Baking Pecan Tarts

Posted on 20 January 2012 by christao408

Every time I visit the US, I make a trip to Costco and buy several pounds of pecans and walnuts. Nuts (with the exception of cashews, peanuts, and macadamias, all of which are grown locally) are very expensive here in Thailand and I enjoy adding nuts to salads, pestos, and of course desserts. Recently, I perfected a pecan pie recipe that makes wonderful two-bite-sized tarts.

The recipe started out from one contributed by an unknown source on the Food Network’s site. As such, they warned that the recipe had not been tested. Certainly not, as I found out after an initial mishap. Let’s put it this way: adding beaten eggs directly into boiling sugar syrup makes for sweet scrambled eggs – not a proper pecan pie filling!

Instead, I rewrote the directions and, after testing two batches, made some adjustments to the ingredients to reduce the sweetness and richness of the filling while adding some depth of flavor thanks to the use of maple syrup.

Pecan Pie or Tarts
1 stick butter (4 oz or 115 g)
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup¹
1/2 cup maple syrup²
2 eggs plus 3 egg whites, beaten well
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans (or 1 cup plus whole pecans to layer the top of the pie)
1 unbaked 9-inch pie shell, or 12 small tart pans lined with pastry dough³
Preheat oven to 350 F (175 C). In a saucepan, melt the butter but don’t let it brown. Mix in the sugar, corn syrup, and maple syrup and cook, stirring constantly, over medium heat until the sugar dissolves.
Temper the eggs by slowly pouring the sugar mixture into them while whisking continuously. Stir in the pecans then pour the mixture into the pie or tart shells. If you want to decorate the top(s) with whole pecans, you can do so.
Bake 1 hour or until firm when shaken. Let cool before serving. If you are making the tarts in a muffin tin, you should carefully remove them to a wire rack after ten minutes of cooling, so they do not stick.
¹ Note that the corn syrup you buy in the store (like Karo brand) is not high-fructose corn syrup.
² I think the Grade B maple syrup, which has a richer flavor, is nice to use. If you have only regular maple syrup, that is fine, too. You can also substitute corn syrup if you do not have maple syrup.
³ Instead of tart pans, you can also use a muffin tin.

Pecan pies and tarts freeze beautifully after they are cooked. They can be warmed up in the oven for about 15 minutes before serving and they’ll be just as nice as if they were freshly-baked.

The Reason Why

Posted on 19 January 2012 by christao408

I owe you an explanation. Normally, I don’t time-stamp past entries back into the present. In this case, though, I felt the need to time-stamp the “Getting to Know Me” entry because I anticipated some new visitors after I participated Wednesday morning in a panel discussion about working overseas.

A few months ago, the director of the Santa Clara University career center contacted me. She was looking for alums who currently live and work overseas to participate in a panel discussion. I eagerly accepted the invitation, being a strong believer in the importance of networking.

This was to be the university’s first-ever panel discussion hosted via Skype video conference call and streamed live. It took a few practice calls for the director and the panelists to work out most of the technical glitches. The experience actually served to illustrate one of the challenges of living and working overseas: unreliable internet service!

The lush grounds of Mission Gardens at my alma matter.

The discussion itself lasted an hour and featured eight panelists: two from Thailand, three from China, and one each from India, New Zealand, and Nicaragua. An hour didn’t give us a lot of time but we were able to talk about what made our work-abroad experiences unique and what suggestions or advice we would give people interested in working abroad.

While there were a lot of different experiences, there were at least two common themes:

First, the importance of networking. Whether through your alumni association or just through informal socializing, when you live abroad, many of your best breaks will happen because of a friend-of-a-friend or an “Oh, I was just talking to someone the other day who is looking for someone with that skill” conversation.
Second, you really have to be patient and take the big picture view. Living overseas – and especially working overseas – involves a lot of challenges and uncertainties. Few things ever go the way you plan and even fewer go easily. Being able to put things in context and not let small things bend you out of shape will help save your sanity.

Near the end of the call, I shared my blog address as an additional resource for people who might be curious what life in Thailand is like. That’s why I anticipated some new traffic. If the first thing they saw was a picture of the emergency slide rafts of a Boeing 747, they might get the wrong impression.

If you are interested, you can view the recorded event here at Livestream.com. There were a few technical glitches but all in all, still interesting.

Getting to Know Me

Posted on 17 January 2012 by christao408

There’s a very ancient saying, and a true and honest thought, that if you become a teacher by your pupils you’ll be taught. As a teacher I’ve been learning – you’ll forgive me if I boast – but I’ve now become an expert in the subject I like most: getting to know you.”

from “The King and I” by Rodgers and Hammerstein

Perusing my feedback log, I noticed that there are a lot of new faces (or footprints!) on my blog. In fact, no fewer than ten new subscribers have signed up in the past eight days and 23 since the start of the year, bringing the total to just about 300. Yikes! Where did you all come from?

One of the things that’s always a challenge for me when I start following someone’s blog is understanding who they are. Much like entering the cinema halfway through a movie, joining a blog that is already in progress leaves a lot of questions unanswered. “Who is that person?” “What vacation is he talking about?” “What horrible illness happened two years ago?”

Matt suggested a few months ago that going back and browsing through earlier entries is a good way to round out your knowledge about a blogger. That’s a good idea but I’m afraid my back entries have a lot of chaff amongst the grain. To save you the trouble of having to winnow through my archives, I’ll give you a brief introduction of myself along with embedded links to interesting and relevant previous entries. That way you can do as much or little catching up as you wish to do.

Allow me to introduce myself…

My name is Chris. I’m an American citizen who was born in 1970 and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since October 2005 I have been a resident of Bangkok, Thailand (which I often refer to using its Thai name, Krungthep) where I live with my husband Tawn.

I started this blog a few months before moving here. Its initial (and continued) purpose was to provide my family and friends an easy way to keep tabs on what I’m up to and the experiences I have as an expatriate. A lot of what I write is about that experience.

Chris at the Elephant Kraal in Ayutthaya province.

I’ve written about my thoughts about possibly moving back. I’ve written about what it’s like to live in Thailand. I’ve been studying Thai since moving here and now read, write, speak and even sometimes understand the language. Living abroad has a lot of challenges. For example, learning to cross the street without getting killed! Other challenges have included making friends in a strange land and dealing with fellow countrymen whose views on being an American rubbed me the wrong way.

Living here has provided so many wonderful adventures. I’ve done a lot of bicycling to explore the city and surrounding areas, resulting in some interesting and unexpected misadventures. For more than a year, I volunteered as an English teacher once a week at a tiny country schoolhouse ninety minutes outside Krungthep. I discovered the schoolhouse on one of my bike rides, had a great time teaching there, and concluded the assignment when the director of the school retired. They even included me in their Teachers’ Day ceremonies, which was a great honor.

My students at Bangkhonthiinai School in Samut Songkhram province.

Along the way, we celebrated the 60th anniversary of His Majesty the King’s reign (the longest reigning current monarch in the world, by the way!). We had a coup. My parents and some other family members came to visit. Tawn and I bought and remodeled a condo. And we hosted a lovely poolside Thanksgiving dinner.

Watching the royal barge procession to celebrate the King’s anniversary.

Of all the writing I’ve done about Thailand, though, the one that has received the most views was one I wrote about the debate over teenage castration, a practice common in young Thai men who feel that they are transsexuals. For some reason, there are a lot of people who Google “teenage castration” and it seems my entry is pretty high up in the results.

As I mentioned, I live with my husband Tawn. We were married last August in the United States although we’ve been together for more than ten years. The story about how we met is a sweet one, deserving of a movie screenplay. After we first met, Tawn lived and studied for his master’s degree in San Francisco. Now that I’ve been here in Thailand for more than four years, I’ve spent more time living here than Tawn spent living in the US!

Tawn and I a few days after meeting in January 2000.

When viewing those entries, you might notice that Tawn is a man and so am I. While I don’t feel the need to make a big fuss about it, it seems that my being gay is a matter of fact that comes up quite often. For example, when we wanted to get married in California but couldn’t because 52% of the voters thought we shouldn’t have that legal right.

But this blog isn’t all about love and marriage and Thailand and politics. The real undercurrent of this blog is food. I’m a foodie. Not only do I enjoy eating, I love to cook. I particularly enjoy trying foods I’ve never made before, just to see if I can. Bagels, French macarons, pasta, baking bread – I’ll try cooking or baking anything just to see if I can.

My friend Ryan and I buying bánh mì from a vendor in Saigon.

In addition to food, I love travel and enjoy meeting new people. I’ve had the chance to meet several other Xangans both in their hometowns and here in Thailand. Tawn and I have been fortunate (not having children makes it easier…) to be able to travel a lot. We had a fun trip to Tokyo last spring, a trip to Saigon a few years back with a dear school friend, a trip to Seoul the winter I arrived in Krungthep, and a honeymoon in New York City, just to name a few destinations.

So that’s me in a nutshell. There’s so much more I could write and so much more I’ve already written. But I’m glad we’ve had a chance to meet and I hope you’ll enjoy reading my blog.

Which brings me to one more thing… one of the things I most appreciate in a subscriber is interaction. We’re all busy, I get that. But when people subscribe and never, ever leave a comment, it makes me wonder what interests them about my blog. It’s a little freaky, in fact. And when people send a friend request but have never commented even once? Well, that’s not much of a start to friendship.

So don’t be shy, people. I’m not asking for a lot, but a bit of interaction and an occasional comment means a lot for me and I think it strengthens the sense of community here at Xanga.

Best wishes,

Chris

Boeing 747-8 Emergency Slides

Posted on 16 January 2012 by christao408

Came across this photo that shows Boeing’s newest jumbo jet, the B-747-8, with its emergency slides deployed. What caught my eye is that the upper deck slides now have a built-in structural support in the form of an arch. Considering how far above the ground the upper deck is, I guess the arch provides support against gusting winds. Talk about a fun-house slide!

On a related note, here’s a short video showing the deployment of the upper deck slide on an Air New Zealand Boeing 747-400, the previous generation of the plane. The slide’s support structure is less elaborate, but it is still interesting to see how it deploys. Let’s hope I never have to see one of these deploy in person.

Food in Bangkok: Samosa

Posted on 15 January 2012 by christao408

Normally I write about entire meals but there is one street vendor in one corner of Bangkok that sells a single item that is so good, that my mouth waters as I write this. The vendor, Raspal Singh, makes samosas, the deep fried Indian pastry filled with a potato mixture and served with a complementary sweet and sour sauce.

Mr. Singh’s stall is nothing more than a single cart parked alongside a wall in a small soi (alley) immediately to the south of India Emporium, a small shopping center in Pahurat (Little India) on Chakrapet Road. This is not far from Bangkok’s Chinatown and the Old Siam shopping center.

All day long he prepares batch after batch of the samosas (they also prepare tikki – which is the filling fried up without the pasty wrapper) and you can only get them to go. They’re so tasty, though, that eating them by the side of the road is perfectly acceptable. Why would you want to wait and let them get cold?

The filling is made of potatoes mixed with loads of spices. It is a great example of vegetarian food that has rich, satisfying flavors.

The secret to any successful fried food is that the oil has to be fresh and at the proper temperature. Too hot and the outside burns before the inside cooks. Too cold and the whole thing becomes greasy. Mr. Singh is the master of the boiling oil-filled wok, turning out an endless stream of perfectly cooked, crispy but not greasy samosas.

If you find yourself in the heart of old Bangkok, craving a snack that will satisfy but leave you eager to return, you should head down to Little India and seek out Mr. Singh’s samosas.

Many thanks to Chawadee Nualkhair (www.bangkokglutton.com), author of Bangkok’s Top 50 Street Food Stalls, for leading me to this gem.

Dining in Bangkok: Krua Apsorn

Posted on 10 January 2012 by christao408

A few weeks ago, I accompanied my friend Chow for lunch at Krua Apsorn. Chow, who is the author of Bangkok’s Top 50 Street Food Stalls, was researching restaurants for an article in an Australian airline’s inflight magazine and needed an extra mouth to help her evaluate the food. Who am I to shirk my duty as a friend?

Krua Apsorn is a Central Thai style restaurant that has garnered much attention in recent years. With a homey charm, decent food, and a slightly obscure location, it is the type of place that makes foreigners feel like they’ve stumbled into a secret cave of culinary treasures. While it is worth a visit, I wouldn’t necessarily put it on my list of “must-visit” restaurants.

The original location of Krua Apsorn (there are now three) is on Samsen Road, which runs north from the Khao San backpacker district towards the Dusit Palace. Located a little ways past the National Library, the restaurant is off the beaten path for most visitors but not terribly difficult to reach. The chef used to cook for the King’s now-deceased mother and older sister and when this restaurant opened, Princess Galayani was known to visit it. Six years ago, the Bangkok Post named it one of Bangkok’s best restaurants and you can now find it listed in nearly every guide book.

Lunch reservations are recommended as this location is popular with large groups of office workers. The interior is modest and the emphasis is on the food rather than the decor. The staff is friendly although rushed and it took a while for us to get their attention to order and then again to get the bill at the end of lunch.

To ensure we gave the restaurant a fair sampling, we brought tremendous appetites, ordering and (for the most part) finishing more dishes than you would think two people could eat. We started with a classic Central Thai appetizer: miang kana. These make-it-yourself appetizers feature a variety of sweet, sour, spicy, savory, and salty tidbits that you wrap in a kailan (or Chinese broccoli) leaf with a splash of tamarind sauce.

Can you spot the following items? Shallot, lime, white ginger, peanut, dried shrimp, and fried pork rind. Combined with the tamarind sauce, this appetizer exemplifies the typical flavor profile that Thai dishes aspire to, a balance of different flavors that leave you very satisfied.

While I’m leery of ordering mussels thanks to a bad experience years ago in Seattle, we couldn’t pass up this dish that sat on nearly every other table. Called hoi malang puu pad chaa, these super fresh mussels were stir-fried in basil, fish sauce, and chilies. At first they didn’t seem too spicy but trying to avoid the chilies was a challenge and eventually you just had to give in and enjoy them.

Another dish was gaeng kiaow waan luuk chin plaa, green curry with fish balls. Green curry is one of the more accessible types of curry for foreigners’ tongues. This one was passable but the taste was watered down.

The rice arrived molded into the shape of a heart. Na rak maak! (Very cute!)

A dish for which the restaurant is famous is neua puu pad prik lueang – crabmeat stir fried with yellow chilies and long beans. The portion of lump crabmeat is generous, fresh, and sweet. The sauce itself is also a little sweet, almost tasting as if it had ghee added to it, although I doubt it does. The long beans were a little undercooked for my taste – reminding me of how when I brought my now-deceased paternal grandmother to eat Thai food once, she commented on a dish of stir fried vegetables, “My, they certainly like their vegetables crunchy.” All in all, this was a well-made dish, though, and one I would order again.

A dish of pad yot pak maew – chayote stems fried with garlic – provided a simple and refreshing contrast to some of the other, more strongly flavored dishes.

Another highlight from Krua Apsorn’s menu is kai fuu puu – crabmeat omelet. Their version, however, is so unlike the omelets you see elsewhere that it really makes you take notice. Cooked in a narrow dish rather than a broad skillet, the omelet gains a lot of volume, looking more like a souffle than a traditional Thai omelet.

Cross section of the kai fuu puu – standing very tall. That said, the amount of crabmeat in the omelet seemed skimpy when compared with, say, the amount of crabmeat in the stir fry with the yellow chilies. Still, this was one of the best dishes.

The final dish we ordered, this one from the daily specials menu, was puu lon pak sot or salted crab and coconut cream stew with fresh vegetables. This is a dish that is less common for foreigners to try and one that I haven’t run across too many times. It is made of salted crab, minced pork, coconut cream, and a variety of herbs and spices, boiled until thick.

The dish is actually more of a dip than a stew, as it is served with a selection of fresh vegetables – two types of eggplants (including the white ones), tumeric root, cabbage, and cucumbers – with which you eat the puu lon. I found the taste of the dish to be interesting, both complex and unusual. It is a bit sour, a bit salty, and very herbal. Chow didn’t care much for it because it has sort of a milky aftertaste but it wasn’t a problem to me.

For dessert, we tried some of the homemade fresh coconut sorbet (which was refreshing but didn’t photograph well) as well as this saku biak tua dam – miniature tapioca with black beans, served in sweetened coconut milk. This is one of my favorite Thai desserts because it is not overwhelmingly sweet and has a bit of saltiness as well as the heartiness of the beans.

What to think of the restaurant overall? You have to start out by understanding that this type of restaurant serves aahan juut, literally “bland food”. It is the type of food that appeals to your grandparents, comfort food that isn’t too assertive. That’s not a knock on the restaurant itself, because the food is well prepared with a lot of attention to the quality of ingredients and the methods of preparation. The flavors are relatively bland because that’s characteristic of Central Thai cuisine when compared with Northern, Northeastern, or Southern Thai.

With all that in mind, Krua Apsorn delivers a good dining experience and value for the money. Is it worth seeking out? If you are already near the restaurant, it is worth stopping by. If you have to trek all the way across the city, there are probably other aahan juut restaurants closer by that will satisfy you just as well and, if you are visiting from outside Thailand, there are other restaurants I would recommend you try before you get to Krua Apsorn.

Christmas Dinner

Posted on 8 January 2012 by christao408

Yes, I am a few weeks late with this entry, but our friend Nat hosted such an extraordinary feast on Christmas day that it would be a shame not to share some photos with you. Nat and his twenty-some guests supped on a dozen dishes and three desserts. The meal was several days in the making, aided by his half-dozen staff members, some of whom formerly worked as hotel sous chefs.

Our menu:

Salmon Wellington	Sous-Vide Turkey
Garlic Honey Roast Turkey	Cornbread Chestnut Stuffing
Mushroom Garlic Stuffing	Carrot Puree
Brussels Sprouts	Grilled Broccoli Rabe
Steamed Corn	Potatoes Savoyarde
Yorkshire Pudding	Chinese Rice Wine Gravy
Cranberry Chutney	White Chocolate Bombe
Coconut Christmas Cake	Strawberry Caramel Angel Food Cake
Vanilla Poppy Seed Ice Cream	Pistachio Ice Cream
Dark Chocolate Ice Cream	Homemade dessert sauces

I arrived mid-afternoon to find the production already well under-way. In fact, Nat and his staff were working from a five-page itinerary that had every step of the multi-day preparation scheduled!

First off, let’s talk about the Salmon Wellington. You may be more familiar with the version served with a beef loin inside, called Beef Wellington. In this version, two whole salmon fillets are topped with a ground mushroom mixture and then baked inside puff pastry dough. Not only is it a tasty way to eat salmon, but it is quite the show-stopper!

Left: Nat takes his frustration out on the puff pasty dough, which he made himself. Puff pasty is one of those pain in the neck sort of things that most people are perfectly happy to just buy from the freezer section of their local grocery store. Right: The salmon is covered with the mushrooms and additional dollops of butter before the top layer of the pastry dough is added and the edges are sealed.

Left: I used some leftover pastry dough to cut out decorative shapes that seemed appropriate for a seafood dish: a squid, a shark, a starfish, and some goldfish. Instead of slits to release the steam, I used a knife steel to make “bubbles”. Clever, huh?

Next item, the Garlic and Honey Roast Turkey. This is Martha Stewart’s recipe and it produces a reliably moist and tender bird. The trouble is that you have to remember to baste it every thirty minutes. If you have a staff, you can assign someone that responsibility. (Oh, if only I had a kitchen staff! Ha ha!)

The turkey, mid-carving. The skin gets very dark and crispy but fear not! Because you have remembered to baste it throughout the cooking, the meat remains moist and flavorful.

Our third main course was another type of turkey, this one prepared sous-vide. Sous-vide is French for “under vacuum” and the style involves cooking the food inside vacuum-sealed plastic bags which are then placed in a water bath for a long, low-temperature spa session. For example, the water bath for the turkey was something like 168 F. This way, the meat cannot get dry and tough, although more delicate cuts can turn mealy if you overcook them.

P1190406

First step, turkey parts are sealed in bags with loads of butter and other seasonings. Next, the bags are placed in the sous-vide machine, which regulates the water temperature. It took about three hours to cook the whole turkey. Afterwards, the bags are taken out and put in a bath of ice water to immediately stop the cooking.

Once cool, you remove the turkey parts, pat them dry, and then immerse them in boiling oil for a minute or so. This allows the exterior to quickly crisp, forming a wonderful skin and an appealing color. On the right, you can hopefully see just how moist the turkey was after the combination of cooking methods. While the roast turkey had been moist, you had to add the qualifier, “for a roast turkey” afterwards. For the sous-vide turkey, the meat was very moist by any standard.

Other selected side dishes:

Left: Cornbread and chestnut stuffing. Right: Brussels sprouts with pine nuts.

Left: Yorkshire puddings (which are kind of like popovers). Center: Grilled broccoli rabe. Right: Cranberry chutney.

Just after 8:00, the guests had all arrived and the food was ready to serve. Dishes were lined up all along the edge of the kitchen counter, a buffet for which no plate had room enough!

I tried to get a little bit of everything on my plate but, alas, a dish or two may have been missed! I did try all of the main dishes and was in agreement with the other guests, all of whom preferred the sous-vide turkey to the traditional roast turkey. The Salmon Wellington was moist and perfectly cooked through but such a shame to have to cut the pastry in order to serve it!

Of course, the most memorable dinners are made not by the food – no matter how elaborate – but by the quality of the company. Tawn and I had the opportunity to dine with wonderful companions, some of them familiar faces and others new acquaintances. All of them, though, made our Christmas dinner an especially enjoyable one.

You may find this hard to believe, but some of us had enough room for dessert. Nat had prepared a trio of cakes. From the left: Strawberry and caramel angel food cake; coconut Christmas cake; and milk chocolate bombe. He also prepared homemade sauces – strawberry, coconut cream, and creamy caramel – to match the cakes. Since no cake is complete without ice cream, he made three flavors: dark chocolate, vanilla poppy seed, and pistachio.

I indulged in a slice of the strawberry caramel food cake but topped it with some coconut sauce, which had plenty of fresh coconut meat in it, and a scoop each of pistachio and vanilla poppy seed ice creams. What a spectacular end to the meal. Many thanks to our friend Nat for hosting this memorable Christmas dinner!

Building a Better Acoustic Screen

Posted on 4 January 2012 by christao408

After I resolved the issue of not having a monitor stand wide enough for my new laptop computer, I had to address the next item on my to-do list: building a proper acoustic screen to reduce extraneous noise when recording audio. A major responsibility in my work is creating online training materials. One part of this is recording the narration that accompanies the training.

The condo unit I use as an office has concrete walls and ceilings and a tile floor. From an acoustic perspective, the room is very “live”. My previous arrangement was to use a stack of throw pillows, carefully balanced, to try and reduce the noise. Not only was this prone to collapsing in the middle of a recording session, but it also didn’t do a very good job reducing the noise.

Over the past few months I had tried to source acoustic foam panels here in Bangkok, an elusive product that exists but nobody actually seems to sell. Finally, after going to a high-end audio shop that I had been told would have the foam, an employee there told me to go to the Ban Mor district near Chinatown. “That’s where everyone gets everything,” he explained.

Ban Mor is about two blocks of a small soi, or alley, located across from the Old Siam shopping center. I go there all the time with Tawn but never realized we were literally across the street from the electronics district. Going from shop to shop on the crowded street, I finally located a speaker store that sold sheets of acoustic foam.

Truth be told, this foam isn’t the same high-density acoustic foam that I originally had in mind. But it is dense enough to do the job and was not too expensive. I brought the sheets home along with some plastic fiberboard then started constructing the acoustic screen. The idea was to measure carefully so the the two panels would hinge closed with the foam fitting together like crocodile’s teeth. This way, it folds up flat, allowing for compact storage when not in use.

After about an hour’s work, I had everything fitting together neatly. The noise reduction is much better than the pillows I was using before and I don’t have any problems with them collapsing mid-recording. One more thing I did to improve the quality of the recordings was to purchase a better quality microphone.

Previously, I was using basically any random microphone you could plug into your computer, just like the ones you might use to talk on Skype. After some research, I settled on a Snowball USB microphone from Blue Microphones. This condenser mic has both omnidirectional and cardioid modes and produces professional quality sound. Pairing that with a pop screen and the acoustic screen and my recordings have improved many times over.

Another project checked off the list!

Building a Monitor Stand

Posted on 2 January 2012 by christao408

While in Kansas City, the IT department decided the best solution to my laptop’s performance issues was to replace it with a new model. When I returned home, I discovered that the laptop’s size would require me to make my first visit to an obscure woodworking district that lies along the railroad tracks near the entrance to the Chalerm Mahanakorn Toll Road.

The new laptop in its place in my office armoire. The laptop is about three-quarters of an inch wider than the previous one, although thankfully they are both made by Dell and use the same docking station. (A docking station, if you aren’t familiar with it, is a device that allows your laptop to function as a desktop computer. You can turn it on while it is closed, attaching it to an external monitor, laptop, and mouse. Very helpful for those of us who really aren’t traveling anywhere with our laptops and would like a large monitor.) Since this laptop was wider than the previous one, the wooden shelf I had used as a monitor stand would no longer fit.

Alongside a dusty road near the entrances to the Khlong Toei Port and the toll road, is a row of woodworking shops. This ragged bunch of shops looks more like a shanty town than a business district, but these businesses can fashion most anything from wood. The shops closest to the port focus on making shipping pallets. Further down are shops with photo albums showing the wares from bookcases to bedposts that they have made.

Not sure which shop would be the best one, we walked for a bit until finding someone who looked welcoming rather than wary. We showed him the sketch I had drawn, explained what we were looking for, and he went off to find some sample pieces of wood to see if the quality would be sufficient. After settling on the wood, he started cutting and rough sanding. I noticed a lack of safety equipment being used by any of the workers. I also noticed that our fellow was missing part of one finger.

Looking down the inside area of the shops, it is unclear where one ends and the next begins. Perhaps it is all really just one big shop with different fronts? The railroad tracks running down the middle of the shops were no longer shiny silver on top, so I concluded that the tracks are not frequently used. That said, some repairmen with a rail repair cart appeared to be fixing the rails, so maybe they are still in service.

After about ten minutes and a couple of careful measurements (he ascribed to the “measure twice, cut once” philosophy – a good sign), the woodworker glued and nailed the legs onto the monitor stand and checked that it was level. We turned down an offer to stain it – I can do that in the future, if I so desire – and headed home. The price for materials and labor? 400 baht – about $13.50.

The finished product, the monitor on the (admittedly not the most handsome) monitor stand with the laptop underneath, and a remote keyboard. Not only is the end product completely satisfactory, but I enjoyed finally having a chance to see what was going on at the woodworking community next to the tollway entrance.

Cooking – Feta and Spinach Phyllo Pie

Posted on 1 January 2012 by christao408

To ensure a tasty start to the new year, I cooked a simple but fulfilling brunch for Tawn and myself, a feta and spinach pie made with phyllo dough. The recipe was based on one in Jamie Oliver’s “30 Minute Meals” series, which is available on iTunes.

The filling is eggs, feta cheese, cheddar cheese, and sauteed spinach seasoned with a little nutmeg, dried oregano, and salt and pepper. I modified the recipe slightly, substituting provolone for the cheddar and also sauteeing an onion to give the filling more flavor. The exterior is formed of sheets of phyllo dough, splashed with extra virgin olive oil and a dusting of sweet paprika. The dough is folded over the top to create a sealed pie and then baked in a skillet in the oven for 20 minutes.

The result is a flaky crust and an oozy, rich interior – a combination of flavors and textures that is very appealing. When paired with a mixed greens salad (in our case with some steamed beets and persimmon), it is a very pleasant meal and a tasty start to 2012!