Category: Food

Fake booze in SE Asia

All this ad needs is some Billy Dee Williams.
All this ad needs is some Billy Dee Williams.

So I was talking about fake Absolut from Laos with the crew today, and it occurred to me that the last bottle of Heineken I had tasted a lot like piss, which is a trademark of the lowest levels of Thai brew (I’m looking at you, Red Horse). I wondered if people bother to adulterate/fake/fuck with tax stamps and lot markings on beer as well, and fired up the old Web Wombat (it’s an Aussie thang):

That video prompted this official response from Heineken: Tampering with Heineken® labels

Which led me to this vid:

Story here: Heineken ‘absolutely on top’ of fake beer threat after Vietnam gang bust

The two stories aren’t about the same incident, andnowI’mgettingsleepysonowittyconclusionforthispost, sorry.

What’s for Breakfast: Protein Explosion Edition

There just isn’t much variety when it comes to breakfast in Maha Sarakham. Most people eat grilled pork skewers and sticky rice or some variation of rice porridge. While delicious, these get quite boring.

If there’s time after dropping the kids off at school, we sometimes go eat lunch stuff for breakfast at one of the few places open that early, but most days we eat at home, because we make the best coffee in town (not terribly difficult).

Today, Nam fried up all the leftover meats in our fridge, including gyoza stuffing, sweet Chinese sausage, and pork floss (that Mina loves eating over rice, lol!). The eggs were also perfectly done. It all came together quite nicely.

What’s for lunch: Green Curry with Wings and Portobellos

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Although I have made green curry with all kinds of meat, chicken is the best because of its wonderful grease. And among the cuts of chicken, we all prefer middle wings with an occasional wing drum thrown in for variety.

Today I sliced in a couple small portobello mushrooms, and along with the filtered fish sauce and chicken grease, they made the curry into an aromatic, coconut-infused umami bomb. With local round eggplant and julienned kachai (lesser ginger).

As far as eating goes, I actually prefer pulling chicken off the bones and mounding it on top of the rice and curry, but the kids just devour it off the bone.

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Mina’s Picnic

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Out of the blue, Mina told us that she and her best friend, on the last day of school (yesterday), had promised to have a picnic together today.
It was quite amusing to watch her put together a bag of snacks and water, and she even washed a plastic bowl and dried it carefully with a paper towel. But when it came to asking what time they were supposed to meet, she gave me a blank stare…
“She’ll just know, daddy, we’re best friends!”
Knowing which way this was heading, I asked if we all could go together. Mina agreed and we were soon hitting the McD’s drive thru and heading off to the park near her school for the picnic. Mina was of course devastated that her friend was not there and kept expecting her to show up throughout lunch. Afterward, she asked me why her friend hadn’t come.
I thought for a while and told her that you have to set a time when you want to meet somebody. Then she asked me if that’s why I’m always angry about people being late.

Alien eyestalks

I found these crazy-looking plants in a local wet market at the base of Phu Rua National park in Loei province yesterday afternoon. An old lady was selling plants from the roadside and forest (Loei people are apparently known to be formidable foragers) across from a stall displaying animal traps, snares, and freshly skinned rats.

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Nobody who has seen these photos (+/- a few hundred Thais in person and my wife’s Facebook) has ever tried these plants before. But the old lady told me how to prepare them, so we steamed them and ate with a green chili dip (the alternative was to make a soup).

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As it turns out, the bigger of the two types of plant (the alien eye stalk one) was better than the smaller iceplant-looking one. If you ate the “eyes” one at a time, they were sweet, but the more you put in your mouth, the more bitter they got. Strange. The iceplant-looking one tasted like… well, like how I imagine iceplant to taste (Thank you, thank you).

Mina loved the mini kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) I also picked up in that market in Loei.
Mina loved the mini kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) I also picked up in that market in Loei (a stringer of 3 sold for 10 Baht)

Although I associate bitter vegetables with poison for some reason (college flashbacks maybe?), we suffered no ill effects from eating these unknown plants, maybe (Nam had a funny stomach feeling possibly due to the cold she was getting over). Overall experience: Exciting in good and bad ways, anticlimactic.