Culinary Attitude Adjustments

A couple of Thai women had a good laugh yesterday at my expense.

I go through a lot of eggs because they're my main source of protein (I'm giving up on fish; it's too messy to fillet—and yes, doctor, I mostly eat the whites). No one sells eggs in a carton. Instead, they package them in what appears to be a cellophane bag, about eight or ten to a bag. Last week the vendor put the little cellophane bag inside a little plastic bag, and I stuck them in my back pack. When I got home, a few of them had broken and I had one serious mess in my pack.

So yesterday, I brought a couple of nice sturdy bags with me to the Sunday market so I could hopefully protect my eggs. I took the little cellophane bag and put it into one of the bags I brought and, lo and behold, I picked a bag with no bottom! The eggs went straight through, crashing to the ground, and the women around me were roaring. Glad I could make their day.

Their belly laugh was prompted by my refusal to take the bag they were about to put the eggs in for me. Like most parts of the world in the 21st century, Thailand is drowning in a sea of plastic bags. The Thais, at least up here in Mae Hong Son, seem oblivious to the problem. So along comes this fereng with her ecological attitude glaring at them. When will I learn to leave my attitudes at the border?

Another culinary mis-step: The Thais, Burmese and all tribes in between are crazy about MSG. They use it in just about everything they eat. They import both salt and MSG from Japan, and the labels on both white, crystalline substances are in Thai and Japanese. The only English letters are, predictably, the name of the company.

Friday night, after making a motzei, I ceremoniously dipped my bread into the crystalline substance I had purchased the day before. Now why wasn't it salty?

Double duhh!