covering up and another sticky dessert

Baring knees and shoulders in the neighborhood here is inappropriate behavior. In the heat, I really want to bare my shoulders and knees. Especially when I run. It's enough to keep me inside the house some evenings. Hungry for dinner, in need of some exercise, but unwilling to get changed out of my tank top. I just lay here on the cool tile floor of the living room with the fan on Hi blowing in my face until the sun goes down and my hunger gets the better of me.

Yesterday evening, hot and hungry, I went out for my last meal in the neighborhood. The hunched, frizzy-haired, toothy-smiled woman who lives two houses down was sitting on the curb munching on something as I walked by. She called out to ask where I was going (like she does every day) and I told her I was going to eat (like I do every day). She laughed and shook her head and talked to me in Thai for about a minute straight. and the whole time I smiled and laughed when she laughed and nodded my head vigorously when it seemed approprate and made the "uuhhhh, uuuhh" sound that means (as far as I can tell) "yes, yes, I see, ok, hmm, really?, interesting." Basically, "I'm listening to you." This is how our conversations normally go, but this evening I got a treat at the end. As I said goodbye she offered me a bag of little leaf-wrapped treats which she said were sweet and made of rice and tua, which in Thai is a broad word for nut, bean or seed. So I still had no idea what I was getting.

Turns out it was a sticky rice dessert. A little pink, yes pink, banana surrounded by coconutty sticky rice and some sweet black beans, all wrapped in a banana leaf and steamed.

A warm, sticky, sweet, chewy little parcel to finish off my last supper of tom yam goong and rice and eggs.

On an entirely unrelated note, I recently stumbled upon this gem while avoiding the chore of grading 160 final exams.