Last Saturday was June 23rd, which would have been my mother's 61st birthday. I remember when she turned 40. And I remember the following year when my dad turned 40. I remember those as moments that they shared with each other, but that they also shared with us kids. They taught us how to be happy for someone other than ourselves - to celebrate another's birthday by making them feel loved. They helped us think of gifts to buy them so that we could experience the joy of giving. And of course, my parents were great gift-receivers. I remember my mom expressing so much happiness when she opened my present of 3 blue pens. They were her favorite kind after all, but I only knew that because my dad helped me to see it!
It's been 13 years since my mom died. Each year when Jun 23rd rolls around it feels a little different. This year, I felt that cooking myself a very Abigail-style brunch would a good way to pay tribute to the memories I have of my mom. Cooking is something I really enjoy doing. Being here in this apartment for just over a month, cooking is still a bit of an experimental process. I cook a lot of things Thai style: stir-fries over rice. Sounds so simple, and perhaps it is. But with the huge variety of vegetables (some which I've only eaten a few times, let alone ever actually cooked myself) and various kinds of cooking sauces, each meal I've cooked here has been pretty unique. They each usually end up being a bit of a process, with some turning out really well and some turning out, well, just all right! So when this meal turned out so tasty and balanced, it made me really happy! I think my mother would be happy to see me being so happy.
Actually, my mother would possibly be rolling with laughter to see me eat something like this: ผัดผักบุ้ง (pad phak boong = stir fried morning glory). Vegetables, especially the green ones, were pretty much the bane of my existence when I was growing up. My mom tried sooo hard to get me to eat peas, beans, spinach, and other stuff that fell in my "gross" category. But I do also remember picking peas from the backyard garden with my mom, then sitting on the back porch together to "pod" them. Plunk plunk plunk! - Raw round bouncy peas dropping into a metal pot. Even though I had vowed to never eat peas, after planting the wrinkly dried seeds into the ground, watering the garden with a hose, seeing the plants sprout up, waiting for the pods to grow big and plump, picking them, then learning how to squeeze open the pods.... that day I was willing to open my mind just a liiiiitle bit and try them again. Raw that is. I ate them right out of the pod, and you know what? I actually liked them! Amazing how a real food-growing experience trumps eating peas from a metal can.
I also liked raw mushrooms as a kid. Fungus has only grown on me (not literally) since then, and it's been fun to try different kinds of mushrooms here. This one I sliced up and stir fried with some mushroom soy sauce:
It's kind of like soy sauce, but it's made with only 40% soy beans. 27% is mushroom, and then it also has sugar, wheat flour and salt water. You can use it for stir frying other vegetables, too, not just mushrooms. With this dish, I also added a little of this tangy-sour-slightly sweet sauce made from tamarinds:
Most traditional Thai dishes combine the elements of sweet, spicy, sour and salty. So I use that idea a lot when I cook, to bring multiple elements of flavor to each dish. The mushroom sauce brought the salty and the tamarind brought the sour and a little bit of sweetness. It all balanced together nicely, and the dish turned out quite tasty!
I actually had a lot of flavors swirling around on my plate. The brown jasmine rice brought them all together nicely. And of course, having some fresh fruit for dessert didn't hurt (banana and papaya)!
