I feel like I'm in my second trimester. I have painful food cravings but absolutely zero way to satiate them. Today I found peanut butter. I spent approximately a million dollars on it and then ate the entire jar with a spoon while sitting on a bench in a department store.
I also found cheese sticks. Another million dollars. They are disgusting but have the faint murmurings of actual cheese tucked somewhere in their repulsiveness and I eat them to remember the cheeses I once knew.
In class this week I doled out the numerous midterm F's, there was a rapid emotional recovery and we moved on. We are now studying food. Studying food might be the motivation behind my cravings. Today in my class (and Lauren's as well) we assigned them to write a comic strip about foods that they don't have in Thailand. I was literally salivating over Guitar and Ople's comic about a chip with guacamole who was jealous of tuna salad because it got to be on crackers instead of chips.
I would kill a man for tuna salad. I would kill a man for guacamole.
Instead, at some point today I was given a cube of unidentifiable green paste. When I asked what it was the Ajarn giving it to me was at a loss for words. It was tasty. Especially if I closed my eyes and pretended it was cubed lettuce.
2 nights ago I dreamt about bagels. A full on dream. Not just a passing moment in said dream but an entire dream centered around bagels. Putting cream cheese on the bagel. Toasting the bagel. Eating the bagel. Having another bagel
I'm on my way out to dinner right now. I foresee rice, possibly with a side of noodles.
I was only there for 3 weeks and I remember dying for a salad! You can eat fruit though right, as long as you can peel it? And salads/veggies are safe at nicer restaurants/hotels is what we were taught (since they purify their water). Maybe that's a lie, but no one got sick from it...
ReplyDeleteare you kidding me? i just wrote an insanely long, witty comment, and the blogosphere just ate it. ughhhhhh
ReplyDeleteanyway, there's a salad bar opening on nimman tomorrow. AMAZING SALAD BAR, claiming insecticide free salads. thank god.
also, blue diamond (moon muang soi 9) has salads. and avocados.
and smoothie blues has guac & chips (haven't tried it, but i've seen it and it looks ok)
as for cheese, i think you've just got to hit up the american/italian (ie slightly more expensive) places in town. i feel like thai people have never known the glory of cheddar. sadness.
This sounds extremely familiar. Not in the oh-I-remember-that-about-thailand! way, but in the I would kill a man for salad way. The only "vegetable" I ever got served in my host family was creamed spinach. 4oz of peanut butter was also nearly impossible to find, and when it was found, it basically cost me the equivalent of 12 baguettes.
ReplyDelete...I have spent some time considering how to fed-ex you lettuce, and the prospects aren't good. I will keep thinking though.
1) Elena, you're a genious. You've written the blog that I wish I could have been inspired enough to write.
ReplyDelete2) Why the hell didn't you tell me you were keeping a blog?? Thank God for Liz Consky.
3) Learn to love Som Tam. It will replace and supercede your salad cravings. And this is coming from a vegetarian.
4) I was in NY last week, and averaged two bagels a day. Averaged. But it was really just a substitute for my Panaeng Moo cravings.
5) Things that cost a million dollars in America: EVERYTHING.
6) All roads are always under construction in Laos. This is why Rama V created the railroads, and the Wright Brothers invented the airplane. Things that are worth a million dollars: a 50 minute flight to avoid 24 hours of overland travel.
7) I owe you a phone call. You seem to be managing fabulously. I'm proud of you.
-Ted