasts. Especially Activa.
• Frozen fruit - this was a popular snack for Madeline back in Canada, and an important ingredient in those smoothies ...
• Ground flaxseed - I have no idea where I would even look for this here in Bangkok, and it's a big ingredient in my fave muffin recipe!

Sometimes grocery shopping gets me a little down here. I find it harder to eat healthfully. Hopefully in six months time I'll be back on my feet.

showtime

I really look forward to the days when Chris arrives home from his office with a new DVD in his bag. Usually every week, he picks out a new movie for us to watch. They're a steal (pun intended) at about $3 per disc. We've had one DVD that was obviously the result of someone sneaking a handycam into the darkened theatre, but the quality of our other pirated discs is quite good. I am quite impressed at how professional the packaging is - I guess I was expecting pirated discs to have the title scrawled across them with a Sharpie - but instead they have a glossy full-colour cover, complete with tiny print reiterating that the disc is only intended for distribution in North America (ha!) and that copying of the disc is a crime (ha!).

I've heard from Chris that going to the cinema here can be quite the experience - popcorn in a variety of flavours, seats that recline into beds complete with pillows and blankets - but I'm quite happy with our cheap DVDs for the time being!

maybe they like the scent of spring rolls

We've been venturing outside the back gate of The Compound on foot regularly since we arrived here. I don't think that I've seen any other foreigners tromping around the back roads, but we usually don't find it scary as long as we pay attention to the traffic. There are tons of soi dogs milling about, but they normally ignore passers-by. Our destination is usually the Sudhathai restaurant, and we've dined there just about once a week from the beginning. The food is delicious, inexpensive, and Madeline likes the resident dog and the waitress who tries to make her smile. It's not quite any restaurant that I'm accustomed to - it's open-air (read: no airconditioning), the kitchen is outside, and there are always plenty of geckos on the walls, watching the diners.

I think that we got there a little later than usual last night, because it was pitch dark when we started our walk home. I wonder if that was what made the difference. We were nearly home, but a group of soi dogs started acting kind of aggressive. We decided to stray from our usual route to avoid them, realized that we'd hit a dead-end, and then backtracked (with trepidation, on my part - I am not comfortable around strange dogs and I had Madeline in the Ergo,too). Thankfully, the dog pack had moved on, but this encounter really made me reconsider the future of our after-dark walks for dinner ...

you can't do that on television ... in Thailand ....

Courtesy of the hard-working censorship folks:

1. Actually smoke on-screen. Culprits will have their faces obscured by the Fuzzy Dot. However, it is acceptable to hold items for smoking, as long one is merely just holding them.
2. Point a gun (or a water gun) at someone. Again, one can hold one, but if it's directed at someone, the Fuzzy Dot will get you.
3. Kiss a man, if one is also a man. Chris and I enjoyed the Gay Witch Hunt episode of The Office last week, and that excruciating smooch between Michael and Oscar was edited right out of the show.  That being said, I'm still tickled that season three is on tv here right now - I don't have to buy the DVDs to catch up!

global warming

I'm still obsessing over the weather, and I've now lived in Bangkok for two months. I've noticed small changes - I don't have the air-conditioning on in the apartment very much these days. I'm finding it too chilly, even with it set quite conservatively. I've learned that it's smart to keep all of the curtains shut tight on one particular side of the apartment, too, until late afternoon. Otherwise, I'm just inviting a warm and stuffy feeling inside.

I'd thought that I'd become a little better at handling the weather here, despite the fact that it continues to be an inhumane 35 degrees Celsius (95F) on a regular basis. But obviously not.

Just this past Saturday, the three of us set out on foot for a walk to the Saturday Market here on The Compound. We did get a subscription to the Bangkok Post, and admired a quartet of tricked out golf carts (racing flames and custom leather seats), but the market was mainly a disappointment of athletic socks and underwear.  Chatuchak it was not. Not even a distant relation. Anyway, we made up for the sad market experience by heading outside of the gates to the local Mexican restaurant for brunch (pineapple soda - yum!), and then a visit to the furniture store across the street. We ordered a matching sofa table so that our new side table wouldn't be lonely, and also so that our telephone won't have to sit on the floor.  From there, it was back to our apartment.

I'm sure that I was out in the sun and heat for less than ninety minutes, but I was completely wiped out by the time that we made it back inside the apartment. I don't do sun well, and I knew that before I moved here. I pretty much had to collapse on the sofa for an hour, waiting of the tiredness/sore tummy/headache/light-headedness to pass. It's just really frustrating when the weather dictates my life so much. In St. John's, I knew that the wind and snow would pass. Here, the heat is pretty constant. I swear that the other ex-pats I see playing tennis and jogging outdoors are really from Mercury.

second, third, and fourth breakfasts

Chris and I have always enjoyed a good brunch buffet. We checked out all of the big ones in Calgary, Banff, and Lake Louise, and a few points in between. Chris's favourite was the one at the Banff Springs Hotel (where I still remember watching some diners at another table transferring food from the buffet to their plates straight into Tupperware containers), but I kind of liked the brunch buffet at the Priddis Greens golf club. Maybe it was the scenery.

This past Sunday, the three of us journeyed into central Bangkok for the brunch buffet at the Shangri-La Hotel in central Bangkok. The hotel was on the river, but we sat indoors, in the kids section (it smelled better, and was air-conditioned). Before we left, we'd read that there would be something like nine different stations at the brunch buffet, and try as we might to figure out what they would be, Chris and I couldn't come up with more than four. It never occured to us that there would be sushi AND dim sum AND a carving station for lamb, ham, and roast beef AND mongolian barbeque AND thai cuisine AND pick a steak have it grilled before your very eyes AND grilled shellfish AND quite a few more that I've forgotten. It was kind of overwhelming, and I think that we'd have to go back a few more times in order to try everything. The things that I thought were really neat were the caramel apples in the dessert section, and miniature food in the children's buffet - tiny hotdogs and hamburgers.

I'm not sure what Chris enjoyed the most, but even a few days later, he was a little baffled that eggs and bacon were no where to be found at the brunch buffet! I'm not sure if he would have had enough room in his stomach, anyway ...