Get it?!? Thai-erd. Haha!

We ordered from Thai Cafe tonight, because we had spent enough time in our kitchen for one day. Our sink clogged up and would not drain, so we spent a good 4 hours trying to clear it. The thought of that smelly gray water is enough to make me lose my appetite. I needed some aromatic Thai spices to perk up my taste buds!

Got the pad thai (above), and a red curry with chicken and rice. The flavours were strong enough, but just lacking a bit in texture. Dry chicken overall. Curry was too runny and had way too many bamboo shoots and basil leaves, and not enough chicken. 

Does anybody have a good Thai place in Vancouver to recommend to me please?

Sometimes, you get to that point where you're making mistake after mistake. For me, it's usually when I'm too stressed out and anxious, and I become unaware of what is happening around me. Not that I made any mistakes, it's mostly H dropping things, misplacing things, or pouring things into other things that he shouldn't (but he didn't know, so now he knows not to pour grease down an old slow draining kitchen sink). Pretty sure he's way tired out from the move. 

I do also know that I get to the point of being too tired to control my emotions sometimes, and I should communicate this better and make sure I don't let myself throw tantrums. 

Thank goodness for grandparents. 

I'm not huge on Thai food, and out of the all the Asian cuisines, I would normally go for something else. Not sure why, maybe a bad experience previously.  We felt adventurous and wanted to try out something new though, because how many times can we visit Pho Vy in a week? H suggested we expand outside of our comfort zone and give Baan Thai a try. 

 

They have great "wok air". The medium spicy is almost too much for me to handle, but doesn't overpower all the spices and flavors. If you're sensitive to spicy food like me, go for the mild. 

We ordered the lunch specials - red curry with chicken (gaeng pak), pad thai, stiry fry (phad khing), because those seem to be a better deal. Lunch specials come with a crispy freshly fried spring roll, as well, and I can eat these everyday. 

We also ordered one of the fried rice options to try out something off the lunch special menu, and it was pretty good too. Lunch specials are the way to go though (better deal).

I'm extremely happy we tried something new.  

It might be easiest to stick with the same old restaurants, the tried and true routines, walking the same route to the same places, where we can order without even looking at the menu, but it might not yield the best result. Sometimes, you need to dig yourself out of your deep deep rut, just climb out of that ditch, and move all your luggage with you to a new place to for fresh experiences. 

I also think sometimes that it would have been so much easier if we didn't have a baby yet, and if we had waited just a little bit longer to figure out a more ideal living situation. Travelling and moving would be so much easier. Would we have been happier though? 

I imagine not. It's delightful to watch her try to flip over and get stuck.

Splurged on the Lovevery play gym recently. So far, she likes it, but still gets bored after maybe 30 minutes. 

  

Visited D&T in Toronto a couple weeks ago (thanks for hosting!), with B, and I’m still recovering from all the food we ate. My favourite meal was at Kiin, which we stumbled upon while looking for a good dinner spot:

To start, we had the shrimp and pomelo salad (on the right in the image below), and the chor lada (the beautiful purple flower shaped dumpling on the left):

The pomelo was super fresh, not sour at all, and all the flavours of the shrimp were enhanced so well by the dressing (I’m sure there was fish sauce). The dumplings were an interesting texture – chewy exterior with bits of peanut inside. It wasn’t my favourite, because I don’t like that texture usually, but I didn’t hate it.

Next, we had the Khao Yum, which comes in a shiny brass bowl filled with the colours of the rainbow:

The server helped us mix all the different ingredients together (jasmine rice, lemongrass, turmeric, edible flowers, sunflower shoots, and more) with a tamarind and soy bean sauce. Although, I wanted to inhale this whole giant bowl of freshness, the best way to taste all the flavours was to really savor each bite. I’m a big fan of lemongrass, and I could keep eating this forever.

The last of the main courses was the sea bream, called Mieng Pla, which came wrapped up in a leaf of sorts:

I don’t have a photo of the little leaf wraps that we were supposed to eat the fish with, but the idea of this dish was to pick up a portion of fish, put it on top of a little piece of lettuce that was already topped off with herbs and vermicelli (at least that’s what I think it was), and eat it all in one bite.

We couldn’t say no to dessert. Our neighbors at the table behind us ordered it first, and who can resist ice cream? We chose the pandan ice cream (instead of the thai iced tea flavor), which was accompanied by 9 different toppings, including the green and red water chestnuts soaked in syrup, grass jelly, jack fruit, coconut shreds, toasted mung bean:

Thai food brings to mind red, green, and yellow curries, and meat grilled on satay sticks, but this place opened my eyes to a different side of this cuisine. If anybody else knows of a good place for khao yum in Vancouver, please tell me about it so that I don’t have to take a plane across the country to eat it again!

I’m trying to find more time to post, but it’s the  end of summer soon. This means that I’m trying to spend as much time as possible outdoors to soak in more vitamin D. It's good for bone density. Be back soon with another post!

This weekend, I made plans for next weekend, while sharing a few meals with a couple friends. One of those meals was at Sawasdee Thai:

I was pleasantly surprised by the quality. We had the pad thai, deep fried tofu that came with a delicious honey sauce, red curry with chicken, some more chicken and basil stir fry of sorts, and a seafood stir fry of sorts with squid. I didn’t really help out with ordering, left the others do all the work. Can’t forget to mention the coconut rice. Always get the coconut rice, because it’s just the perfect combo with the curry sauce.

The whole meal came to about $80 only for all 6 of us. Afterwards at home, I chugged a whole 2L of water, probably because of all the MSG and salt, but hey, it was delicious at the moment and I have on regrets.

Also spent the weekend reading all of Startup by Doree Shafrir instead of going out. I borrowed an eBook from the library and zoomed right through it, pretty easy read. It’s like Gossip Girl for the Tech world. I’ve never been part of a Startup, but I can totally relate to the themes of the book (ie, females in the Tech workforce, information in the Internet age, office life, etc…) Would recommend.

So about those plans for next weekend... I'm excited, and you should be too. 

Trekked across SFO to Twin Peaks! Originally wanted to visit the Sutro Nature Reserve, but it didn’t look like it would be as rewarding as climbing to the top of a hill to see the whole city from above. The clouds cleared up at the top, where I felt like I would literally be blown away if I didn’t try to make myself heavier.

Came back down to the Castro, hungry and ready to chow down on whatever food I could find. It was already past 2PM by the time the food arrived, and it took me a lot of willpower to hold back, and take this picture first:

This was one of the lunch special sets at Thai House, including red curry with chicken, and a shrimp spring roll thingy, which was awesomely crispy. The soup on the bottom right was sorta too salty though. Overall, pretty good food, nice place for a quiet late lunch. I’d want to try out the other restaurants to see what else the Castro district could offer though, so I wouldn’t come back again any time soon.

Then, I walked all the way back to the hotel, drank wine, and watched movies Netflix. Being alone is definitely an art.

Back to present times… Feeling physically bad because it’s been a while since I’ve had time to exercise. Heart’s been racing these days… Not in the I’m happy to see you way either.