groceries, mushrooms, rainstorm, reptiles, and it's hot.

The weather here is always pretty steamy, but the past few days have been especially hot, and yesterday was the first time here that I've wished for the temperature to drop just a couple of degrees. I, the queen of down jackets in 75 degree weather, hat and gloves at the 4th of July picnic, 5 fleece blankets on August nights, have encountered weather too hot and too humid for even my liking.

The day today was cloudless, bright and hot, hot hot. I sweat through my classes (no a/c and sometimes no fans in the classrooms) and through my speech team practice after school (I showed my students a clip of an Obama speech as an excuse to come into the air conditioned computer room, though I'm confident they didn't understand a word of it). On my walk to the pool in the afternoon I ran across a strange lizard by the road.. it was 3-4 feet long and moved kind of like a crocodile...

unidentified reptilian creature lurking in the lawn

At FoodLand, a cheap store just outside Bangkok, I picked up groceries for next week. the sort of things that at home would be rare and foreign ingredients, but now are daily staples. it's telling to look at the shopping lists I make here next to what I'd put on my lists in Portland, and on my lists in Honduras. all three with such different culinary traditions...

standard Thailand shopping list:
- curry pastes
- coconut milk
- baby eggplants
- bean sprouts
- sweet basil leaves
- green mangoes and papaya
- mangosteens, lychees and rambutans
- coconut yogurt
- limes
- oyster mushrooms
- tim tams, of course
- rice
- rice noodles
- fish sauce
- bottles of drinking water

standard Portland shopping list:
- apples
- pears
- breakfast cereal
- oatmeal
- sliced sandwich bread
- cheese, cheese, cheese
- pasta
- zucchini
- bell peppers
- onions
- garlic
- bottle of wine
- bread from the local bakery
- plain organic yogurt

standard Roatan shopping list:
- plantains (maduros and verdes)
- bananas
- pineapples
- bag of refried red beans
- tortillas
- cilantro
- garlic
- onions
- mangoes
- LOTS of avocados
- tomatoes
- 6pack of Salva Vida
- bottles of drinking water

..hm. maybe that wasn't entirely fascinating, but I find it interesting.

On the way out, I bought a white little egg shaped bun, topped with black sesame seeds and filled with a thick paste made of sugar and ground black sesame seeds and ? The slightly bitter taste of the sesame paste just doesn't do it for me (and there was so much of the stuff) in what should be a tender fluffy sweet treat.. but at least I got a (blurred) picture of the little guy.

black sesame bun

Possibly the biggest surprise I've had in terms of typical foods here, was discovering just how many mushrooms thais use in their cooking. I don't know if it's just the region where I live, but [you'll be pleased to hear, Ryan] I've seen mushrooms of all sorts in much of the food I eat here. The classic tom yam goong (spicy prawn soup) always has small white hemispheres bobbing on the surface - I think these are sort of like button mushrooms at home - and other soups/stews often feature a smaller, feathery mushroom as a main ingredient. The ubiquitous mushroom here, from what I can see, is one that they translate as "baby angel" but is extremely similar to what we call oyster mushrooms. Chewy, savory and meaty, browned in some hot oil, they're the epitome of umami.. I use them instead of meat in a lot of dishes.

baby angel, or oysters, mushrooms on my dining room table
I paid 18baht (about 50 cents) for a full pound

On the motorbike ride home this evening foreboding black clouds were rapidly taking over the blue sky, the wind was picking up, and precisely as I stepped through the door into my house, the downpour began. I'm upstairs now, surrounded by the deafening din of raindrops the size of cats' heads (this may be a slight exaggeration) plummeting to earth, landing on banana leaves and tin roofs and pavement. I think I'll stay in tonight..