Green Mango Salad with Fish

Green mango, cherry tomatoes, tilapia, Chinese sausage

I was a bit over zealous when I cooked last night and ended up with too much food. As such, we did not eat the steam fish.

As I was making dinner tonight, I did not feel like having steam fish. A steam fish is really meant to be eaten right away. Looking through my fridge, I found some green mango and cherry tomatoes, so I decided to make a salad with these things instead.

I deboned the fish, cut up the Chinese sausage (with witch I steamed the fish), and then cut up the  mango and cherry tomatoes, and then mixed everything with some sesame oil, olive oil, fish sauce and oyster sauce. I think it would go nicely with some sweet chili peppers as well but nothing spicy for me and Sammy. I would also be good to add some lime juice but I had none available.

At any rate, Sammy and I devoured the dish in no time and Sammy said that it was pretty good. That’s the only food critic that I care for now.

 

Halloween Party in Chiang Mai

Our car had been in the shop for about a month since the car accident. We rented a car for that time period and were to return it this morning. We were supposed to get our car back yesterday, but were told that it wouldn’t be ready until this afternoon at 3pm. We extended our lease for that period of time.

When we checked the progress yesterday afternoon, the car seemed far from finished, so we were a bit skeptical about getting it back today, but they assured us that it would be ready by 3pm.

At 2:30pm, we were passing by the dealership so Gary dropped in to check on the progress, and there were still much to be done. The car did not even have the bumpers on. We were told that it wouldn’t be ready until 4pm. We tried to call the car rental company for a later drop off, but were told that the person was already on his way to the dealership to pick up the car.

Oh well, so we returned the car to the rental company by 3pm and got our deposit back (we had to pay for the car rental ourselves even though the accident was not our fault. The insurance paid for the car fixes). We then went in to the dealership to wait for our car.

The whole dealership was decorated with orange and black for a Halloween celebration! I remembered receiving a text message from the dealership before regarding a Halloween party for customer appreciation but never paid attention. Oh well, since we had to wait for the car, we might as well enjoyed the process.

Inside the dealership, there were tables setup with drinks and deserts. There was also a tarot card reader stand. There were quite a few people sitting inside with heaves of food on the table. We have been told that Thai people don’t pay much attention to the exact time, except for food.

Cupcake

Green bean paste mochi

Outside the dealership, there were food stalls making fresh food.

Fried oysters with egg

Shrimp Pad Thai

 

Coconut crepe

Fried meat balls with cheese inside

Some of the employees came by and saying Thai to us, encouraging us to get some food etc. (I presumed). Since we had nothing better to do, we ended up doing quite a bit of food tasting. Samantha was quite happy. Even the owner’s wife came by and talked to us in Thai. She switched to English after we’d told her that we did not understand Thai and that we came from California. She said that a lot of Thai people wanted to visit California.

We finally got out car back around 5pm. It looks good from the outside but there are some issues still, but that’s for another day.

Kluai Khai (Egg Banana)

Since we have come to Thailand, we have come across an amazing array of bananas. We don’t know how many different kinds of bananas are there in Thailand, but I have read numbers like 20, 30, and even 100.

One day, we bought a bunch of small bananas thinking that they were probably custard bananas or something like that. Then Gary had his first taste, and he exclaimed, “These bananas are orange inside!”

I couldn’t imagine what an orange banana would look and taste like, so I had one myself to see. The skin was very thin. Once you took a bite, the flesh inside the banana was almost orange in color, and it was extremely sweet! I agreed with Gary that this was probably the best banana we had ever tasted, better even than the apple bananas in Hawaii!

After some research, this banana seems to be called the Egg Banana (which is quite appropriate for its orange color inside), or Kluai Khai. Last night, we bought some more bananas and we hope that they turn out to be the same egg bananas, but they turned out to be something else, still tasty but not quite as good.