Michelle over for an afternoon of Baking and Cooking peppered with Drinking and smothered in generous helping of chitchat and laughter.

After a morning of geeking out and shopping for ingredients at Ampang Grocers, while the girls baked, I made drinks.

Seen here is Crushed seedless grapes, simple syrup and Malibu

the entire first batch of which Lex downed…

… along with the bottle while i wasn’t looking. Kidding! XD

And I also made lunch…

… Chicken Alfredo with Yellow Bell Peppers, mushrooms and Capers.

The ladies on the otherhand made the most awesome carrot cake I’ve eaten in a long time… maybe even ever. (In the back is Midori and Melon Milk over Ice)

Seen here is a slice, with icing and pecans. How awesome was it?

Well heres Lex busy stuffing herself with it…

… and yea, this picture speaks for itself. :D

So yea, it was a really fun day…

Good food, good drinks…

… and awesome company. :D Cheers! and happy week ahead.

First meal I had after we landed. So sorry it looks a bit plain, we dug right in because we were so hungry after the flight I forgot to take a picture.

Ditto the Tom Yum. As some of you might know, I’m not a big fan of Thai food, as over here it’s just really kick-you-in-the-face spicy. Nut the food is just so different in Thailand. It’s so much more defined, earthy. Sure it’s still spicy, but it doesn’t just drown out everything . I officially love Thai now :D

Case in point, a Thai pork and prawn salad. It’s actually refreshingly tangy while spicy, and the heat works with the tanginess, as opposed to just salty and chilli hot you might expect from something here at home.

Sweet and sour prawn. They are very big on prawn over here, they are so big and juicy.. and Cheap! :D

One way you know the Thais are very big on food, is that everywhere in Bangkok there are street vendors. Selling everything from noodles to BBQ skewers to sweets. But then again, when you have a city with six million people living in it, there’s a lot of feeding to be done. It’s such a pity i quite literally don’t have the gut for the street food.

But it’s OK. For one thing you will notice about the Thais is that they really give a damn about what they do. No matter if you’re a business person, artisan, cook or just a security guard, they do things with a certain standard of care.

So it isn’t surprising then that despite the sanitary conditions of a high end department store food court

the food still tastes good…

well… on it’s own it tastes good anyway. I can;t really tell you how it tastes compared to the stuff hawked on the streets.

BBQ pork, lamb and chicken on skewers. It’s not satay because these are actually marinated in something a mildly spicy caramel with santan. Sweet, creamy with a tangy spicy tone.

Thai sausages. It’s meat mixed with a generous helping of local herbs. The taste of herbs is much stronger compared to the western verity we’re used to.

Like us, they also eat a lot of “spare parts”

Heres the scene in a market we were at on day two, after some sightseeing, we dropped by to pick up some stuff for the following cooking lesson.

One thing you’ll notice about the wet markets here…

They are actually clean!

If you’ve ever visited a Malaysian wet market,

you’ll notice that the floor are usually wet, if not all together muddy.

And here we are in a wet market out in the outskirts of a country we perceive to be an example of a 3rd world nation

but surprise surprise they seem to have done it better than us!

That’s a “Tom Yum Kit” my mom is holding, all the herbs you need to whip up a pot of Tom Yum

Greens

and more greens

and this concludes our trip to the market.

After that we headed off for cooking lessons…

where we made Thai Fired Rice Noodles…

That’s my sister… Interesting thing about these noodles is that instead of being softened and then fried, the ingredients are first cooked into a broth, and then the noodles are put in in their dehydrated state, so as they soften they absorb the broth and with it all the flavour.

Green Curry…

served up on fresh rice noodles…

Tom Yum…

Home made fish cake

served with home made Thai chilli sauce

and a really refreshing

papaya salad. For whoever is interested, I’ll post the recipes for all the above along with more pics later :D

and we end the day with some Pandan Coconuts.

Lunch…

and dinner from our last night in Bangkok.

My last day in Bangkok was spent shopping. And OMG I don’t think I’ve ever bought so much in one go, but the stuff was so cheap i couldn’t resist. I must have bought like 7 shirts in 2 hours. This shirt cost rm 18

Here’s a bottle of Jim Beam steak sauce. Something you’ll never find in Malaysia since it contains actual Jim Beam. and it only cost rm6.50

This thing that looks like a bird of sorts is actually a face mask for riding. I’ve been trying to buy one of these here since my days of riding a bike, but i could never find one. So i just had to buy it. rm 40

and of course…

i went nuts at the duty free.

what can i say? i love rum.. yarrrrrrrrr!

of course, I think the most interesting i bought, is this. The Original Lensbaby! :D All you photographers out there would know what this is.

The Malaysian Distributor is selling it for Rm525… i bought this for Rm310 *happy*

I shall leave you with this quick sample from the lensbaby. It’s not very clear as I haven;t gotten the hang of it yet.