Something I have in common with fierce Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: we both fractured our elbows in 2009. That makes us like blood sisters, right?

I am now obsessed with tamarind...

Cooking classes are a popular "tourist attraction" in Thailand. I am usually not one for conventional tourist attraction, but you will see from my future posts full of vacation photos that I basically did every typical tourist attraction available, because they're so damn cool over there. I mean, who doesn't want to ride an elephant, drink "twig whiskey" with old men who never quite got right after a few decade of opium, swim with 50 different kinds of tropical fish in a shallow coral reef, and see a real, practical application for gold leaf? More on these later. This post is about my love affair with food and how I got to make a whole bunch of it from scratch, using amazingly fresh ingredients. There was also a small gang of cats roaming around the house where the cooking class was held, which was a big bonus for this crazy cat lady in training.

John is prepping his ingredients


breafast: pad thai

spring rolls (fried & steamed)








tom kha gai soup with oyster mushrooms


cashew chicken stir fry


green chicken curry


red chicken curry with thai eggplant


yellow chicken curry stir-fry



papaya salad


who let me play with fire?