Today marks a new milestone in our move across the world. For better or for worse, we have run out of Life cereal. To most people this is an inconsequential detail, I will even go so far as to say that it may be irrelevant. But for those of you who know our 4-year old son Falcon, the sunrise today ushered in a new era -one of immense power struggles, deprivation, and passionate fury. Our child loves bread, with every fiber of his petite and wispy being. He loves cereal, oatmeal, pancakes, toast, croissants, macaroni and sugar snap peas, but only the peas, not the pod. Running out of our last creature comfort from home is devastating for him and we are not above bribing him to try new foods at this point. Thankfully, he is showing a very slight interest in sticky rice which we are rewarding with heaping spoonfuls of peanut butter or ice cream or both.
The rest of us have been fairing only slightly better with this transition. Finding SIM cards for our smart phones…no problem, establishing residency in a foreign country…got it, opening a bank account…piece of cake. Did someone say cake? Finding food to satisfy an insanely ravenous bottomless-pit of a stomach, one picky child, a modestly discerning palate and one toddler who shouldn’t even be mentioned because she would eat dirt and be happy about it….tough. We have found a grocery store that sells corn flakes, peanut butter and macaroni and cheese so we won’t starve, but we may complain a lot. Nearly everyone who heard that we were moving to Thailand said, “Ohhh, the food! The food is amazing. Tell me all about it. I love Thai food. Send me pictures.” And while we certainly have had some good food, I have not experienced the culinary orgasm that I was expecting. We buy fruit at the markets and have indulged heavily in persimmons, avocados, pineapple and bananas. We also make our daily trip(s) to the food vendors for fried rice, mangoes and sticky rice, pad thai, omelettes and meat skewers. I make green and red curry at home and every once in awhile we go to restaurants for mystery meat noodle soup. So far, all of it has just been mediocre. I am really looking forward to going on a food tour and really trying some new things and having some explanation of what it is that we are eating.
Speaking of mystery meat, it’s everywhere…on skewers, in soup, by itself, on pizza (see below), in pad thai, freaking everywhere. It’s somewhere on the nugget-bologna-hot dog spectrum and it’s called misleading things, like “sausage,” which implies that it is meaty, fatty and/or peppery. But don’t be fooled, it’s none of those things. Now that I’ve written all this, I’m starting to doubt that it’s even meat. Maybe it’s tofu with the essence of meat. I need to investigate this further.
Although there is a lot of gastronomic uncertainty here, I have to admit that it is a little thrilling to order something new. I have found that Ben and Blue have totally different techniques than I do when it comes to the unknown. I’m an ease-into-it kind of girl. Have something familiar with a side of unfamiliar. I’ll try chips, but the seaweed flavor. I’ll have the pad thai but instead of chicken, I’ll have the teeny, tiny shrimps and wonton noodles. Usually, this technique works pretty well for me. Ben and Blue are the jump-in-with-both-feet kind. He’s like, “I’ll have the barbequed, purple blob.” Come to find out, it’s a whole, barely cooked squid on a stick. Not breaded or seasoned calamari as we know it, but straight up, out of the ocean, squid on a stick. Eat it like a rubber seafood lollipop. I suppose that there is some merit to their way of things, but frankly, I let the voyeur in me just sit back and enjoy the show.
If the dearly beloved Anthony Bourdain was still around, I would challenge him to live solely on the food of another ethnic group. Here is Ben’s attempt at “sandwiches.”
Under 6 Overseas 