Lots of food

Golf, Aidan and I went to Berkeley yesterday on our ethnic food run. In my commitment to eating more vegetarian, I went to the Indian grocery store I'd been going to for years. Indian is my favorite vegetarian food, although I cannot eat it every meal for the flavors are so strong. I still remember when I went to India, by the time I was there a month, I was really tired of the food. I didn't eat Indian food for nearly a year afterward! Luckily, I didn't have the same reaction with Thai food, since I lived in Thailand for nearly four years, and I was certainly able to break up my meals with western food and just good ole fruit - albeit exotic varieties we don't get here.

Anyway, I bought some different dals at the Indian shop - toor, chana and urad. I got besan, which is chickpea (or grabanzo bean) flour and some basmati rice. I got two different mixes for idlis, since I have an idli mold, so I want to see if one brand is better than the other. And now that I have all the ingredients, I'd like to try making it from scratch too. I also got some rasam soup base, which is really delicious to eat with idlis. Those are the main ingredients for many Indian dishes, and I'd just need to get vegetables, as I already have the main spices: tumeric, cumin, mustard seeds and coriander.

After I was done at the Indian shop, we went to the Talaat TukTuk or Tuk Tuk Thai Market in English. It was a few blocks further down the street and it's the largest Thai market I've ever been to. It includes a food court where you can get tasty dishes for the same price as a fast food meal. I got my pad thai talay, which is seafood pad thai. Seems most non-Thai people eat the pad thai, since it's the most familiar and for sure delicious, but I get it because Golf doesn't cook it at home. Golf got the pad si eew which is broad rice noodles with pork and green vegetables (broccoli being the American equivalent). It was yummy!

This market has a real tuk tuk inside it, although fancier than the ones putting down the streets in Bangkok. Aidan loves playing on it, sitting in the driver's seat. We'll for sure take him for a short ride on one next time we're in Thailand. Then we got our groceries there (Golf doing most of the shopping) and went home. It was a surprisingly fun morning and so nice not to have to make anything for lunch.