Category Archives: North Virginia Thai Language Meet Up

Sawasdee Krab!

Fall is coming on strong which means the holidays are just around the corner and that means office parties, social get togethers and lots of eating. For me that means firing up the kitchen at Wit’s End for more Thai cooking like today. Instead of meeting at a restaurant or coffee shop like usual my Thai Meetup group had a potluck meeting. Everyone had to fix a dish or bring something.

For this weeks blog I thought I’d share my culinary potluck adventure. This month things also means more cooking because in two more weeks it’s Halloween and I volunteered to make Pad Grapao Neua and Grapao Gai for our office Halloween potluck.

That’s the curse of being know as-

a. someone that can cook
b. can cook something exotic like Thai food and
c. is actually pretty dang good at it!

At least that’s what other people say about my cooking not me I swear! I haven’t had a customer dissatisfied yet, well, except for that time I had two friends over and one could not eat beef or anything spicy. So what did I serve, fiery Pad Grapoa Beef and Basil. I forgot I swear! But I still haven’t lived that down….

At work my department has meetings twice a month. These meetings aren’t the most exciting event in my day but they are pretty informative. Sometimes the boss has lunch catered but maybe that’s a bribe to make sure everyone shows up! So what do I do? As a glutton for punishment I offer to make Thai food for lunch at one of our meetings in December. Let’s see about 20 people, and knowing me I’ll fix at least five different dishes plus I have to get all this stuff from my house in Washington to my job in Maryland and I don’t own a car. Just like me to let my mouth write a check I have to figure out how I’m going to cash!

Today’s menu is way easier but I was running late getting started cooking this morning and be at the pot luck on time but you know I work best when I’m under pressure and some chaos going on. My secret is have everything I need to chop, pick, pluck or cut prepared ahead of time. This is how I managed to make two seperate dishes at the same time with a two hour late start and still be only an hour late. I also keep everything within an arms reach then I can stand in one spot and just pivot all day long.

Satay? Ok!

You can never go wrong with Satay Gai or curry flavored chicken skewers. You can also never make too many ‘cuz trust me they’ll go fast! I like these because they are fairly easy to make just take a day or so to make them my way.

The recipe is simple, actually I cheat a little, buy the Satay mix and Satay peanut butter sauce in the package as you see here. Any decent Thai or Asian market will sell this since it’s a popular brand. You can follow the instructions or make it the way I do which is a little different but worth it. I learned this from an ex-faen who could make Satay beef that would melt in your mouth like butter! Oh man!

The Satay mix has two parts. Part A is the mix for the chicken and Part B is for making Peanut Sauce. I only use the mix for the Satay and buy the Peanut sauce in the jar. That’s UN-official Thai cooking to get it out of the bottle but I remember when I tried making it the authentic way and I don’t want my fire insurance to go up again. But enough yapping, let’s cook!

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Sawasdee Krab!

Has anyone missed me? It has been a few weeks since my last literary opus (ha!) it seems there was always something getting in the way, including my own procrastination sometimes I admit, to sitting down and hammering out a new blog for the cyber masses. We’ve got so many new and excellent writers on here now for compettition, don’t think that since I haven’t been writing I’ve not been reading I need to hustle and get back in the swing of blogging or I could lose my place!

This time I want to share with you some of this past weekends adventures with my friends in the North Virginia Thai Langauge Group. Our core members are me, Vut, Oop, Dew, Tiffany and Tim and we had a great couple of get togethers this weekend in Virginia at the Lao temple there on Sunday Wat Lao Buddhavong and then back in DC to celebrate the Fourth of July holiday on Monday. At Wat Lao we went to see a true national icon of Thailand in concert, Carabao! I’m going to write more on them tomorrow when I get all the pics we took from the concert ready.

Instead today I want to talk about our other get together the next day to celebrate the Fourth and also one of my favorite subjects…thai food! As our dear Oakmonster would say you don’t entertain guests without offering food (it’s a Thai thing) and the same is true for many Americans you don’t celebrate our nations Independence day without eating but at least you don’t have to dress up like for Thanksgiving unless you decide to wear all red, white and blue for America or the same great colors for Thailand! :p

What would our countries birthday celebration be without hotdogs, hamburgers and BBQ on the grill? Well actually I wouldn’t know since, yep, we went all out and did things Thai Style! I don’t cook unless it’s Thai food (it’s a Wit thing 😉 ) as you can tell in my pic here แกงคั่วสับปะรด anyone?

We had planned to have a potluck get together for awhile now as a group probably at my place since I wanted to cook for the everyone but I have this strange phobia about cooking in someone elses kitchen (lol) I like to know where everything is otherwise I am even more of a wreck when trying to put on a big meal for folks.

Since the Fourth of July was this month I had the brillant idea to combine the two and we could have an outdoor potluck. I would fix everything at home and then finally get to use my nifty Tiffin that I bought at the Thai market last year. Everyone would bring something and we’d have a nice eat out until time for the fireworks to start at least that was the intention.

However what is that expression? The road to hell is paved with good intentions? Well it certainly wasn’t that bad but we did have a few misfires that almost sunk everything! It started Sunday ….