KennethT

When I was a kid, we went to Chi-Chi's also. I loved it!

Everything looks great, but those pancakes would put me in teh hospital! (I've got a major buckwheat allergy... don't ask me how I found that out.. hehe)

Unless I'm desperate, I usually avoid ordering water spinach for delivery. It invariably ends up overcooked and mushy/slimy and generally less than pleasant. I'll still eat it as it vaguely resembles when it's good, but my wife will categorically refuse.

Interesting. Can you get the Shark brand where you are? It's made in Thailand and is the closest that I've found to what was served to me when traveling there. Definitely very different from the Rooster sauce, which is ubiquitous here, but as you say, nothign like real Sriracha.

Looks great - what do you use for a boil?

And this came from a tasting she did today...

I forgot to post this - this came back with my wife from a trip to a bunch of Port houses.... Those Symingtons make a damn good olive oil! Although not as good as their port....

I've never seen that type of insulated bag - that is fantastic! We have the same as @Anna N describes - and even worse than potholes are delivery guys on bikes weaving in and out of traffic! @liuzhou for the hand pulled noodles, do they arrive cold or hot? Places that do that here typically cook them, then chill them to put in the containers so the noodles don't turn to mush while in transit? They also tend to stick together into a single mass, so usually I have to add a bit of soup and then jostle them around to loosen, then add teh rest of the soup. Since the noodles are room temp, I also wind up having to reheat the soup before adding since it will cool once it hits the cold noodles.

Vietnamese grilled chicken (actually baked/broiled) on a bed of rau ram with stir fried yu choi and sticky rice. I could really use a good banh mi right now! Not much better than rau ram soaked in chicken juices... Pandan flavored kuih bakar from Lady Wong for dessert

Lemongrass rehab is going well... Lots of new shoots.

Finally able to make a large batch of Old Lai Huat style sambal, so sambal grouper.

what is paddy fragrant rice? Is it a variety of rice or a cooking method?

Got it - I'm with you - I'd be getting the local fish also!

Happy to see this, as always. Will Ian miss entirely? I think it's just about due west of you right now, off the coast of Georgia/South Carolina. On average, how is the sushi rice there?

I don't remember where I read it, but I thought that morels were poisonous when raw

Sichuan style mahi mahi.

Beer Chang! I haven't had one of those since being in Chiang Mai 16 years ago!

Black pepper shrimp with stir fried water spinach

do you ever eat the leaves whole when they're fresh?

Thanks. Years ago, in Saigon, in one of the bushes of herbs provided at practically every meal, there was an herb I couldn't identify. When I asked someone, they just called it "wild herb". The leaves looked similar to the lemon verbena in @Paul Bacino's post above - they did have a slight lemony flavor that I really enjoyed. Over the years I've tried to identify it and think that maybe it was a young mango leaf, but I haven't seen one in person to really know.

Where do you get fresh lemon verbena? I don't think I've ever seen it before - I've always seen it dried. Are the leaves tough? Can you eat them without grinding them?

Just an update on the morning glory - as of this morning, I see some small roots already!

Attempting growing morning glory from the grocery store (actually a street vendor in Chinatown) Lemongrass rehab doing well - they were getting slightly root bound in the solo cups so now in the fabric bag.

I had COVID shot #5 yesterday and am still feeling slightly under the weather, so chicken soup to the rescue: Viet mien ga with some rau muong aka ong choy aka morning glory aka kangkung aka pak boong that was gifted to me yesterday.

My wife brought this home from Portugal: Other than the obvious (est straight from the can) what should I do with them?