First Attempt At Cooking Thai Food

For most of 2005 and 2007, I lived in Thailand. Each year I lived with a family and learned to enjoy some classic Thai dishes. Since coming back to the US, there have rarely been opportunities to enjoy some of my most favorite traditional Thai dishes. This is not because of a lack of Thai restaurants, just a lack of traditional or even street food style of Thai cooking.


And then I found this blog. She Simmers. She writes about several of the best Thai dishes around: som tam, jaew Sauce, street fried chicken, and even Thai fried beef.


Despite needing to go out to the legendary H-Mart to get all of the necessary ingredients, I got aggressive with my Thai cooking and decided to try all of the above recipes.

Painting A Blank Canvas Chalkboard

The second Carol mentioned painting a wall with chalkboard paint I loved the idea. The question of which wall answered itself in our space. In our kitchen is a slender wall the "separates" our kitchen area from our bedroom area. The process of painting with chalkboard paint is a little laborious and takes some super human patience. Not only do they recommend 3 coats (and I would recommend using a roller, not a brush) but you also must wait several days before drawing on it. On top of that, you need to completely cover the wall with an even layer of chalk, let sit for day, erase and repeat. This helps the board to look better after being washed.

We painted our 3 coats, waited several days for it to dry, covered the board in a layer of chalk but that's when our patience ran out and we couldn't resist erasing the board and drawing stick people. The result: when we erase our board a chalky residue remains after drying leaving our board a little less "clean" than we would like. But overall, the board rocks.

The before photo


Our new chalkboard with a layer of chalk.


The first erasing plus a chalk ledge.

Here you can see the residue that's left on the chalkboard after we erase it and it dries.

First Post or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Internet

Via Asher Sarlin

The Internet knows all, or at least it thinks it does. As Carol and I begin our life living together in our new apartment, it has been there to help with our DIY projects, challenge our culinary skills with new recipes, and answer all those random questions we think up, like "Are oysters sustainable?" (The answer is Yes.) In short, we are the people who google anything we are curious about and count on the Internet to teach us everything. The idea behind this blog is to share some of what we have learned or even what we've been entertained by as we google things we don't know about.