Week #14: Thailand

The sad fact is, it's Sunday and I'm throwing this post together as a way to take a break from throttling Word (which, if you didn't know, is what I do for a living).  That's right, I've worked the whole weekend.  This week is going to be kind of nuts too...tomorrow I need to drive in to Cambridge for work.  Tuesday night I'll need to hit the gym (trust me) and it's my long workout night (not to mention a school night for Nick).  Wednesday is Nick's surgery.  Thursday is up in the air.  Friday, if I make it that far, should be a little less hectic, but it doesn't look promising.  Saturday is training for Spin stuff.  Wow, just writing all that out made me curl up in the fetal position in my chair.  Oops.

In any case, I'm going to do my best to keep cooking this week, since the last couple weeks have been kind of fails.

So Thailand.

Thailand (pronounced /ˈtaɪlænd/ TYE-land or /ˈtaɪlənd/;^[6] Thai: ราชอาณาจักรไทย Ratcha Anachak Thai, IPA: [râːtɕʰa ʔaːnaːtɕɑ̀k tʰɑj]( listen)) (formerly Siam Thai: สยาม) is an independent country that lies in the heart of Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the west by the Andaman Sea and the southern extremity of Burma. Its maritime boundaries include Vietnam in the Gulf of Thailand to the southeast and Indonesia and India in the Andaman Sea to the southwest.

What about the food?

Thai cuisine blends five fundamental tastes: sweet, spicy, sour, bitter and salty. Some common ingredients used in Thai cuisine include garlic, chillies, lime juice, lemon grass, and fish sauce. The staple food in Thailand is rice, particularly jasmine variety rice (also known as Hom Mali rice) which is included in almost every meal. Thailand is the world's largest exporter of rice, and Thais domestically consume over 100 kg of milled rice per person per year.^[64] Over 5000 varieties of rice from Thailand are preserved in the rice gene bank of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), based in the Philippines. The king of Thailand is the official patron of IRRI.^[65]

Lots of rice.  I can handle that. 

So, without much ceremony or introduction, here's the recipe list for the week:

Sunday: http://www.realthairecipes.com/recipes/thai-fried-rice-with-chicken/
Monday (Nick's night to cook): http://www.realthairecipes.com/recipes/american-fried-rice/
Thursday: http://www.realthairecipes.com/recipes/vegetarian-pad-thai/
Saturday: http://thaifood.about.com/od/quickeasythairecipes/r/chickenmushroom.htm

Tuesday is going to be a very long day (what else is new) so I'm going to stick with something familiar...maybe even red beans, who knows. 

Sorry for the lackluster post folks...gotta get back to exorcising the demons in Word.