Okay, jet lag sucks.

I haven’t been able to stay up past 10:00, and last night I actually fell asleep while watching Revenge. Who does that?!

But I just caught up on 2 weeks of How Sweet It Is and that breathed some life back into me. I want to make her latest crock pot chicken like, immediately.

I also want to develop a taste for Thai food again ASAP so I can share all the skillz I learned at cooking class. It was FANTASTIC! We put in a reservation and received an email in broken English about where to meet our teacher on a street corner. Pretty normal for Thailand. We started by heading to the market to pick up ingredients for the five courses we were making.

He had us wash and chop all the vegetables and herbs, clean and cut the chicken, and peel and de-vein the shrimp. Then we each had our little stations on the floor with cutting blocks and sharp knives.

I had worked with some of the ingredients before, but there were some new ones like kaffir lime leaves, Thai basil, and jelly mushrooms (ew).

We made:

Tom Yum Soup

Chicken with Cashew Nuts

Red Curry

Green Curry

Mango Sticky Rice*

*if they ever put me on Best Thing I Ever Ate, this is what I’m choosing.

A few notes about Thai food:

1) Everything cooks REALLY fast. All the ingredients went in the wok and Chef Nusi danced around yelling “FRY FRY FRY” and then within minutes I was burning my tongue on delicious food.

2) All proteins and vegetables are interchangeable. The seasoning stays the same, and then you put in whatever meat/fish/tofu you like, plus whatever vegetables or textural things you have on hand. A lot of the key ingredients, though, can’t be substituted. I’m interested to see whether the grocery stores here have the ingredients we used. Of course Shoppers won’t- I’ll have to try the new Harris Teeter.

3) A lot of the flavor is reliant on aromatics that you don’t necessarily eat. For example, these little pea-type things that I think have some association with eggplant.. I bit into one and it was nasty and bitter. And then I told Danielle to eat one, too. She didn’t.

4) It would be normal to eat rice at every course in a day. Rice with omelette for breakfast, fried rice for lunch, curry with rice for dinner, mango sticky rice for dessert. Throw me some noodles, please.

I do have the recipes for these things, but this post is already pretty extensive. Tweet us at Spilllthebeans if you want any of them! And, if you happen to be planning a trip to Thailand,  www.bangkokthaicooking.com. Ka pun ka!