Thai Flux

Week 2 of Thai cooking class: 

I find I'm exploring the boundaries of myself as well as learning to cook some excellent Thai dishes.  I have some pretty serious vinegar aversions, as you may already know, and so wandering into a world where I am using and eating unknown ingredients found in liquids packaged in bottles that look suspiciously like condiments is very much anathema to me.  Sometimes fear rules when it shouldn't.   My healthy respect for Thai and Chinese and Japanese and Korean is based on US restaurant experiences where I have been burned, but I'm learning.  And so, with the help of lime juice and being able to explore all the ingredients in a delightfully simple recipe, I find I am actually able to cook a mean sweet and sour soup without vinegar even if in restaurants they may still be off limits.    

My boundaries are being stretched and what a good thing that is...  Fish sauce, chili paste in soy bean oil (Nam prik pao), Golden Mountain seasoning sauce, thick sweet sauce, galangal, tamarind, straw mushrooms.  I can now cook with these ingredients and not be scared of them.  Just a little knowledge can propel one so far away from their comfort zone so quickly.  How true that is in not just cooking.  Ruts are easy.  Way too easy and surprisingly unsatisfying.    

       

Tulips are up here on the east coast, as are daffodils, crocus, bulbs of all kinds, butterfly bushes sprouting new leaves, parsley perking up after being squashed by snow all winter.  Spring is on the doorstep even if it is early March.  Life seems to be in flux mode...   it may be muddy, but oddly, that's when it is easiest to get out of established ruts and form new paths even if they may be sometimes sideways.   It is good to be reminded that there is always more to life than what I may be expecting.