Awesome's Culinary Adventures

This is Laddawan, my daughter-in law. Her family calls her Aw and we call her Awesome.

This shot was taken this past summer in an elevator somewhere in Chicago,. She began with a visit to her home country Thailand, then Wisconsin, Vancouver, B.C.,  and finished with a week-long Alaskan cruise before returning home to Kitchener, Ontario.

She had hooked up with a couple of family members who wanted to see a bit of everything and they did very well.

During that almost three-month long trip last summer, she took pictures this way:

Tourist sites—2%

Food 98%

She is a superb cook. In Bangkok, during  her teens, her entrepreneur aunt, who owns a couple of restaurants, put her to work  during school vacations cooking  for the noon-hour crowd. You have to be fast, colorful and gifted for that crowd.

The population in Bangkok varies from sixteen to 20 million in a day and the lunch hour is a mad blur of activity.

She cooks mostly Thai although her North American food is wonderful. She brushes up on her English watching all the cooking shows and taking massive notes.

We love being invited for a meal at her place.

She can take her food many notches hotter than most of us but we’re slowly working our way up the scale. It’s worth it—she makes fabulous tiny crunchy spring rolls like you’ve never tasted and she does amazing things with fat, juicy shrimp and the ribs—they look dry and overdone and then you bite into one and you’re in food heaven. I’m salivating now.

She took tons of pictures of food in Thailand recently. They rely on seafood, noodles in various forms and loads of veggies. Everything seems to revolve around what  she calls "noodle".

Here’s a look at the Thai portion of her recent trip. 

                                         

                                          A lot of cooking is done at the table and everyone automatically                                                         shares.

She's holding a large local oyster

It's beautiful and she can whip up any of these beauties in minutes. Just stay out of her way--she moves fast.