The Best Thai Beer – Snowy Weizen

A good friend from Roi Et brought his boys over yesterday, and we had an epic dinner with smoked ribs (using a new white wine finish I read about and will now implement every time), authentic Mexican rice and beans, hastily smoked Isaan sausage and Indian corn, grilled het nang fa (literally: fairy mushrooms) from Nam’s sister’s farm resort, and several kinds of beer from my friend Gop’s bottle shop.

Among the beers, the real standout was this Snowy Weizen (obviously inspired by the huge success of Hoegaarden in Thailand in the past few years), produced by Boon Rawd Brewery (other products: Leo Beer, Singha Beer, Thai Beer). It’s a cloudy unfiltered mess in your glass, and also quite delicious.

The fairy mushrooms, lightly oiled and grilled, are simply the best I’ve had in Thailand, and despite their nickname, do not make you see fairies.

Ping pong anywhere


Well, it looks like I’m going to have to buy this boy a ping pong table (table tennis table?). Luckily, it looks like used ones go for 1/3 the price of a new one here…. but they’re mostly down in Bangkok. Wonder how much shipping will cost.

Fact: There is no space at our house for all of our stuff.

Also: Mina and Max will eventually need their own rooms, which we did not plan for when designing this house (when we didn’t yet have kids). In retrospect: Duh!

The Curse of RSS

Looks like I get to play my one of my favorite games again: Note the passing of another free RSS reader, not have the will to protest its disappearing, and halfheartedly look for another free replacement.

Yay Reddit and Facebook, you win again!

Google+, don’t even look at me, man. Your cousin Google Reader was twice the social network you’ll ever be, and it wasn’t even a social network.

Auto-parking Slipper Resort in Japan

Alternate usages:

  • Segways for cats (light load bearing)
  • Go Go Gadget Rollerslips (heavy load bearing)
  • Tech-enabled procreation aid for rapidly aging population (G Parking)
  • Ad-hoc conveyor sushi party set

I wish Nissan would quit spending resources on clickbait and just make better cars… My RB-20 cries itself to sleep every night knowing that its great grandkids are (under) powering ugly hybrid bimbo boxes with whiny CVTs and ridiculous start/stop features.

Giant Thai Lemon

My mother-in-law gave this to us last week, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen one. The flavor is 90% lemon and 10% pomelo (grapefruity), which is surprising since it looks mostly like a pomelo. This probably means it can be used as a lemon substitute for many cooking applications , and in fact, Nam put it in a killer Tom Kha Gai last night. The pomelo flavor was not noticeable at all. Overall though, it wasn’t quite as sour or pure as a normal Thai lemon – the flavor was a bit muddled.

In the first pic, I included a few objects for size reference: A small bottle of Sriracha, an Old Spice deodorant stick, and a tube of CPU grease. You know, random things I use every day, strewn all over the kitchen counter.