Hurricane Ike Evacuation, Part 4

Our fourth night as evacuees was spent at my mom's house. This night was special because she was hosting a prayer session in honor of my grandparents and great-grandparents. When she told me this, I was expecting a group of about 10-15 close friends over for dinner and prayer. But oh did I underestimate my mama. Her guestlist included over 70 guests and she prepared the feast for all the guest virtually single-handed.

It wasn't until the 11th hour did she ask for help, i.e., the event started at 7pm and she didn't call on us until 10am that morning. She bought all the groceries herself. The night before the event, she was up until 4 am preparing ingredients for sausage, two types of sticky rice, congee (rice porridge), stir-fried noodles and more. By the time we arrived to help, she had gotten most things to the point she just needed to combine items and put over fire. However, she did need me to grate the cucumbers. The problem was she didn't have a grater. So instead, I had to use a peeler. Yes, one of those things that peels the skin off potatoes and carrots, I used that. To effectively grate 20 lbs of cucumbers for the Vietnamese salad called goi. Yes, 20 lbs!!! I've never hated cucumbers more in my life.

Since I was busy grating cucumbers, I didn't get any fotos of the prep work. But here are some of the results:


Clockwise from the purple rice: purple sticky rice, peanut sticky rice, goi (Vietnamese salad, yay me for grating 20 lbs of cucumbers), stir-fried beef noodles, eggrolls, and fried shrimp chips. The coloring of the purple sticky rice is just for show. Sometimes it made red or just left as plain white. The peanut sticky rice is white sticky rice mixed with peanuts boiled soft so that it almost serves as a creamy compliment to the sweet rice. Because I grew up eating it, I never really knew what it was, but wikipedia can tell you more about sticky rice. The beef noodles are similar to what you'd find at a Chinese restaurant, except my mama's dish is much better. It's not drowned in sauce, not too salty and with a good balance of beef, veggies and rice noodles.


For those of you a bit squimish, you may want to skip to the next foto. Here are platters of all things pork not served in 99% of restaurants. In no particular order (because it's all mixed together), there's boiled pork intestine, stomach, tongue, belly, ear and liver. These tasty tidbits were added to the congee made with coagulated pig blood. If the previous 2 sentences sparked more intrigue than indigestion, consider yourself a foodie.


Here's the home-made sausage. Well, technically my mama only prepared the filling and had the sausages stuffed by professionals, though I'm sure she seriously considered doing it herself. As you can see that unlike the sausage at the store, which is comprised of evenly ground meats, this sausage is purposedly chunky. Though I'm unsure why we wouldn't just leave the meat chunks out for eat as is, it sure tastes good.

Though there were many other food items, I didn't get more fotos because with over 70 on the guestlist, once the food is laid out, no one waits for the cameraman to get a shot. I'll end this post with some words of wisdom: NEVER get in the way of a woman with a huge pot of boiling soup.

Ike Evacuation, Part 3

Finally got internet at the house again. So I'll be playing catch up these next few posts. Stay tuned.

During our third day back in Dallas we were treated to a Laotian feast fit for kings. Our good friends had a housewarming that included what seemed like 20 family-members from Kansas. And what kind of housewarming would it be without a proper buffet? Several of the visiting family members seemingly worked 16 hours straight so that we could experience a food coma. Here are some fotos of the fruits of their labor.

I apologize in advance for any misunderstandings or misrepresentations of the foods items you are about to see.


So here's everything laid out in smaller serving bowls. I wish I could give you detailed descriptions about each dish's ingredients and method of cooking, but much like when I was growing up, I was told to not ask questions and finish everything in my bowl. And that's exactly what I did. I've never been one to offend the cook, in this case several Laotian women ready to put me in my place. Though giving you my best guess of each dish would only showcase my ignorance of Laotian cuisine, I do distinctively remember lots of bamboo shoots, roasted pig and beef salad. Once again, that was beef salad. Much like a salad is a bowl full of shredded lettuce, the beef salad was a bowl of thinly-slice beef. Honestly, any cuisine with a meat salad wins my vote.


Here's a foto of the roasted pig. Each piece had a layer of moist, salty meat, rich, oily fat and crispy, crunchy skin. I think if I were to have a last meal, it would include roast pig.


They warned me that the food would be spicy, but seeing as how I love to sweat, I told them how the food was just right. So here's what they whipped up for me to eat with the food. Yes, that's just a bunch of BYA (burn your a**) pepper crushed with salt and sugar. To this they added some sort of soy sauce mixture. Let's just say I didn't again comment on how the food wasn't spicy enough.

Seem like a lot of food? It was. But that was only lunch. After a siesta, we were ready to eat some more...at least expected to.


And why wouldn't everyone be expected to eat more, especially when the out-of-town guests worked so hard on preparations. This foto was only a small portion of what was being prepared for dinner. As soon as the ladies saw me in the kitchen with a camera, threats were made on my life if any fotos were taken of them cooking. I heeded their warnings.

MY NEW FAVORITE DISH

This dish was simply called nem, which is the name of the main ingredient. Though nem is briefly described on wikipedia (last bullet under "Meat Dishes"), wiki fails to mention that it's a slightly sour type of sausage that is usually eaten while drinking beer.


What these ladies did with it wasn't anything short of genius. They crumbled huge pieces of nem by hand, mixed in rice, lime juice and other secret ingredients, reshaped the mixture into balls and deep-fried the newly-formed bundles of joy.


The result are crispy spheres that look ready for devouring. Or so I thought until I reached for one and was promptly scolded. The ladies weren't done yet. This was but a mere step in the preparation of this dish.


Next came the ball breaking and I'm not talking about them giving me a hard time all day for snapping fotos while they toiled away. The fried, steamy clump of meat and rice was then crumbled to form what almost looked like Chinese fried rice. I guess it technically was still fried rice, but I didn't refer to it as much for fear of offending the lovely ladies preparing the meal.


Finally, the mixture is tossed with fresh cilantro and served. The result is a dish combining moist steamed rice, crunchy fried pieces, sour meaty pork chunks and fresh flavorful cilantro. In other words, every bite was a spoonful of "OMG that's good!"

There were so much more delicious Laotian dishes I ate that night, but in all the celebration associated with a housewarming, my focus on fotography blurred as the night went on. Though I ate much more than I should have, my only regret is that I didn't give each lady a hug for the food they made.

Short Interruption

Been without internet at home ever since Hurricane Ike rolled through. Will update as soon as I'm back online. Thanks for checking in!

Ike Evacuation, Part 2

Our second night back was spent at my wife's aunt's place where it's obvious she shares my mother-in-law's hatred of hunger.


Clockwise from the watermelon chunks: mango salad, eggrolls and fried shrimp crackers, fresh greens, rice noodles with pork and various condiments. In addition to this fotos, she also steamed some beautiful blue crabs. However, there's no fotos of the crabs because I was too excited and forgot, which seems to happen more often than I'd like.


Here's a close-up of the mango salad. This is traditionally prepared with green papaya instead of mango, but my aunt-in-law was experimenting. But unlike my high-school chemistry class, this experiment was wildly successful. The mango was tender, the cucumbers were crisp, the peanuts were crunchy, the shrimp was firm and the herbs were flavorful. All this tossed in a light mixture of vinegar and sugar makes for a refreshing salad that easily fills you up without the guilt.


Of course the salad has to be guilt-free because here is where all the guilt lies, home-made eggrolls and fried shrimp crackers. Eggrolls are the Vietnamese equivalent to the hamburger. Everyone makes them slightly different and it's very hard to mess up. These were delicious; I had three after I was already full, just to make sure I was full. I think she uses a shrimp and pork mixture. The shrimp crackers are always a favorite of mine. You can buy these things packaged at the store where they look and feel like little squares of uncooked lasagna. However, toss these babies into a pot of boiling oil for 30 seconds and they'll expand into what you see here, crunchy salty shrimp-flavored wafers that make me feel like a kid again. What I like to do with them is just put them against my tongue and as it dissolves on my tongue, a strange vacuum is created causing it to stick. To me, this phenomena is undeniable proof that I was meant to eat it.

Ike Evacuation, Part 1

Though Hurricane Ike caused some major damage to the Houston area and my neighborhood, one of the silver linings of Ike's storm clouds is that the wife and I spent another weekend in Dallas with some great home-cooking from our families.

We had dinner at my mother-in-law's the first night back and here's what she made:


My mother-in-law felt adventurous this day and experimented with chicken tenders. She created her own batter and served it with a traditional Vietnamese dipping sauce. The combination worked great and I ended up eating much more than I should have.


This tofu soup is a traditional Vietnamese soup. Though this dish and some rice is typically all a person would need for a meal, my mother-in-law must have decided that, since we were evacuees, we must also be suffering from famine because she also served the following:


She served some stewed catfish and steamed chicken. As you can see, hunger is four-letter word in my mother-in-law's home. Of course I'm not complaining, rather merely stating a wonderful fact.