Today was one of my favorite days at Mercy. We spent the whole day with the children doing regular things. We met Misty’s sister and mother in the morning and then went with Rose, Lek and Day to the market in Khlong Toey. This market is a local market that most of the people in this area get their food and goods at. The prices are a lot cheaper than anywhere else. We took a large songtheaw to get there.
When we arrived the conditions were a little shocking, especially in the seafood and meat section. Thankfully growing up on a farm made seeing this easier for me but it would be a little shocking to most. You could find everything from dead frogs, to pig skin, fish, animal tongues and feet, snouts and other crazy things. Many of the fish were still alive but sliced open on the side so that they were slithering around in a pot. Some of the fish even made it out of their pan and were flopping across the street.
The ground was very wet so it did not help the conditions any as our feet were very dirty. However, to me this was all part of the experience.
In the produce section things were a little better, even though the food was not in the most sanitary conditions. We bought all of our ingredients for our cooking class and then rented a taxi truck to come home. All of us crammed into the back of it.
Before we started cooking I helped the cooks in the kitchen peel over 100 boiled eggs…mom I was practicing for your deviled eggs.
Back at Mercy Cherri began our lesson by teaching us how to make Tom Yum Krung. Don’t worry I wrote down every step and will take a few of the ingredients back home so I can make it for some of you. Mom you would love it. We also made our favorite pork omelets, pork in soy sauce, some kind of stir-fry, and my favorite salty fish. It took us a long time to prepare everything as Thai cooking involves a lot more preparation and a lot more work. Together with the girls we sat down for a lovely lunch. After lunch we met back up to bake some cookies.
The girls never made chocolate chip cookies before so they were very excited. The ingredients to make one batch of cookies cost a lot more than all of the other food combined. At first we had a small betty crooker like oven as there is no oven in the main kitchen, but we found something a little more useful downstairs. The girls thought that it would be nice to make enough cookies for everyone at Mercy so I went back to the store to get some more ingredients. Three hours later we had baked 16 dozen cookies.
I loved spending the day cooking with the girls and playing with the younger children. Although they definitely tired me out, I had a great time. It is hard to imagine that soon I may never see them again.
In the evening we brought the rest of the cookies to our boys. They were already in bed but not sleeping yet, but as soon as they saw me come in with the cookies they were wide awake. I was swarmed. I bet the scene looked a lot like a person feeding birds at the park…all of the boys were crowded around.
Misty and I picked up some of our things, grabbed a pizza and headed back to Mercy for the night. We slept in the apartment at Mercy with her family. All in all today was a perfect day.
When we were at Soi 40 Gelong snuck into our room again and tried to take pictures of all of us. He positioned himself in what he believed to be the best position and then went from there. We all had a good laugh watching him, especially because he was so serious about taking the most perfect picture. Don’t worry, I too, took pictures.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment