About christao408

An expat American who moved to Bangkok in 2005 with his partner (now husband). Life is a grand adventure and each experience is worth having if for no other reason than to remind us that we are alive.

New Year’s Cinnamon Rolls

Posted on 10 January 2010 by christao408

Perhaps I have my timeline wrong because now that I think about it, these may have been New Year’s Eve breakfast cinnamon rolls. Nonetheless, we started our morning with a pan of cinnamon rolls that were mighty tasty, especially with a tangy orange zest and buttermilk icing.

My great-grandmother, a woman of stout German heritage, made cinnamon rolls regularly. These were yeast rolls which required more time and advance planning. I’m quite keen on a recipe from Cooks Illustrated that uses as its base a baking powder biscuit dough. You mix the dough, roll it out, add the topping then roll it up, cut it and bake it. Easy.

The ingredient for this recipe are pretty simple. The cinnamon-sugar filling is 5.25 oz of brown sugar, 1.75 oz of granulated sugar, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, 1/8 teaspoon each ground cloves and salt, and 1 tablespoon of melted butter. You can modify the sugar and spices a bit if you would like to achieve a different flavor profile or level of sweetness. For example, you could add some nutmeg or cut back on the sugar a little.

The biscuit dough is 12.5 oz all-purpose flour, 2 tablespoons granulated sugar, 1.25 teaspoons baking powder, 0.5 teaspoons baking soda, 0.5 teaspoon salt, 1.25 cups buttermilk and 6 tablespoons melted unsalted butter.

Mix the sugar and spices together and then add the one tablespoon butter, stirring until it forms the consistency of wet sand.

Mix the dry ingredients for the dough together. Pour 2 tablespoons of the melted butter into the buttermilk, whisking to distribute the butter into little drops throughout the buttermilk. Pour this liquid mixture into the dry ingredients.

Stir together until just combined. The dough will be wet and tacky.

Turn the dough onto a floured board and knead just a few times until it becomes smooth and is no longer shaggy.

Using your hands, pat the dough into a 12 by 9 inch rectangle. Brush the remaining butter onto the dough leaving a small gap at the edges.

Evenly sprinkle the cinnamon-sugar mixture across the dough, leaving a border around the edge. You can use less than the entire amount of the mixture if you don’t want the rolls to be as sweet. You can also add chopped nuts and raisins or other dried fruit at this point. I used pecans and black and golden raisins.

Working with a bench scraper or spatula, start rolling the dough along the long side, pressing down to make the roll pretty tight. This helps hold the filling in place. As you get to the final edge, brush a little more melted butter along the edge to help it hold firmly. Pinch the edges shut and gently smooth the log so it is uniform in size.

Cut the log into nine equally sized slices.

Carefully place each slice in a buttered nonstick cake pan. Place the first slice in the center and distribute the remaining slices around the first one like flower petals. You can brush the tops of the rolls with any remaining butter and sprinkle on any leftover filling or filling that fell out on the cutting board.

Bake in a preheated 425 F oven for about 25 minutes or until edge are golden brown. After loosening the edges with a spatula and allowing to rest for two or three minutes, slide onto a greased cooling rack without separating. I found it easier, though, to invert them onto a plate and then invert them again onto a second plate or serving platter. Otherwise the buns wanted to fall apart. Wait five more minutes before icing.

While the rolls are baking, prepare a cream cheese icing. The icing is 2 tablespoons of softened cream cheese, 2 tablespoons buttermilk, some orange zest and 4 oz confectioner’s sugar, whisked together.

Drizzle the icing onto the rolls, as much or as little as you desire. These are best eaten while warm but they tasted pretty good upon reheating later in the day, too.

The finished product! Beautiful, isn’t it? With some fresh fruit it makes for a pretty healthy (well, almost) start to the day.

There we are with our New Year’s Eve day breakfast. A sweet end to the old year!

New Year’s Eve

Posted on 8 January 2010 by christao408

After four days up in Chiang Mai and having sent our houseguest Stephanie on her way back to Melbourne, let me return to New Year’s Eve and catch you up on events.

New Year’s Eve is a big event here in Thailand. In fact, unlike for many companies in the United States, New Year’s Eve is a statutory holiday here, as is New Year’s Day. Tawn’s extended family, much of which lives in properties adjacent to his parents’, hold a big annual party to ring in the new year. Tawn was there for most of the afternoon, returning home about 11 pm to celebrate the stroke of midnight with Stephanie and me.

This left Stephanie and me to our own devices for most of the evening. Instead of venturing out – crowds and the threat of bombs! – we stayed at home and had a low-key dinner of homemade pizza, salad and chocolate souffles.

The pizza was pepperoni, mushrooms and red peppers, something simple and satisfying to munch on.

A mixed greens salad with plenty of toppings increased the healthfulness of the meal. Then we took a turn for the cardiac unit (no, wait – chocolate has antioxidants, right?) with the souffles.

This was not my first time using this recipe from Cook’s Illustrated Best Make-Ahead Recipes. The secret is that you can make souffles in advance, wrap them well (uncooked) then freeze them. Then, when you want a hot souffle all you have to do is take it out of the freezer and slip it into a hot oven. Twenty five minutes later you’ll have dessert on the table.

The ingredients: chocolate, confectioner’s sugar and granulated sugar, egg yolks, egg whites, cream of tartar, salt, vanilla and a bit of orange liqueur.

Melt the chocolate and butter in a bowl set over simmering water. Beat the egg yolks into the granulated sugar.

Continue whipping the yolks and sugar until the mixture triples in volume. Gentle fold the chocolate and egg mixture together until just incorporated.

Whip the egg whites, adding a bit of cream of tartar and then a bit of confectioner’s sugar, until they form stiff peaks.

Gently fold the egg whites into the chocolate mixture until mixed, being careful not to deflate. Spoon into ramekins that have been buttered and sprinkled with granulated sugar. Fill to the top and then cover with plastic wrap and then foil. Refrigerate for up to three hours or freeze. When ready, remove the wrappings and bake on a tray in the oven for about 25 minutes or until the interior is still slightly soft.

Remove and dust with confectioner’s sugar. Some berries or a berry sauce are nice, too!

Above, Stephanie and I toast our New Year’s Eve dinner. Would have been nice to have Tawn home with us, but he was back in time for the fireworks.

While it is a bit more than a week late, let me wish you all the very best for 2010. May each of you enjoy good health, great happiness and boundless peace.

A Few Days Away

Posted on 6 January 2010 by christao408

For the final week of our houseguest’s visit, she and I are up in Chiang Mai province in the north of Thailand. I’ll resume blogging once I’m back at week’s end.

Hope everyone is well!

Tawn, Meet Martha

Posted on 3 January 2010 by christao408

The most important thing for you to know is that neither of the pictures in this entry were doctored. One of Tawn’s heroes is – no surprise here – Martha Stewart, the domestic diva who has empowered women around the globe (and many men, too) to rediscover the joy of the homemaking arts.

In an object lesson for the theory that it is all about who you know, Tawn had the opportunity to meet Martha. His friend Ble (pronounced “bun”), a fairly well known Thai interior designer and decorator who designed our condo, has a trio of stores in the mid-Sukhumvit area, Eligible, Incredible and Irresistible. Tori Burch, a fashion designer, has shopped at Ble’s stores many times and when Tori’s friend Martha came to Phuket for the holidays, Tori told her about these fabulous stores she must come see.

Martha’s hosts, the family whose company owns the rights to distribute the Martha Stewart Living line in Southeast Asia, contacted Ble, who has done design work for their stores here in Bangkok, and arranged for Martha to come visit his shops.

Ble contacted Tawn for some PR and hosting suggestions so that Martha and her assistant would be comfortable but not overwhelmed when they came to shop. Tawn brought one of our our tea sets and several boxes of Mariage Fréres teas that he purchased on his last trip to Paris.

Sure enough, Martha was impressed with Tawn’s tea service. After Tawn offered tea to her, she looked over the set and after tasting the tea and commenting how nice it was, she and Tawn had a brief conversation about where he had acquired the tea. “Mariage Fréres,” she said, “How charming.”

While she shopped, Martha and her assistant took notes and pictures and she mentioned that she would write about this visit on her blog. Perhaps she’ll even mention the handsome man who served her a proper cup of tea. It’s a good thing.

From left to right, Eddy, Ble, Martha and Tawn. She looks a little apprehensive with that body language, doesn’t she? As if she’s never been surrounded by gay men before. Pish-posh! Anyone notice what Tawn and Martha have in common?

Needless to say, our tenth anniversary couldn’t have been better celebrated than with this visit from someone whom we both highly respect.

Can it be ten years already?

Posted on 2 January 2010 by christao408

Perhaps all couples deal with the confusion about what dates are important to celebrate in their relationship. For married couples, the date of marriage is the paramount anniversary. There are other dates, too. First meeting, first date, first kiss, etc. Since Tawn and I only recently married, we’ve long used January 3rd as our anniversary as this is the date we first met.

The whole story about how we met – and I think it is a compelling one that should be turned into a screenplay – is located here. I won’t repeat it in this entry – you can read it at your leisure as I know many of you have. But I would like to note that it has been ten years – ten years! – since that day. Ten years finds us in the same city where we spent our first few days together, so perhaps that is telling.

After recently completing my project of having all my old 35mm negatives scanned, I came across the first picture of Tawn and me together.

That’s us on January 4, 2000 in historic Ayutthaya, the former capital of old Siam.

Here’s us two days ago, January 1st 2010. No, the baby isn’t a recent addition to our family! We ran into some friends during brunch who just gave birth to their first daughter, Lada. Notice any changes? I think Tawn looks as handsome as ever!

Happy anniversary Tawn!

Updating the Nutrition Information Food Labels

Posted on 1 January 2010 by christao408

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit public health advocacy group, is proposing changes in the way packaged food is labeled. The CSPI, with whom I’ve had some disagreements over the years (disparaging movie theatre popcorn and in 1994 calling fettuccine Alfredo “a heart attack on a plate“), nonetheless has played a prominent role in bringing issues of diet and nutrition to the forefront of the public consciousness in America.

Their latest effort is around updating the nearly twenty-year old packaged food label. This label is designed to provide consumers with the information needed to make health-conscious choices while standing in the supermarket aisle. CSPI, though, says there are many changes needed to bring the labelling up-to-date and make it an easier tool with more relevant information.

Here is a look at the before and after versions of the labels. Notice they remain the same size, so no additional space would be required on packages. You can click on the picture to see the full CSPI graphic about the labels.

Here are the proposed changes I find most interesting:

Calorie and serving size information is in much larger type at the top of the label.
The ingredient list is much easier to read by printing it in regular type instead of all capital letters. Also, bullets separate ingredients rather than allowing them to all run together.
Similar ingredients are listed together and shown by the percentage by weight. For instance, sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup and grape juice concentrate are all forms of sugar and would be listed in parenthesis under the catchall heading “sugars.”
Products containing more than 20 percent of the daily recommendation for fats, sugards, sodium and cholesterol would use red labeling and the word “high” placed next to the percentage. Easier to avoid foods that are high in these things.
For items made of grains, the top of the lable would prominently display the percentage of whole grains contained in the product.

What are your thoughts about these changes? I’m a firm believer that knowledge is power and that people are hungry (pardon the pun) for more and clearer information about the food they are consuming. Updated labels could help give people the information they need to make healthier, more helpful choices.

Additional Links:

A timeline of food and nutrition labeling.
Full CSPI graphic of proposed changes and of the old and new versions of the label.
Original NY Times article that inspired this entry.

Screen Smarter, Not Harder

Posted on 31 December 2009 by christao408

In the wake of the Christmas Day attempt at blowing up a Northwest Airlines flight heading from Amsterdam to Detroit, security officials have stepped up screening and other activities in an effort to increase safety and security. Well, that’s ostensibly the reason. One could be forgiven, though, for mistaking the increased activity as mere busyness for the sake of looking busy, rather than as rational steps that actually increase security.

Thankfully, in the days immediately following the tightening of security measures, several of the dumber ones (requiring passengers to remain seated for the last hour of the flight, not allowing any carry-on items including blankets or pillows to be in their laps, and turning off the inflight entertainment systems so as to disable the flight tracking feature which shows where the plane is on a map) were quickly rescinded or pilots were given authority to relax the measures at their discretion.

It seems to me that if we are serious about increasing our security while flying, there are several things we need to do. There are also things we need to stop doing as they are wasteful and do nothing to increase security.

We need to implement more thorough inspection of people and bags. This should include the purchase and use of more full-body imaging devices, which can detect nonmetallic as well as metallic items hidden beneath clothing. There are ways to work around privacy concerns but this is one of the most effective ways to find potentially dangerous devices that can all too easily be concealed during current screening procedures.

The flip side of this is that we need to get smarter about whom we screen. We spend too much energy putting grandma and grandpa through secondary screenings when they don’t seem to be a likely security threat. Past affronts like making a mother drink her breastmilk from a bottle she was carrying on in order to prove it wasn’t harmful make a mockery of our security procedures and the freedoms we give up in order to be more secure. Essentially, events like these and the thousands of indignities we suffer at airport security checkpoints across the nation are a sure sign the terrorists have won.

We need to start screening cargo. While checked baggage now goes through security screening, almost all of the cargo shipped on planes (as well as all of it sent by container ship) does not undergo any inspection, relying instead on the government’s “trusted shipper” program. Without a doubt, this is a serious gap in our security and could easily be something for a terrorist to exploit.

We need to get our intelligence services working together. Time and again we learn (Monday morning quarterbacking, of course) that we had heaps of information about people who attempted or succeeded in hijacking or bringing down aircraft. The relevant agencies need a better process for taking the information they have and acting on it. The Nigerian man involved in the Christmas Day bombing attempt should never have been allowed to board the flight based on information we already had.

We need more accountability at the Transportation Security Administration about the effectiveness of security measures put into place. Reports obtained by news sources have indicated that TSA screeners miss intentionally concealed weapons on passengers and in baggage at about the same rate screeners did prior to September 11, 2001. This means that the massive investment and inconvenience we suffer is largely ineffective in increasing security. The results of those tests need to be public and if improvements aren’t made, people need to lose their job. While I can understand the security reasons for not disclosing which airports have the worst screeners, the composite scores should be available for all of us to see.

People in many countries around the world have to put up with intrusive and time-consuming security measures. (In some countries that is because we invaded them and made the situation worse!) That’s the price we pay for increased security. At the same time, the price we pay should be commiserate with the security we are provided. Right now, I don’t see that we’re getting a good return on that investment.

A Deep Conversation

Posted on 30 December 2009 by christao408

Christmas Day I managed to have a muscle spasm in my lower right back. I wasn’t lifting, bending, stretching or doing anything at the time. The muscle just had an unexplained spasm. The following day I went to the hospital and had an acupuncturist look at it. Upon review it was decided that physical therapy would be more effective than acupuncture in this case. So the following two days I came in for physical therapy.

After an ultrasound treatment (it’s a boy!) and twenty minutes of heat pad and traction, I spent an hour working with a physical therapist who stretched, pulled, and massaged my torso and taught me exercises I could do to strengthen my back muscles.

The staff seemed to really like that I spoke Thai. This therapist in particular, who spoke English quite well, fell into an easy rapport with me and we ended up having a very wide-ranging conversation, mostly in Thai, over the two days he worked on me.

The conversation was, in fact, the longest conversation I’ve had with any Thai whom I did not already know. We talked about language, life upcountry (where he went to university) versus in the big city (where he was born and raised), how Bangkok has changed in the past thirty years, and we even talked about the political situation in Thailand. Generally, Thais are very hesitant to discuss politics with strangers, but he was very candid with me, although he spoke in very veiled terms since lèse majesté laws are strictly enforced in Thailand. The long and the short of it is that he worries about changes that will inevitably come.

I walked away from our conversation with a deep sense of satisfaction. Although I’ve lived here for more than four years, I rarely have the opportunity to interact in depth with Thais whom I don’t already know, especially on any meaningful level. At the physical therapy clinic I must have been viewed as a pleasant change from the usual foreigner so was able to chat with the staff a great deal.

Interestingly, upon learning that I was married to a Thai – and being only slightly shocked that that Thai is a man – I was asked what seems to be a litmus test question: “Do you like Pattaya?” Pattaya, a seaside resort two hours southeast of Bangkok, has a reputation for trashiness particularly with regards to sex for sale and, less so these days, child prostitution. I answered that I had been to Pattaya only once, for just a few hours on an errand, and had found it very distasteful. That seemed to be the right answer.

New Carpet Arrival

Posted on 30 December 2009 by christao408

We’ve been in this condo just over two years and yet the process of decorating and remodeling never quite seems to come to an end. This past week we received two chairs and a new carpet that Tawn had ordered, changing the living room’s look from this:

To this:

What do I think? Well, I’m easily satisfied and each new thing seems to be another unnecessary addition to the house. That’s not the type of feedback Tawn is looking for, though. I think the chairs are okay, design-wise, although without arms I don’t find them comfortable enough to settle in with a good book. The color disconnect between the chairs and the sofa is a problem – one or the other needs to change.

The carpet, though, is quite nice. I’d like to see a little more color in it, but I think the pattern and the larger size makes the space more interesting.

Here’s a 75-second video that shows the whole install process for the carpet in super-fast mode. Enjoy!

National Archives Videos

Posted on 28 December 2009 by christao408

Did you know that the National Archives has a YouTube channel? Well, it isn’t actually the National Archives’ channel but the result of a non-profit group that has purchased and posted DVD versions of several of the National Archives’ videos.

Does it seem odd that they would purchase DVDs for public domain videos? Several of the Archives’ videos are available only in low resolution and you are “encouraged” to purchase the videos from Amazon.com instead. This seems wrong considering that the videos should be made available to all taxpayers and citizens without having to pay for them.

The National Archives’ fantastic collection of public domain videos includes all sorts of treasures such as footage from Adm. Byrd’s 1939-41 journey to Antarctica, a 1970 nature film depicting the four seasons at Yellowstone National Park, and a vintage film from the late 1940s about counterfeiting and its suppression. Add to that Nixon’s Watergate speech and footage of the Hindenburg disaster. There are all sorts of amazing things there.

The twenty movies that Public.Resource.Org has posted on YouTube are here. I’ll share with you one very worthwhile treat, which I enjoyed this evening: Bob Hope’s 1967 Christmas Special from Thailand and Vietnam. One of Hope’s funny lines from the stage of one of the camps in Thailand: “They say that Thailand has never been conquered. No wonder, nobody can get through that traffic.” Ah, so it was that way back then, too?

Hope you enjoy this classic.

christao408

The adventures of an expat American who moved to Bangkok for his husband.

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