Good Food Isaan Thailand.

Well now that we have Nong Ja in what I call daycare but Thais call kindergarten. Thais have three levels of kindergarten but I consider three year olds to be in daycare.

I have absolutely no faith in the Thai education system as it is shit, an utter cluster fuck, as Clint Eastwood said in character as Gunnery Sergeant Highway in the excellent movie Heartbreak Ridge. If I was asked by the Ministry of Education my thoughts, that would be my response.

Now Nong Ja goes to daycare, this is solely for her to interact with other kids. I expect her to be taught absolutely bugger all. I have already rolled my eyes at some homework sent home for her. Like free written alphabet letters in a notebook with no guiding lines for tracing and so forth.

But for something like 8,000 Thai baht for 20 weeks, what do I expect. Not a lot, it is Thailand.

So now Noot has free time each day, time she didn’t have before and after I gave her a little revving up after a few weeks of her sitting around and being a lazy ass, she is getting back into a sort of routine.

This means a lot more home cooked meals, she has time to travel to the market (don’t know why she didn’t before but don’t question a Thai girl) and prepare dinner mid afternoon and then whack it all together and as the saying goes, “Bob’s your uncle.”

I love the fresh vegetables from the market, and Noot is a pretty good cook, not as good as me but she can hold her own.

Fresh papaya and carrot.

Chinese Kale, people hate it or love it. I have heard people say it tastes like soap. I love it.

For 10 baht you get a big bunch of Chinese kale.

To make my favourite dish using it, you add garlic and stir fry.

Add the stalks of the kale and some carrot.

Then you add the leaves and the most important ingredient being oyster sauce.

Some water and steam on high heat and things are nearly ready.

Chinese kale, carrot, garlic and oyster sauce.

A typical Thai soup, and pretty good. Most of these soups are bland but not ours, Noot always gets some flavor in ours.

This is a bamboo dish with pork. The fermented bamboo we get from the village and is the best as it isn’t bitter.

And I was really spoilt as Noot made me papaya salad Dum Thai, my favourite type of papaya salad. Not a bad meal at all.

Brunty