Boots in the Oven

One last Thai meal... in a manner of speaking.

Stepping back into Thailand, June 2006, for the second-to-last time...

(You can refresh your memory, or meet these posts for the first time, over here.)

We got back from our Ayutthaya day trip midafternoon covered in dust and dirt and soot marred by rivulets of sweat.  It was so hot outside that we knew we'd have to retreat for a while to the quiet white coolness of our room at the Baan Sabai. 

But lunch had been really, really lacking in the department of deliciousness and decency, even, so we were hungry.

Street vendor to the rescue!  This woman was almost directly in front of the Baan Sabai.  She offered my two favorite cooking methods rolled into one... grill plus dumpling. 

We got a little variety - one with banana, one with peanut, and one with more bean, if I remember correctly.  This, plus a trusty large Beer Chang - Elephant Beer, that is - helped our moods considerably.  Though I could be confounding my variables... we also each had a bracingly cold shower and a brief nap.

To be perfectly truthful, the rice balls were a little dry, probably because they were being kept warm over the grillwok.

We waited until dark to poke our now quite tan and scrubbed faces tentatively outside.  Almost immediately, Husbear spotted a strolling man with an intriguing mix of... what could that be?

Not wanting to miss out, he picked up speed.

Just as we thought - this gentleman was our first mobile insect vendor!

We'd seen insects a couple of times before - most notably at the market we visited during our cooking class in Chiang Mai -  but we hadn't tried any.  And after a trip during which we found ourselves eating, at various times, hot vit lon (fetal duck egg), field mouse, and traditional British jellied eels, we had to have one last thing you can't find here in the States.

But, having made the decision to try some of the wares, um... how do you choose between all of them?

I wanted to try the bamboo worms, mostly because of their gratifying lack of spindly legs.

Husbear went for the grasshoppers, because, well... he wanted to stick up for all that hopped-on grass?

So, we requested a small baggie of the two types, with some crickets thrown in for good measure.  The guy sprayed a thin brown liquid (fish sauce mixed with something, perhaps?) over our bugs, and handed them over.

We immediately selected one of each type for each of us and snacked.  Honestly, not bad.  A little fishy, from the spray, perhaps?  A nutty flavor predominated.

These definitely needed a beer to help wash them down, so we trudged over to a place we'd scouted earlier that looked to do a good job on whole grilled fish.

Taking a table, we ordered a couple beers and unwrapped our tiny, leggy bounty.

Care for a closeup?  With a full-face view of a grasshopper, who looks like he's being stalked by a particularly brazen cricket?

With the beers, this became a satisfying aperitif.  I liked the smaller insects better - the grasshoppers' legs kept getting stuck in my teeth.  Undesirable.

But, of course, man does not live on leggy hoppers and crawlies alone, so we ordered some food.  After our day in the searing heat of Ayutthaya, I was totally dehydrated and thought the menu's miso soup would be perfect.

Oops.  Forgot we were in a Korean restaurant.  Still, though, the soup was nice, and definitely began the process of restoring my electrolytes.

We had to order a whole fish, of course.  That's one thing that I've found to be lacking at restaurants around here - it's hard to just get a whole grilled or fried fish.  Fillets rule in the States.

It's been so long that I've stupidly forgotten what kind of fish we ate.  A flat one.  Grilled.

It came with so-so panchan.

The fish, whatever it was, was really yummy.  It was served with a nicely spicy tangy sauce and fish sauce, along with a bit of a cabbagey salad for crunch and some greenery.

All in all, very nice.  We left and walked back towards our hotel, stopping at some hostel that was playing the Borat movie.  Nice. 

Only one more Southeast Asia post!  And that one is predominantly airplane food. 

When do we go back? 

SXSW, Chinese, and another reason to Beware the Ides of March

It's been a while, I know.  I've just started a "job" reading exit level TAKS tests, and after a day of scanning overwhelmingly mediocre essays sprinkled with few moments of sheer brilliance the last thing I've wanted to do is come home and write. 

Interestingly, those aforementioned moments are often failing essays.  Go figure.  I think it's another example of how No Child Left Behind is really a push towards mediocrity - from my reading these sixteen-year-olds' two pages, it feels like the those outliers are being slowly forced towards the middle.

Anyhoo, with me burning my eyes out at a computer screen and Husbear working six-day 80 or 90 hour weeks, yeah, the blog's suffered.  But now we're back, to let YOU know, we can really shake 'em down.

And to tell you about this hilarious experience we had last week at Austin's huge music and blogging extravaganza, South by Southwest aka SXSW aka South by.

Thursday, I got home eyes-ableeding from the essays.  Husbear arrived oh, two and a half hours later or so, and we drove over to a nearby Chinese restaurant we'd been wanting to try - China Palace.  I was all primed to ask for the Chinese menu, but apparently they've been getting that request enough that they've added it as the final page of the Western-style menu.

I honestly don't know if they have a beer or wine menu... we stuck with tea.  And a pallet of food from the Chinese page of the menu.

First?  Scallion pancake.  (You were starting to think there weren't any pics in this post, ja?)

Perfect, at least in my limited knowledge of scallion pancakes.  Nice and chewy, and somehow not greasy - I don't know how they pulled that off.  Sort of huge, though.  We probably should have taken half of this one home, but sometimes it's hard to stop eating the crispy fried bready tastiness.

We did bring home huge amounts of our two entrees, though.  First of those was a last-minute decision, the Shrimp with Soft Tofu.

Seriously Cantonese, here.  The dish was really good, but would have benefited from higher-quality shrimp.  Subtle flavors all melded really well, with a nice soothing salty shrimpyness and the smooth taste and mouthfeel of the tofu.  Really fun to eat.

Not as much fun as the Shredded Pork with Mustard Greens and Tofu Knot.  Holy happymouth. 

Again, the sauce here really remained in the background.  The main flavors were the sharp cruciferousness of the mustard greens and the meaty pork, but the fun here was in the texture.  The tofu knot had such a nice chew to it that really contrasted with the crunch of the mustard greens and the barely resistant bamboo shoot.

There was a huge amount of garlic in this dish, but we were surprised to be pretty much unable to taste it.

Here's a closeup of that tofu knot.  It's apparently made from the skin that forms in a layer on a block of tofu while it's being made.  The skin is rolled and tied into a knot.  Ta-da!

Total, for the two of us, before tip?  $23.75.  Noice.

We loaded our six pounds of leftovers into the car and drove downtown to the Light Bar.  A friend of ours here in town who's better at staying in touch with college friends than we are called me to tell me an old friend was playing there with his band.  (I can no longer recognize runon sentences.  Sorry.)

Downtown was PACKED with people wearing wristbands and credentials and looking like they were from somewhere much more self-conscious than Austin.  Lots of metallic shoes, one-color sack dresses, enormous bags, extra-tight jeans, wide-armed glasses... you know the type.  We eventually paid to park and walked over to the Light Bar, where a hip-hop showcase was going on downstairs and a hand-lettered sign pointed us up to the rooftop patio for the Arclight Records Showcase.

Corona was $5.50, as was Shiner.  Perhaps you're from a large town, and those sound like reasonable bottle-beer prices, but damn were SXSW attendees getting ripped off!  Sheez.

Yeah, we bought drinks.

Our friend's band, the Freshkills, went on as scheduled at 10:00.  We were sitting, enjoying the music and enjoying watching a couple of hardcore fans getting their hipster dance on, when suddenly their sound was cut off.

The crowd started chanting.  "Bull-SHIT.  Bull-SHIT."  You try it, it's quite therapeutic.

Turned out they'd been shut off because the club was violating a noise ordinance.  During a huge music festival.  Yeah.

Rumor was some jackass threw a golf ball at a cop car off the roof the day before, and that there were perhaps some other unspecified annoyances, so the cops weren't wanting shows at that particular bar. 

We went and got our money back, but when we waited around to talk to our friend, the doorkeeper snapped at us.  "You gonna take your money back and STAY HERE?"

Well, yeah, actually.  The cover was for live music, and there isn't any.  We did throw away a good chunk of change at the bar, though.

After Mitch talked with his folks and other friends that had come to see him play, we all split and walked over to Imperia to get the boy some food.  We had a great time catching up.  I hate when I fall out of touch with people I really like, especially when it's so hard to meet new folks.

Rapid topic shift.  BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH.

You know why, right?

No, not because we have to fear being stabbed by a Senator we've treated like a son. 

Actually, it's because these particular Ides are the 20th anniversary of the Bloomin' Onion, that scarily delicious allegedly 2200 calorie treat.

I had a very interesting email earlier this week, with some Bloomin' Onion trivia.  Did you know that the type of onion used in the gutbomb appetizer was specially devised by what the Outback folks choose to call an "onionologist" at Texas A & M?

No?

Well... how about the fact that the chain serves about 40,000 Bloomin' Onions a day? (That's 84 million calories and just under 5.4 million grams of fat, for you party-poopers.)

A piece of personal history, since I'm on the subject of not only Bloomin' Onions, but also long-lost college friends.  I had a good friend my first year of college that used to order a knockoff Bloomin' Onion from WingZone or somewhere once or twice a week.  Then he'd eat the whole thing. 

Great, now I want a ginormous batter-dipped and fried onion with deliciously spicy dipping sauce.  Curse you, Outback!

No, seriously, thanks to their Blogger Outreach program for sending me lots of detailed information and pretty pictures of the process each restaurant goes through to turn out the tasty. 

All from me.  Look for a post about bugs soon.  I hope.

Wow! This Series of Tubes is Amazing!

I'm not saying that I did this post from my sexy new iPhone while sitting in a field- but I totally did! I know I'm paragraphs behind, but I don't come from a first adoption kind of family. Call me naive but I can't help feeling a little like I'm on some weird Star Trek episode.

I mean seriously, all this wireless and internets business totally kicks ass.

Alright, enough bragging and amazement. I'm going back to work.

Does anyone know if these things work overseas?

Damn. Yesterday was Weird

So I often feel that my life lists a bit toward the strange.  Yesterday confirmed my suspicions. 

In a 12 hour period I was fined $500 for the misappropriation of state property, I had a private tour of a famous massacre site, and I was picked up by Robert Rodriguez in a shiny red Z4 who proceeded to drive me around the 'burbs for a couple hours. 

WTF?

Maybe I'll elaborate further sometime but for now I think I'll just mull it over and review my previous life choices.

Hope your days are interesting too.

-L.Pants