Oh, baby! – Page 10 – C. Buddha's Hasty Musings

Pink Kubota

At a fruit orchard tour in Chonburi, Thailand.

I will never catch up with all the photos I have to post before I retire… At least I’ll have a lot of photos to look at then.

I’m in the middle of editing a particularly confusing English translation of an academic paper for publication. I usually decline work like this, but the client agreed to a generous hourly wage (it makes more sense than charging per page), so here I am, slogging it out all weekend. I hate doing work like this when the kids are home, because all I want to do is play with them and there are constant distractions.

Anyway, I had a sudden need to hear Mariah’s first album in all its Vision of Lovingestlyish glory, so I fired up the music transmogrifier and the tunes instantly flowed from my PC’s speakers… Took me back to listening to the Carpenters in my dad’s VW beetle decades ago, and I realized that there is a similar gap between musical generations – Mariah’s first album was released 24 years ago!!! Holy shit, I am old.

And now, back to the grindstone.

UPDATE #1: Let me be very specific. I keep playing one specific loop from a single song, to chase the bad English away. This one: http://youtu.be/I3_cOYvvjog?t=4m05s

UPDATE #2: Note to self – Future mashup:
“All In Your Technicolor, Blurring the Mind” by White Carey
Tracks:
http://youtu.be/I3_cOYvvjog
http://youtu.be/A3SOfRrbUMI?t=4s

UPDATE #3: Now I got myself stuck listening to Astrocreep 2000 while editing bad English and it’s not going so well..

Falling down I am a psychoholic
Erratic and sure I cannot fail
Replay slow smooth and automatic
Go easy riding danger
Yeah – two guns west I ride an instamatic
Polaroid rat crucifixion nail
Antenna down cruising in the deep red
Mouth of a demon angel

GET IT ON!
GET IT ON!
GET IT ON!
GET IT ON!

First Grade

Max no longer wears tartans.

He has so many girls fawning over him at school, it’s ridiculous.

And so a new era begins….

Candy Sushi-making Kit (Tanoshi Sushi-ya san by Kracie)

A self-explanatory photo series (because I am lazy, although I should state that this was brought by Michiko & Dave for Mina, who watches kawaii Japanese candy-making videos incessantly on YouTube and is learning little girl Japanese phrases as a result):

The Perfect Breakfast – East Meets West

Pan-fried eggs with assorted meat, toast, rice porridge, coffee. It’s hard to find a good breakfast in Thailand if you are tired of the standard fare. We found a good place.

— Posted from WordPress for Android —

Mina loves noodles

Mina is a 4-year old noodle snob. — I have a 4-year old noodle snob.

What my co-worker hilariously dubbed "gay balls" noodles. .. maybe because they are actually called "sweet eggs" noodles by the store (although they aren't actually sweet, which is puzzling). — What my co-worker hilariously dubbed “guy balls” noodles. .. maybe because they are actually called “sweet eggs” noodles by the store (although they aren’t actually sweet, which is puzzling).

I still haven’t finished posting all of the food photos from Nam’s phone.

Menopausal Chicken, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Spent Hen

I came to know about Ms. Hen, and spent hens in general, by accident.

I found a ridiculously cheap whole chicken at Tesco a few weeks ago. The thick plastic bag it was packaged in read: “Ms. Hen”.

Ms. Hen was only about 85 baht ($2.60 US), about one-third the price of a normal chicken, but it being a giant supermarket chain that buys in tons and pallets and truckloads and prices accordingly, I didn’t think much about it.

My usual recipe for a whole chicken is a slight variation of the Hainan Chicken recipe my cousin Kris posted on YouTube ages ago (228,000 views!!! Awesome!! When I get that many hits, Google generally bans my videos!), and it bears great results time and time again, as demonstrated by my daughter’s reaction in the photo above.

This time, however, we were in for a horrible surprise. Ms. Hen looked and smelled delicious, however, was as hard and rubbery as a tire. No joke, she resisted being cut with my sharpest knives. Max bravely said he didn’t mind how chewy it was, but I knew dinner was a bust. We ended up eating everything but the chicken. In disgust, I made a barbarian face, let out my best war cry, and with some difficulty, tore the stubborn bird in half. I threw the carcass in the refrigerator with every intention of giving it to some street dogs the next day.

———————–

For some reason, the next day when I was making a small test run of pork carnitas in the slow cooker, I had a sudden flash of inspiration and threw Ms. Hen’s dead body on top of the pork and then let it cook all day. The end result was simply THE MOST DELICIOUS CHICKEN IN THE WORLD. I’m talking better than the best I’ve had in Hawaii (Huli huli chicken), Bordeaux (Les volailles at La Tupina), Japan (Kochin), or my previous favorite from Rayong (animatronically grilled chicken).

The best way to describe it was what my friend who devoured it with me said: Issan turkey. It had the perfect amount of gaminess like turkey, but the heavenly golden fat and skin of a chicken. Somehow, cooking it on top of carnitas seemed to have little to do with it, but a test for repeatability is in order.

So far, I’ve not seen Ms. Hen again at Tesco, but the price tag on the shelf where she would be stocked still remains. One day, I will find her again. One day, we will be together. And perhaps then, I will dress her up and attempt to better my arch rival, Jamie Oliver, by adapting his recipe and giving it an even more eclectic name: Spent Hen in Milk

okonomiyaki

We have successfully found a local-ish substitute for yamaimo.

Category: Oh, baby!

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