Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
I pulled the kids from Tae Kwon Do a while ago because their sensei was a dumbass. We were looking for a good Muay Thai coach for a couple years, and may have finally found one at a new fitness center that sprang up nearby. Nam and I will be working out at the same time, a couple times a week, so that’s good. At our first session, our trainer pushed us so hard, I almost puked. Good times.
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Mina came down with a pretty high fever on a day that includes me getting up early to teach (and thus skipping my MA classes), a dance recital for both kids in the afternoon, Nam and Max flying to Bangkok in the evening and staying the night, etc., etc., etc.
She is intermittently waking up with feverish dreams and asking if she is still on earth or in space, and other trippy shit like that… I wanted to tell her to embrace it, but she just feels icky and now, mommy has to leave, too. Woe is us.
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Fusion green curry for dinner: Coconut milk, curry paste, chicken, long green peppers, Japanese eggplant, carrots, green eggplant, enoki mushrooms, bird’s eye chillies, krachai (lesser galangal), horapha (Thai sweet basil), bai makrut (kaffir lime leaf), grated lime skin, and secret seasonings. I usually use straw mushrooms but didn’t find them at the fresh market today.
One of the horrible ironies of contemporary Thai cooking is that people have been corrupted by sugar and everything is too sweet. It took me eight years to find a balance for green curry that I have confidence putting up against any other. It might not be to everyone’s taste (it is pretty spicy), but it has wowed many. I take my curry experimentation very seriously!
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A damn fine cup of Americano in Khon Kaen, next to Central Khon Kaen.
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Last night, we planned to go camping in our front yard. Max came down with a cold and Mina does nothing without him, so the kids ended up staying in the house. Nam worried about the kids waking up in the middle of the night and not finding her, so she also slept in the house. I had already put tents up, so I decided to sleep on the lawn alone.
Woke up with a sore back and lit some charcoal because camping is not camping without fire. Grilled some yakitori and khao chi rice balls in a wonderful fusion of classic Japanese and Isan flavor profiles. Then I went to my Sunday masters class and thought about when I would have time to write my thesis. I seriously need a day to chill every week, but that’s not going to happen for a while.
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This is the latest entry in a series I created about mosquitoes eating fruit; I’ll link the other entries here later.
UPDATE:
Click to see the entire Mosquitoes Eating Fruit Series.
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A couple months ago, they opened a new mini-mall called Robinson’s Living Center in the next city over, Roi-Et. I teach in Roi-Et on Saturday mornings, so Nam and the kids went to check out the new mall… They had a very well equipped and expensive (for Thailand) play area where parents could dump there kids for a couple hours. We never leave them unsupervised in strange places, so Nam ended up with a lot of photos of their play session.
