Obsession with Asian Stores!

Banh Mi ( Vietnamese sandwich) and eggroll

International Sauces Galore!

Instead of using MSG, many Asian people have switched to that yellow chicken powder. o

This may sound crazy or weird, but one of the most important factor when it comes to me deciding if I want to move to a city is whether or not they have Asian grocery stores!  Since I absolutely love cooking, being able to have access to Asian stores is a MUST for me. This Vmart in Providence has everything I need for cooking a variety of Asian food. This may not be the nicest store I shop at, it is pretty affordable so it’s good enough for me. My only complaint is that the stock guy did not know much about Asian food when I had asked him where some things were. Poor guy he felt bad for not knowing what I was asking for. Since he didn’t know where the padek was, I looked for it myself!

Treat yourself!

This is my second week on that “military diet” and I have to say, I don’t look as bloated. I will weigh myself at school tomorrow when I go in to work. The first three days I had only lost 1 pound. As for my appetite, it has been pretty manageable but today I did have a major craving for my curry dish! I might make some this weekend as  my “treat” meal. I’m not going to call it my “cheat” meal because I don’t call living life  ” cheating”.  We should savor our food and enjoy it without feeling guilty!

Dieting with Lao Food

Typical Lao food

I  have decided in my quest to drop some weight I will eat mostly Lao food. Two meals of the three will be Lao food instead of American food. Fortunately I am a good Lao cook so I will not have any problem except I will have to work on my portion control. Too much sticky rice and sausage is not exactly the healthiest food to eat. For example look at the portion on this plate, it is way too much for one person. I my defense I did share it with my kids.   I don’t know if I will lose any weight just mainly eating Lao food, but I am going to experiment and see. I will experiment with making healthier version of traditional Lao food. For example, using sharitaki noodles (low carbs)  instead of pho noodles when I make Pho.

I will  keep  you posted and uploaded with my recipe changes. Please feel free to share.

Exploitation of People Desperate to Loose Weight

Does this look familiar to you?

The new year has just started but we are already being bombarded with commercials by Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, Atkins, South Beach, Medifast, and many more diet companies,reminding us to get our fat ass off the couch and get going on our New Year’s resolution! For some of us procrastinators, we don’t even want to turn on the TV because we know there is going to be a weight loss commercial making  us feel guilty about devouring that  piece of stuffed crust pizza or that greasy leg of chicken. The bottom line is while the TV world is ready for us  to lose weight, we are still trying to persuade ourselves that today is the DAY where we will put down that pizza or chicken leg and take up that free weight peeking out from under the TV stand. And it doesn’t help that there are so many diet companies ready to take advantage of our desperation to drop that love handle we lovingly call our “side kicks”!

I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about diet fads considering I have been guilty of falling victim to so many that I have lost count. I have tried the 17 day diet, Atkins diet, cabbage soup diet, the 7 day cleanse diet  and the list goes on.  I have jumped on so many diet bandwagon that I am a regular customer at the front of that line. The conductor knows me by my name! You get the point.

Besides trying out the different diet fads, I have coupled it with several workouts from cardiokickboxing to Pilates to Yoga to cycling to weightlifting to Zumba to Tae Bo! The point is I’m still trying to find that right combo of diet and exercise that will help me get fit and make good on that New Year’s resolution! In the meanwhile, I will try to not fall prey to those diet companies out to exploit my desire to be fit and cute again! Hopefully, one day I can shout, “Eureka!” once I find that right diet and exercise combo!

Lao Food

For some Americans, starting a pot of coffee signals the start of the day, but for many Laotians, it’s putting on the rice steamer.  When I was living at home, my parents would always get up early to cook the rice and that’s how we would wake up, with the fragrant smell of rice wafting through the house.  To us this meant, delicious food was not too far off.

Both my mom and dad have their speciality when it comes to meals.  One of my dad’s speciality is pork sausage which he makes from scratch.  He usually uses a hind portion of the pork to make it. He does not use a meat grinder to cut the meat.  Instead he chops it up because he likes the rough texture and chewy texture of the finished product.  He uses many seasoning, spices, and herbs such as thai pepper and lemon grass in the sausage.  The end result is a delicious sausage that you can freeze and cook and eat later like I did one afternoon.  To balance out the slightly greasy taste of the sausage, I accompanied it with brown rice.

Mom’s visit

Dessert

Stir-fry

Beef salad

A couple of weeks ago, my mom came to visit my siblings and I.  Before she came down I told her that I would like for her to cook me some of my favorites especially the desserts since I rarely eat it! When she came down she brought my dad’s famous beef meatballs which he has become an expert in making over the years. Also she brought some of delicious pork sausage that we cook in the oven and ate with rice. 

My mom made stir-fry, dessert, pho, and salads for us.  She cooked the whole week she was here. Sitting in the kitchen and eating together reminds me of my time at home as a kid and teenager. Her cooking brings back memories of friends and family coming over to eat on the weekends where we would have at lest five main dishes.  The adults would be sprawl out in the living room floor sitting on the matts and the kids would be sitting on the kitchen floor with their food.  The adults would be eating, drinking, and laughing at something somebody else would say.  After the meals were over, somebody would crank up the stereo and put on some Lao tape. Then some people would get up and start up the lum vong.  Some would dance, some would sing while others just sat back and relax and laugh at everybody else.

I along with the rest of the teenagers would help the women clean up and wash the dishes.  Then all the teenagers would go outside and visit while our parents stayed inside the house. 

My mom’s visit reminds me of how much I miss living in a Lao community where everybody knew each other, where one Lao person helped another, where we enjoy the simple things in life.

I am Lao

Wow! I can’t believed I used to eat these weird looking insects!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVReWa8hQ

Recently, I saw this music video, “I am Lao” that reminded me of all the delicious food I ate growing up.  My mom is an exceptional cook.  I would be so bold as to say she is more talented than a mere cook, she is truely amazing  when it comes to food.  Everything she makes is fantastic.  Everybody loves her cooking. I am excited about her upcoming visitation so I can eat some of my favorite Lao food.

My mom has many specialities from pho, to chicken salad to different sauces. One of the things we ate was chail( sauce) cicada.  The only bad part was we, the kids had to go captured the cicada from people’s houses! My siblings and I along with other Laotian teenagers and adults would grab our bags when it was dark, and when we could hear the cicada buzzing. We headed out the door with our flash lights and plastic bags to go in search of our prey. Of course, we would start with our own front yard then head out to the rest of the neighborhood.  Looking back now, I’m surprised we didn’t get arrested for trespassing on people’s properties. I guess it also helped that we knew almost everybody in the neighborhood because all the kids played together. At first I was extremely embarrassed at the start of my cicada hunting career because I was a teenager who still cared what others think. So, when my friends first asked what we were doing with the cicada, I didn’t even know what lie to tell them.  I can’t very well tell them it was for a science experiment because we all went to the only high school in town and they know what exactly goes on in class.  As for saying it was for a bug collection, that wouldn’t work either since we had our bags stuffed with them. In the end, I was forced to tell the truth: we eat them! Strangely, most of our friends in the neighborhood did not freak out as much as I thought they would.  Once they got over the bit of news that we love to eat it, some of the kids even helped us hunt the cicada.

So here is the rough recipe of my mom’s chail cicada.  My memory is a little faulty, but I’m pretty sure this is what she put in it. The first thing is to roost the locus, thai pepper, and a head of yellow onion in the oven. Once all that is cooked, smash the thai pepper in the coke (stone grinder used for papaya salad)  then throw in the cooked locust and some of the yellow onion.  Mashed everything up then throw in some padek, fish sauce, and msg. When it comes to Lao food, we don’t really use measurements like teaspoons or tablespoon as much as in American cooknig because we season our food according to our taste.