Posts Tagged Food

Fresh Bamboo

Fri, Apr 22nd, 2011  |   Food, Musings No Comments

I recently read The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, a book that reminded me of what a privilege and pleasure it is to be able to eat fresh produce year round. Fresh, locally grown food inevitably tastes better than store-bought stuff, and the nutritional content can be much higher as well.

In fact, this is one of my favourite aspects of spending a lot of time in Japan, where there is a long history of knowing what to eat, and when best to eat it.

Take these bamboo shoots for instance:

Fresh bamboo shoots from the bamboo forest next door
Fresh bamboo shoots from the bamboo forest next door

One of my neighbors owns land with a bunch of bamboo trees on it, and each year around this time, the family picks fresh bamboo shoots and shares with the neighborhood.

If you’ve never seen fresh bamboo shoots, they don’t look like much more than hairy stumps. But when you peel the fuzzy covering off and get to the tender, succulent part inside…yummy! So much tastier than canned bamboo products.

We’ve made a couple of dishes so far, the first being a simple stir-fry of bamboo shoots, fresh green peppers and garlic:

Stir-fried bamboo shoot with green pepper and garlic
Stir-fried bamboo shoot with green pepper and garlic

And just now, we made steamed rice with bamboo, chicken and really fresh green peas:

Steamed rice with chicken, bamboo shoots and green peas
Steamed rice with chicken, bamboo shoots and green peas

The only thing better than making the dishes is eating them!

Ayutthaya

Wed, Jul 14th, 2010  |   Funny Stuff, Musings, People, Places, Adventures 2 Comments

A couple of days after TDEX wrapped up, a few of us drove up to Ayutthaya. Actually, a couple of us drove. The rest of us sat in the back asking: “Are we there yet?” at 30-second intervals.

The primary goal was to have lunch at a restaurant called Ton Nam that’s famous for serving river prawns.


River prawns at Ton Nam restaurant, Ayutthaya

We also tried a thai dessert/ snack called roti sai mai, which is sort of like stringy cotton candy that you wrap in a thin roti. I’m not really a dessert person, but it was good, as you can see from the expression on Mean’s face:


Mean enjoying roti sai mai

To work off some of the calories ingested, we spent a bit of time walking around a couple of the temples, mostly Wat Mahathat and the reclining Buddha. If you live in Bangkok or have occasion to visit Thailand, it’s worth travelling to Ayutthaya to learn a little about Thai history. The first time I visited the old part of the city was over 20 years ago.


Aey and Mean at the reclining Buddha in Ayutthaya

It was a weekday during rainy season, so there weren’t many other people around. This gave us the perfect opportunity to conduct extensive tests of our photo and video gear…as you can see in the two series of gif files below.

Among us, we had a Canon IXY220IS compact camera, an Olympus Pen camera, a Panasonic GF-1, a Canon 5D Mark II and a Sony CX550V handycam…so we had to put all the hi-tech hardware to good use.

It probably says a lot about us that this was what we decided to do:



Despite appearances (particularly Eric’s Calvin-like grin), this was a serious camera test. Eric was running through us with the video camera set to capture slow-motion footage.

One of the clips actually turned out quite nicely. I’m sure Eric will post it once he’s back home…if for nothing more than to demonstrate that there really was a (somewhat) constructive purpose to his running a slalom course in the middle of the old city of Ayutthaya.

And of course, after getting back to Bangkok, we went for more food, starting with incredibly good Som Tam Gai Yang (green papaya salad, grilled chicken, plus other stuff) and sticky rice:


Eric Cheng with sticky rice

…followed by my all-time favourite dessert, mango with sticky rice, from the vendor on the corner of Thonglor and Sukhumvit:


Fresh mangos…for mango with sticky rice!

Eating so much in one day was certainly hard work, but someone had to do it.

10 Great Places to Eat in Phuket

Mon, Apr 20th, 2009  |   Featured, Food, Video, Multimedia 14 Comments

In case it’s not completely obvious, I love the fact that I get to try lots of great food in many of the places I travel to, especially in Asia.

When I was in Phuket last year, we spent two entire days eating at local food stalls and restaurants…places not on the tourist map.

This is a short video summary of 10 recommendations for places to try, which goes together with this PDF file that has details of the specific locations and dishes…in case you’re heading over to Phuket.