Sunday, August 22

We've moved out of durian and jackfruit season into mangosteen and rambutan season, it's warm and muggy and often rainy here, and life under lockdown goes on.

On Fridays we eat doughnuts. We walk in the direction of Phloen Chit to a cart set up near the train tracks. I don't know what time in the morning this guy starts, but while he's there, he works nonstop—cutting up the fresh dough into small pieces, frying it in a hot, oil-filled, wok, and then scooping out the puffed-up pieces of dough to cool in their metal tray before customers come to scoop them up. 

Even early in the morning, it looks like hot work. But by 9am or so he sells out and closes up shop. The vendor makes Chinese doughnuts and little round doughnut holes and we usually get some of both and a container of condensed milk dipping sauce, all for 30 baht (about 90 cents).

And here's lunch at the cart just outside our condo. One of the women who works there speaks some English, but the other woman speaks only Thai, so I've been trying to learn how to order our meals in Thai. I ordered Roman's kra pow moo krob just fine, but I tried to order stir fried vegetables with pork (I think it's pad pak ruam moo, but I forgot and just said pad pak moo) and ended up with fried rice with shrimp (khao pad goong). Whoops!

The next time, I just pointed to the vegetables, and added the word “moo.”

Success!

Here's a breakfast from earlier in the week, of mango sticky rice with dried mung beans (also pictured, though hard to make out: Roman's coffee in the elephant mug his Filipina coworkers bought him).

On the weekends, I make weekend breakfasts—on Saturday morning, it was a hash with a duck egg and bacon, served with pomelo. I had secretly bought the bacon without Roman's knowledge and he was wonderstruck at having it for the first time since we left St. George.  

 

I continue to experiment with cooking with duck...this last week I made duck bolognese, which we had with spaghetti, and a cucumber salad with mint and green onion.

On Sunday, we headed to the Khlong Toey market, where we picked up garlic, limes, chilies, mushrooms, onions, peeled petai, chinese broccoli, thick rice noodles, a pineapple, a package of small fluffy-looking cakes, firm tofu, and head-on shrimp. We also bought duck breast and duck legs while surrounded by cages of lives chicken & ducks.

And the market cats chilled.

The evening after we went to the market, I made us a dinner of pan-fried garlic shrimp and petai (also known as stink beans or bitter beans—yikes!) with sticky rice and a lime-chili-garlic sauce we bought at the market.

Roman also got me some lilies--my favorite--at the market

The sunsets have been particularly striking lately.

And here are some neighborhood toads.

 On an entirely different note...why is this a product?

They're gummy candies. Ick.

And maybe this is a really old sign, or maybe I'm misinformed, but I don't think avoiding live animals and/or undercooked meats is how we stop the spread of Covid, as this sign I saw on a bathroom door suggests.

And that's it for now. I'll just be hanging out here, pretending I'm a tiger in a jungle.