Just a photo I’ve always liked. Those are my hands in the upper left corner. I was in southern Thailand, learning about cashew apples. I’d spent the hour before exploring Krabi’s Ban Laempho Gastropod Fossil Beach—an ancient cemetery of mollusks preserved in layered beds—when lunch called my name. A few little stalls selling fried chicken and Muslim curries were clustered at the park entrance above the beach. I climbed the hill, pointed to a bin, and immediately roused a swarm of women.

“Himaphan!” they shouted in unison. “Cashew! Eat! Eat!”

But it wasn’t the nut I found in my salted-fish curry—it was the cashew apple. A vendor ducked into her kitchen and returned with a bowl of freshly cut fruits, pale yellow, some tinged in red. She sprinkled them with sugar. They were juicy, with a guava-like flavor and an endnote that sucked my mouth dry.

The women showed me a specimen recently plucked from a tree. “Here’s the flower. Here’s the fruit,” they explained. A curious thing: the nut, which is technically a fruit, resembles a green lima bean. It dangles beneath the apple, a pseudo-fruit, which swells as it grows—until it’s picked and sliced and curried by the enterprising Muslim cooks of Krabi.

There in the picture above, you can see the bowl of whole fruits beneath the sugared slices and just to the right of the mustard-colored salted fish curry.

Also, you can see my fingers in the process of scribbling. Yes—I do it the old-fashioned way. When I’m out and about and eating in the great, wide world: I write my notes in cheap little notebooks sold at 7-Elevens and local markets all across Southeast Asia. I stuff them with business cards and maps. Sometimes I sketch little diagrams to aid my notes; sometimes my pages get smeared in the curry at hand. Sources often grab my notebooks and jot information in their own language, which I can investigate further as I proceed with my story. This is enormously helpful when working across language and cultural barriers. And in these cases, a digital recorder (which I do have) or other electronic gadgets wouldn’t help. I might go through five or 10 notebooks on an in-depth article; many, many more for projects and books. The result is that my office closet contains giant boxes filled with years and years of little notebooks.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, as I work my way through Nicholas Carr’s account of the Internet’s effects on our brains—the way we think, read, see and process messages. It’s a fascinating read and an enlightening examination of the way our brains change with the technology around them.

And then, of course, we have the issue of all that paper accumulated after years of reporting. What’s the ecological footprint of that? (Then again, what’s the ecological footprint of factories that poison the workers who make our electronic gadgets?)

Much to ponder.

(In other ponderables, today’s GlobalPost contains our story on tools made from bombs in Laos. It’s one in a series of articles we’re doing in conjunction with our forthcoming book on UXO in Laos — a project I noted almost entirely by hand, in little notebooks.)

A flower display at the Santa Fe Farmers Market

Maybe you’re married or maybe you’re not—but you know about Date Night, right? I’m not talking about the movie (which I haven’t yet seen) but the general concept: couples get caught in the routines and responsibilities of everyday life. They need a little time for themselves. They need dinner, a movie, whathaveyou. They need Date Night (remember, the Obamas raised a ruckus last summer when they flew to New York for a night on the town?). Well, lately, we’ve been chatting with a couple of friends about needing more of these “dates” more often. We exchanged recommendations—restaurants, bars, cafés. And we vowed to do better.

So last weekend, Jerry and I did something we’d intended to do for more than a year. We turned Date Night into Date Day, taking the train to Santa Fe (beautiful! relaxing! convenient! and super cheap at $7 roundtrip!), meandering through the sunny hours of a perfect Saturday.

We began just a block from the station (where else?) at the Santa Fe Farmers Market, which reflected a full-on cliché of color (see photo above). I stuffed my tote bag with garlic and onions, and a scent that followed me through the city. I noticed I was not the only customer to browse the nearby Borders in a cloud of Allium perfume!

We lunched at Zia—poky service, mostly mediocre food. But the light! It struck the table at so many angles, and it put Jerry into an artsy photographic mood…

Light on lemon in water, Zia Diner

Light on blue bottle top, Zia Diner

Utensils reflect red awning, Zia Diner

And truth be told, my gazpacho sparked a creative nerve in me—I have plans to tinker with that cold avocado/zucchini/red pepper/corn soup.

From there, we dipped into various galleries, and a thoughtful Bill Eppridge exhibit. We totally lost ourselves, for hours, at Photo-Eye, and the neighboring Garcia Street Books (where I found a great new gem, which I’d known all about but had yet to hold in my hands: Susan Herrmann Loomis’s latest, Nuts in the Kitchen.)

And that took us through to the moment we glanced at a clock, uttered a few naughty words, and began a quick trot back to the station. We made it—with time enough for a beer (he) and a margarita (I) at the Railyard just before sitting to a stellar sunset ride south, back home.

Great Date Day. What about you?

A taxi driver eats noodles at his regular coffee stall hangout in Phnom Penh.

In The Faster Times today, I have a primer on Asian eating. I get a lot of questions about etiquette from people traveling to Asia for the first time, wondering when to use chopsticks, what to do with sticky rice, and (primarily) how to eat without offending. It’s a big continent, and customs vary dramatically from region to region. But this quick little guide should at least help you through the basics.

I also thought I’d take the opportunity here to share a few shots of eating in Asia. Read the article to understand the significance of what’s going on in the pictures.

Down the hatch and chuc suc khoe!

Cocktails with straws, Vientiane.

Tissues on the floor (1), Cambodia.

Tissues on the floor (2), Cambodia. Note the basket, normally kept beneath the table.

Lao noodle soup with chopsticks and spoon.

Thai coffee brewed with a cloth bag.

Thai noodle soup with chopsticks and spoon.

Bangkok street vendor.

Let me begin with disclosure: this review comes with attachments. I share entangled endeavors with Kim Fay, author of the newly released Communion: A Culinary Journey Through Vietnam. Her publisher, ThingsAsian Press, will publish my next two books. And I have contributed essays to Kim’s guidebook series, To Asia With Love. Though Kim and I have never met in person, sticklers for objectivity would argue that I cannot write an unbiased review of her book.

But I can write a fair review.

And in fact I’ve waited months to do just that. Back in October, with days growing shorter and winds colder, Kim sent me a draft of her manuscript—double-spaced type on 8 ½ x 11 paper, no photos except a rough copy of the book’s cover. But now I have the real thing, nearly 300 pages of intertwined essays and full-color photos taken by Kim’s sister, photographer Julie Fay Ashborn. It is one of the heftiest, most beautiful food and travel books I’ve seen from Asia. (The type is a bit tiny—my parents would have trouble reading it—but the photos are big and bold.)

“I thought about how much better food tastes when it fits into a narrative.” With this, Kim captures the nugget of great food writing. Ingredients are important—yes—but context is so much more so. (If you know this blog, you might notice I’ve said this before. Stay tuned for a forthcoming essay on this topic.)

Communion doesn’t simply tell us what Kim thought about the crispy fried eggplant she ate in Hoi An. Instead, it guides us through the life of Miss Vy, the restaurateur and instructor who opened her history to Kim. By the time we reach the recipe for that eggplant, “as delicate and flavorful as Miss Vy,” we know all about the chef’s upbringing, her family’s post-war struggles through Doi Moi, and her thoughts on communism, poverty and sexism. In turn, I am all the hungrier for her food.

I’m reminded of Paul Theroux, who wrote years ago about how Conrad, Hemingway and the other greats “had not done Africa justice.” Their writings “ignored Africans or else made them insubstantial figures in a landscape.” They wrote of Africa with out any Africans.

I see the same today in writings on Asia. I see it in the travelers themselves, and I find it in the ever-burgeoning world of food lit. “The tourists I met when I was young were better,” a Hmong woman recently told me. “Before, they come because they love Vietnam. Now, they come because they are just traveling.” Just traveling—with iPods in the ears and eyes cast inward (or hidden behind tiny digital cameras). I don’t want to know about their fave banana pancakes or their perception of Saigon’s best noodles—not unless their opinions reflect something more than themselves.

Tell me, instead, about the woman serving those awesome noodles and how she came to be behind a steaming wok on the street. Tell me her history and ideas. Tell me how her noodles fit—or don’t—into the texture of modern-day Asia.

Of course, no writer succeeds at this all the time—but it is what I strive to do. And it is what Kim Fay has done in Communion.

I particularly love an exchange she had with a “stylish” Vietnamese friend on the subject of a trendy restaurant resembling a series of street-food stalls, minus the grime. It’s popular with locals. “I don’t have to sit near sewage while I’m eating,” the friend said. “I can get fruit juice or coffee, or even both if I want, and I can eat all sorts of different foods. My kids can have one thing, and I can have another. Maybe it’s not the best, but we can each have whatever we like. And when we leave… my hair doesn’t smell like cuttlefish.”

There. That right there is what I want to read in a story on Vietnamese—or Thai, Lao, Khmer, Malaysian, Indian or Burmese—eating. Kim questions whether sitting at a stall, sucking on exhaust is an essential part of the street-food experience. And it very well might be for many of the glossy-eyed foreigners who write glowingly about such settings. But the vast majority of my Asian friends choose cleanliness when given the chance. They like indoor restaurants with tables and chairs, too. Imagine that.

Kim does express worry over the incremental sanitization of Asia leading to the sanitization of Asian flavor—a legitimate concern, considering the popular restaurant in question served a mediocre bowl of bun bo Hue that needed more shrimp paste. But thank you, Kim, for including your friend’s perspective. So many culinary missives fall flat on scope and view. We get street food, 24/7. But Communion covers the spectrum—from fish sauce aficionados to the “master grafter” of Dalat’s famous fruits; from humble bowls of clam rice to the haute creations of Didier Corlou. It portrays the breadth of a Vietnamese palate as varied as the people themselves.

I open books, blogs and magazines with cravings for Asian food and the people who deliver it. Too often I find, instead, another foreigner in a vacuum. I read Kim Fay and I feel I’m meeting Vietnam all over again.

Several girls mix individual bowls of noodle soup at the Sam Neua morning market in Laos.

Greetings from the American Southwest. Jerry and I are home to a house that looks much the same. The herb garden grows again, the pomegranates bloom. And we fight the remnants of jet lag while leaping back into stateside life. I’ve had sporadic postings here lately, but that will change next week. Stay tuned for new reports and lots of stories from the weeks and months behind us. Meanwhile, you can also follow the Rambling Spoon Facebook page, where I often write between blog posts with links to food news and interesting tidbits.

Though the body has made it to New Mexico, the brain remains in Laos. Amid five months’ worth of dusting, vacuuming and laundering, I’m spending my hours typing and organizing hordes of notes. I’m remembering a steamy Sunday morning, just a few weeks ago (I cannot believe it was this month… feels like ages ago), when Jerry and I strolled through the Sam Neua morning market, which sprawls along the riverbank. We sat on a long wooden bench at a wide table covered in trays of herbs. A friendly woman stood beside her bubbling pots, ready to dole out servings of buffalo foe (or fer). Hers was one of the best bowls of noodle soup I’d had in weeks—rich meaty broth infused with galangal and thin tender strips of buffalo meat, very lightly cooked over parboiled wild water grasses; topped with a variety of fresh wild mints and additional raw wild water grasses, lime and the usual chile. This is what I love about Lao foe: most every bowl in every little village or town tastes different. It is one cook’s creation and none other.

As we ate, we watched seven little girls marching toward us. They aimed straight for our table, crowding around us, sitting patiently for their own bowls. They were, you might say, granddaughters of the revolution.

When their soups arrived, I watched as each little girl painstakingly constructed what was obviously her personal ideal—just enough chile, herbs, salt, fish sauce, shrimp paste and locally made Lao tomato-chile ketchup to make a uniquely individual breakfast. Each girl also brought a personal baggie of sticky rice to be dipped into the soup.

Slurp, slurp, smack, smack—they ate to contentment. But the girls’ bright red bowls contained so much chile, their little lips burned at the edges. They didn’t seem to mind. The vendor offered each of us a cup of drinking water served in a recycled glass shrimp-paste container, with label still intact. They were, I realized, the exact size and dimension of Vietnamese coffee cups.

Now that I’m back in the States, I’m struck by the freedom those little girls enjoyed. Seven kids, roughly between the ages of 9 and 12, out on their own for a Sunday morning breakfast and shopping spree. All across Sam Neua—all across Laos, really—we encountered little kids, some as young as 4 or 5, wandering and playing away from parental eyes. Kids walk to school alone. Kids hike through the forest alone. I’m not saying this always works. But coming from the perspective of a fear-riddled country in which parents drive their kids to the bus stop two blocks away—this sort of Lao-style freedom is refreshing. There is little cause for worry. Laos is not a place of rampant kidnappings. But it is a country in which parents help parents and neighbors help neighbors. In Laos, the village rears a child. If a mother isn’t watching her kid, chances are every other mother on the block is.

Anyway, it was a great bowl of soup. And even more pleasant to see young girls enjoying the food on their own terms.

A vendor on Thanon Lad Krabang fries noodles for a hungry crowd less than an hour before curfew

So much has happened in the past week—our reunion with Shu, the death of our friend Manophet, the eruption of Bangkok—I can’t process it yet. But here we sit, surrounded by concrete walls in a quiet, air-conditioned hotel amid dark and smoldering streets not long past curfew.

We arrived in Bangkok last night, around midnight, on the eve of a military crackdown on protesters who had occupied the city core for weeks. “What are you doing in Bangkok now?” the night desk man asked when we checked into our usual hotel, eerily quiet even at 1 a.m. We told him we were trying to go home (to finish our own work), but we’d left several bags at the hotel in February before departing for Laos. Jerry and I are not here to cover this story (many others have risked and sacrificed their lives already). But we had to make our way to the edge of urban warfare in order to get out.

From that vantage, on Sukhumvit Soi 2, the day progressed quietly despite the acrid scent of burning plastic and rubber, and towering black plumes in the distance. Our street was blocked, no traffic in or out. How strange to be two of only three guests at a normally packed hotel. We monitored the news minute by minute, watching the Bangkok Dangerous map and weighing our options: Should we stay? Should we go? We debated (and not always in the friendliest manner.) The hotel was just beyond the “no-man’s land” between soldiers and protesters, and we felt relatively safe inside as long as the violence didn’t spread.

But it did. After the military crushed the main Red Shirts protest camp, we began reading reports of fires scattered around Bangkok. We found a reliable taxi driver who squeezed through barricades and sweet-talked his way past soldiers to get us out and into a hotel near the airport. By the time we settled there, CentralWorld, one of Southeast Asia’s largest shopping malls, burned uncontrollably (you can watch the movie on YouTube or join the Facebook fan page). It’s apparently gone now. (And to think I’d hoped to buy new Tevas there before getting on the plane.)

It was a rush of activity tonight on Thanon Lat Krabang, near Suvarnabhumi. We ate pad thai at a small stall hurrying to fill big orders before the curfew went into effect. Dozens of customers buying last-minute beer filled the adjacent mini mart before the shop gates closed.

And now we wait—to see what the night brings, to see what the day brings, to finally board our plane (we hope) to San Francisco late tomorrow night. Meanwhile—because this is Bangkok, a city with infinite levels of surreal—we flip through channels and find the news in Burmese. It’s not Bangkok on the screen, but images from Cyclone Nargis, which struck two years ago. I listen to the voices and watch the shaky pictures, instantly reminded of where we were and what we were doing just a year and two weeks ago.

And then I look at another surreal set of images from Bangkok, May 19, 1992—precisely 18 years ago today.

The same Lat Krabang vendor juggles several noodle orders.

Irony on a black shirt.

WTF? Jerry discovered these while scrounging for a snack this afternoon. He said, “I had no idea what to make of them. They are crunchy potato tubes with gobs of salt and MSG.”

A soldier on Sukhumvit directs our taxi driver away from the trouble spots.

Thanh Hoa dinner: fried tofu and tomato, green-leaf soup, nems, nuoc mam and rice

That’s Whipped with a capital W, and that’s precisely how I feel. Let’s just say it was an insane serpentine 9-hour bus ride, up one mountain and down another, between Sam Neua (Laos) and Thanh Hoa (Vietnam). After a hotel run-around not worth repeating, we finally found an acceptable room (after asking for new sheets) and the only open food stall within walking distance (above). It was nearly 9 p.m. Neither of us had eaten since the handful of sticky rice, dried buffalo and jaeow bong we picked up at the Sam Neua market around 7 a.m. Sometimes, the greatest food on earth is the food in your bowl when the tummy rumbles with day-long hunger and aching fatigue.

The next morning we caught a bus to Hanoi, where a thieving taxi driver managed to ring up an extra 18 km on his meter. He finally agreed to go away for 150,000 dong after Jerry started taking pictures of his face and his license plate.

But the worst was yet to come, when the two of us set out about Hanoi, trying to find the second necessary rabies shot for Jerry, who had tangled with a cat in Vieng Xay. He had had his first shot in Sam Neua, and he’ll need three more in the upcoming weeks. It took three hospitals, another series of taxi rip-offs and several hours to finally find a dose of Verorab at a private Hanoi clinic. (***If you are traveling through Asia and acquire a cat, dog or other animal bite/scratch, please please please get the entire series of rabies vaccinations ASAP.)

Since then, we’ve gone totally local in Hanoi, wandering the streets in a heat stupor, sitting on tiny stools while sipping ca phe sua da, digging into bowls of bun cha found in the narrowest corridors of this chaotic city of maniacal motos. I cannot believe how Hanoi has changed in the 14 years since I worked and studied here. It’s bursting at every edge. But it still showcases great little moments of serendipity. Yesterday, amid all these millions of people, we bumped into two journalist friends on the street—two of my former students, whom I hadn’t seen since we parted 18 months ago.

Tomorrow night (after Jerry successfully finds shot #3, we hope) we will depart on an overnight train for Lao Cai, en route to Sapa. We are finally going to see Shu! I won’t be posting for the next week or so. Our hours are extremely limited, and this whole vaccination fiasco has diminished the time we had hoped to spend with Shu. After just a few days in Sapa, we’ll be on another plane to Bangkok before yet another rush of travel.

We’ll have many stories to come. Big news and exciting plans. But right now, we must rest. And eat.

Thanh Hoa breakfast: pho ga

Khmer sour fish soup, Boeng Keng Kang Restaurant, Phnom Penh

In Cambodia, sour fish soup with water grass is everyday food. It’s basic, it’s cheap, it’s easy to make and everyone eats it. A day without samlor machou trou kuon trey is almost like a day without rice–almost. But not quite. Our story on this simple tamarind-rich dish is now out in The Wall Street Journal.

This is but one of many sour soups found across Cambodia. When we return to New Mexico this summer, I have every intention of experimenting with a whole stash of recipes from this trip. So stay tuned. I can taste a batch of samlor machou kreung in the future — and I’ll tell you all about that lovely green tint extracted from lemongrass leaves.

Meanwhile, imagine a bowl of this (restaurant details in the story):

Khmer sour fish soup, Khmer Kitchen, Phnom Penh

Khmer sour fish soup, Sa Em, Phnom Penh

En route to Boualapha recently, we stopped for a light roadside lunch of sour pickled fish (som paa) and sour pickled pork (som muu), both of which had been grilled in banana leaves. Each little packet opened to the most potent pate-like wedges (white fish, pink pork) with a firm consistency and an incredibly sour kick in the tongue. Just a little bit of som mixed with a ball of sticky rice, alternated with an accompanying jaeow: delicious! The jaeow maengda came in little plastic cups from Thailand–so the label actually had the Thai name, nam prik maengda, though this same variety is made and eaten on this side of the river, too. It was a particularly dry and crumbly style, slightly sweet, with the consistency of pork flossy. Its ingredient of note was a water cockroach that lives in the countryside.

The shop owner told us she makes som every day with nothing more than fermented fish (or fermented pork), garlic (and lots of it), cooked sticky rice, salt and MSG.

Breakfast, Day 5

Last month, we spent nine days in the field with Jim Harris’s team in rural Phongsali province. We camped at the local dispensary and showered with cold river water, which was piped uphill to the village. The team hired two young women to cook, clean and launder. Our meals were served communally, outside, on an old red table. There weren’t enough benches and chairs, so we stood around baskets of sticky rice and the plat du jour. Each person paid 30,000 kip ($3.50) for three daily meals.

In those nine days, I kept a diary of what we ate. With a few small exceptions (late meals, off trekking), I managed to record almost every meal. I present that diary here because I find it a fascinating telltale of village life, its limitations, its repetitions and routines. Villagers bestowed the team with little gifts of homegrown garlic and backyard tamarind. But after the novelty faded (Sophoon is unaccustomed to foreign guests), I don’t think our cooks quite knew what to do with us. I would have loved more of the roots and vegetables that villagers collect in the forest, as well as the greens they grow in their garden. I offered to pay extra for fresh lettuce, spinach, herbs and other greens–but the residents of Sophoon almost never sell their vegetables, so the concept somewhat confused them. When something new appeared on the table, it likely had come strapped to the back of a dusty moto, driven by itinerant peddlers who make the daily trek from Dien Bien Phu, not far across the border. These sorts of travels make me a more appreciative person. The surprise of a fresh mango or mustard leaves tickled my palate with delight.

I’m a lover of simple, spicy farm food; homegrown and homemade. But it didn’t take long for my tongue to tire. By Day 3, I was sick of fish (and egg, which neither Jerry nor I eat). Of course, repetition is a matter of life in Sophoon. Villagers eat what’s in season, what falls off the tree, what pops through the soil in the forest, or what comes through on the occasional truck to Vietnam.

On the other hand, Sophoon is an organic locavore heaven. When a cook walked into the kitchen hut with a chicken, we ate it for dinner that night. And Michael Pollan would approve: nothing on this menu contained more than five ingredients. With a couple of canned exceptions, absolutely everything originated in the hills between Sophoon and Dien Bien Phu.

Dinner ’round the red table

So goes our week of village sustenance (with comments in parentheses):

DAY 1
Dinner
-Sticky rice
-Red jaeow (or jeow—spicy paste made with toasted chiles. More on this to come.)
-Minced fish with chile
-Plain boiled cabbage
-Green & yellow beans with tomato, onion, chile, garlic

DAY 2
Breakfast
-Sticky rice
-Red jaeow
-Fried egg with green onion, garlic, tomato, chile
-Boiled cabbage with garlic and chile

Lunch
-Sticky rice
-Red Jaeow
-Boiled cabbage
-Fried small fish

Dinner
-Sticky rice
-Red jaeow
-Fragrant fish soup with lemongrass (which team leader Vilaisack plucked from a field after a bomb demolition)
-Fish laap

Team leader Vilaisack with lemongrass cut from a field near a bomb demolition

DAY 3
Breakfast
-Sticky rice
-Very garlicky red jaeow
-Boiled cabbage and tomato with garlic
-Small fried fish

Lunch
-Sticky rice
-Red jaeow, super garlicky and juicy
-Omelet with tomato, chile, onion
-Spicy slightly bitter fish (from Dien Bien Phu) stuffed with lemongrass in a soup of tomato, garlic and local sour fruit

Dinner
-Sticky rice
-Red jaeow
-Omelet
-Fish/tomato/lemongrass soup
(This is getting old and the team is griping. Only fish and egg, egg and fish. We lobby for more vegetables.)

DAY 4
Breakfast
-Sticky rice
-Red jaeow
-Omelet
(This is really old. And skimpy. We try to get the cooks to buy vegetables from the locals. It costs 3,000 kip, 35 cents, for a kilogram of any vegetables. We offer to pay extra if necessary.)

Lunch
-Sticky rice
-Red jaeow
-Pork with boiled garlic, tomato, chile
-Mustard greens soup with chile and black pepper
(Variety! A distinct improvement.)

Dinner
-Sticky rice
-Red jaeow
-Steamed cassava leaves (which the team collected after a demolition)
-Dried salty crispy beef
-Pork with tomato, yellow beans, chile, garlic

DAY 5
Breakfast
-Sticky rice
-Red jaeow
-Dried toasted buffalo skin strips (hard as rock)
-Yesterday’s leftover pork cooked with garlic, chile, spinach
-Minced pork fat cooked in tomato garlic broth for a Lao khao soy-style sauce
-Bowl of fresh raw lettuce leaves
(A pig was purchased before yesterday’s lunch, and we’re still eating it).

Lunch
-Sticky rice
-Fresh green roasted chile jaeow, super hot
-Pork fat with shredded tomato and cabbage
-Mustard green soup with hunks of pork fat

Dinner
(Jim succeeds in organizing “Mexico night.”)
-Raw cabbage leaves to use as tortillas
-Canned black refried beans cooked with fresh garlic
-“Salsa” of cooked tomatoes, onions, chile
(Jim uses the cabbage to wrap the ingredients like a taco. It works. The guys each try one and declare it sep, meaning delicious. Then they eat their sticky rice, pork fat with greens and green chile jaeow and deer meat of mysterious origins.)

Jim explains “Mexico Night” tacos to the team…

…which everyone enjoys before reverting to the usual sticky rice.

DAY 6
Breakfast
-Sticky rice
-Green jaeow
-Mild bok choy soup with chile and garlic
-Dark dried beef (we’re told beef, but it looks distinctly like the previous night’s deer) fried with bok choy, garlic, onion, a bit of tomato and pork fat

Lunch
-Sticky rice
-Red jaeow
-Dried beef pieces
-Beef, bok choy and garlic soup
-Fresh sweet mango

Dinner
-Sticky rice
-Red jaeow
-Fish soup (only fish and gingery broth, no vegetables)
-Watermelon (which I bought off a truck that stopped in the village and dumped its stash)

DAY 7
Breakfast
-Sticky rice
-Green jaeow with added tamarind
-Cilantro and green chile soup
-Steamed cassava leaves
-Canned sardines and tomato
-Omelet

Lunch
-Sticky rice
-Green jaeow
-Papaya salad with peanuts
-Mustard greens soup
-Green beans fried with chicken, chile, garlic

Dinner
-Sticky rice
-Red jaeow
-Green beans with chicken

DAY 8
Breakfast
-Sticky rice
-Red jaeow
-Boiled mustard greens soup, just a little chile and salt
-Plain boiled green beans
-Fried meaty bacon with little fat

Dinner
-Sticky rice
-Red jaeow
-Tamarind chicken soup
-Chopped “grenade” chicken with green beans
(In addition, I cook canned tuna, tomato, onion, garlic and chile.)

DAY 9
Breakfast
-Sticky rice
-Red juicy jaeow
-Fresh lettuce leaves
-Canned sardines in tomato sauce
-Sweet potato ginger soup
(This is good. Mild, young, fragrant ginger slightly sweetened from the potatoes. I think of making it at home: start with chicken stock, some small fresh garlic and garlic greens and/or chives, ginger, potato chunks, dried red chile, salt. If not using regular potatoes, add a pinch of palm sugar.)

Lunch
-Sticky rice
-Red jaeow
-Melon soup with green onion and grenade chicken
-Papaya salad
-Fried forest ferns with chile, garlic, fish (Borneo-style but these ferns have a leafier consistency… now why couldn’t we have had these sooner?