The four dollar experiment

I know I fall in love with Thailand quite often, but this next entry might be the highest contributing factor to me never wanting to leave.

It all started when I had an afternoon off and went for a long bike ride to clear my mind, and ponder how to hold myself hostage in this country until my parents and sister come to visit. A friend of mine suggested I should bike to the airport sometime, because its beautiful and not far from ‘khalok. So on Saturday my students didn’t want to study, so I randomly had the afternoon off to explore the airport. The ride was awesome- only 14 or so km, on a quiet but well paved road that peaked out at the Yom River every once in a while. I guess it sounds kind of weird to go on a trip to the airport, but really the airport is like Sawankhalok’s biggest nature park. There is a zoo (of buffalo), a resort with a swimming pool, and orchid garden, Sawankhalok’s most expensive restaurant, and an organic agricultural project! So I went to check out the scared kids whose parents insisted they ride the fat buffalo so they (and I) could take pictures, and the restaurant overlooking their organic garden project….when I found bags of the most delicious fresh looking lettuce I have ever seen (in Thailand)! I was so excited to see mixed greens like that, so I bought two bags and quickly biked back to Sawankhalok. ITS SALAD TIME!! (I am definitely my mother’s daughter in my father’s country)

I headed straight to my favorite market at the temple on the outskirts of Sawankhalok to gather some ingredients to make this salad possible. The grocery store in town sells the worst tasting salad dressing (as in sugar water), so if I wanted a satisfying salad, I would have to make it from scratch. A full basket of ingredients later, I headed home while the sun set over the Yom River <3

The recipe to happiness:

• Organic lettuce from Sukhothai airport’s organic garden
• Onion, lime, garlic, cucumber and mint from Sawankhalok’s local market, grown harvested and sold by local people (chili peppers optional. Apparently I’m not that Thai yet, because I bought the chili peppers but didn’t include them in my salad)
• Mangoes from Kirk and Bryan’s front yard
• Sawankhalok-made honey, sold at the Saturday day market.

And the rest is simple really…because it’s a salad. I minced the garlic, onion and ginger (by hand, because my crappy food processor/blender doesn’t actually food process), cut up the cucumbers, and the mango into little cubes, put the cucumbers and mango over the bed of lettuce, sprinkled the garlic onion and ginger over that, followed by bits of mint, squeezed a little lime, then poured a teaspoon of honey over it and BAM! Tropical Salad Heaven.

The coolest thing about this maybe-not-so-exciting adventure is that it all cost me about 110 bhat, less than four dollars, including the two bags of organic lettuce. And it’s enough for at least three days of salad.

….Now, if only I had a quality glass of red wine, I could stay in Thailand forever.