Create Your Own Treats at Goofy's Candy Company

Look closely. This sign is made out of jelly beans.

I kind of feel like I need to make up for showing you all those dead and about-to-be-dead chickens last week. In a 180 degree turnaround, I'm focusing this post on the sweet treats of Goofy's Candy Company in Downtown Disney Marketplace.

When we first decided to visit DisneyWorld in Florida last year, what do you think was one of the first things my daughter put on the To Do list? Pictures with Anna and Elsa from Frozen? Nope. Thank goodness because the line for that character greeting was 3 hours long. A princess makeover at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique nestled in Cinderella's Castle? Nope. My girl has never been the "princessy" type unless it's Princess Peach from Mario Brothers. Instead, she is one, giant walking sweet tooth. She takes after both her parents. So, when she said she wanted to visit Goofy's Candy Company, there wasn't much arm twisting to convince the rest of the family to go along.

Ghee Hiang Biscuits, a Penang Food Souvenir

Gong Xi Fa Cai! Happy New Year!

An assortment of biscuits from Ghee Hiang

Chinese New Year is once again upon us. It's time for visiting family back in the home town, nightly fireworks, celebrating with friends, and giving lots and lots of gifts. While a hong bao (red envelope) filled with money is always welcome, food gifts are a nice touch, especially if it's the local specialty. Paris has its macarons. Belgium has its chocolates. Penang has Ghee Hiang pastry biscuits. I always bring these back to Texas with me. If I don't, my mom is sure to give me a hard time about it. (Hi mom!) She says they remind her of the Chinese pastries she enjoyed growing up in the Philippines.

Cambodian Snack Food: Bamboo Sticky Rice

It's Girl Scout Cookie time where I live in Texas. When we moved back this summer from Malaysia, I was so grateful that an existing Girl Scout troop was able to squeeze in my daughter that I uttered the words, "I will do anything to help." That, in short, is how I ended up being the Cookie Mom, the person who coordinates this fundraiser for our troop. If you're not familiar with Girl Scout cookies, they are only available in an area for 4-6 weeks, and they are HUGELY popular, especially Thin Mints. Girls sell them at booths outside stores on the weekends, and some parents sell them at work. American expats in Malaysia will hopefully ask that friends send a few boxes over. Even hardcore foodies who have sworn off all processed foods make an exception for Girl Scout Cookies.

To get my mind off of American cookies, I am turning my thoughts to Cambodian snacks.

You've heard of street food. What about highway food? The highway between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh is lined with stands selling Krolan (Bamboo Sticky Rice).  It's very similar to a dish I've seen in Thailand and Malaysia. The smoke rising up from the charcoal brazier is what first caught my eye, and then I noticed what initially looked like scrolls of parchment paper in baskets on tables. No one seemed to have a very big operation, but the stands were plentiful.

Have you tried Fresh Nutmeg?

I used to think of nutmeg as just an aromatic, brown, powdered spice that I added to my Christmas cookies and desserts. The smell of it brings to mind the image of festive holiday decorations, presents under the tree, and sipping eggnog by a roaring fire. Tasting it is like jumping headfirst into a Currier and Ives print.

Then, I moved to Malaysia and discovered fresh nutmeg. It tastes fruity and light — nothing like the spice. I love nutmeg juice which is a refreshing antidote to heat and humidity. It's a treat you should make sure you try if you visit Penang island. While it's not native to Malaysia, nutmeg trees were cultivated in Penang in the late 18th century by the British East India company as a way to expand their lucrative spice trade.

Nutmeg fruit

Today's guest post is written by 13-year-old Sean K. and photographed by 11-year-old Isaac K., two of the wonderful Malaysian kids I met while living in Penang. Their family and some friends toured the small, family-run Ghee Hup Nutmeg Farm and factory, and I asked them to share their visit with you.

Chocolate Workshop at Chocolate Passion

Some people are carnivores, and some fancy-pants types call themselves omnivores. Some hipsters are locovores. I consider myself a chocovore — someone who eats chocolate. Preferably all the time. All. The. Time. I have a fantasy that I fill a Camelbak Hydration Pack with liquid chocolate ganache and have it at the ready whenever I need a hit. So, when Chocolate Passion announced a chocolate making workshop at their Straits Quay location, I immediately signed up. And then in a fit of lunacy propelled by a brain high on cocoa, I asked my two youngest kiddos if they'd like to join me. I bet you can guess their answer. "Yes, mama!"

Let's just think of this as career exploration.

The workshop started off with a 30-minute lecture on the history and production of chocolate. My son probably would have paid better attention had he remembered to wear his eyeglasses to see the presentation. Then, it was time to wash our hands and get started on the hands-on part. The staff distributed about 250 grams each of white, dark, and milk chocolate. I will attest that this is some of the best quality chocolate I have come across in Penang. Believe me, I have surveyed the other options extensively. After zapping it in the microwave, one 30 second burst at a time, we eventually ended up with 3 bowls of melted goodness.

Mixing up the white and milk chocolates.
If only she had another hand, then she could stir the dark chocolate, too.

Finally, it was time to start creating on our chocolate masterpieces. We filled piping bags with the melted chocolate and snipped off the bottom.

Chocolate Passion's Master Artisan Callin Tan demonstrates how to fill a piping bag.

My kids have fortunately had some experience helping me decorate cakes, so they were familiar with how to properly hold and handle piping bags. They experimented with putting more than one type of chocolate into a mold in layers or to add design accents. Coloring the white chocolate was another way to add a little oomph to the candy's appearance. When each tray was full, we carefully placed them into the refrigerator to harden.

Piping melted chocolate into the molds.

Concentrating on getting it just right

Having gained some confidence in making molded chocolates, we then moved on to freehand designs. This was also a good opportunity to add in some little extras like sprinkles, corn flakes, sugared nuts, or slivered almonds.

Freehand chocolate designs, except for the lolly.

The hardest part was keeping the chocolate at just the right temperature. We had to go back to the microwave a few times to melt the chocolate which had begun to harden in the bowl. My daughter took advantage of the pliable, dough-like stage of the chocolate to use her fingers to form a little animal head. That turned out to be an extremely messy activity.

Surprisingly, my kids followed my strict instructions not to lick their fingers
as we'd be sharing these chocolates as gifts.

Creating all this chocolaty yumminess took a couple hours. When the chocolates in the molds finally hardened, we turned the trays over and popped them out. At the end of the class, everyone put their best pieces on display as we did a little show-and-tell for the other students and received a Certificate for attending. They gave us plastic bags with twist ties and a fine looking chocolate box to package up our goodies for gift-giving. I couldn't believe how much we had made. Bonus! We got to bring our aprons home to remind us of our fun as a Chocolatier-for-a-day.

Just a few of our best looking chocolate candies

Do you know what is the best part of this workshop?

Eating the chocolates, of course!

Nom nom, so delicious!

We signed up for this workshop that was announced on their Facebook page, but you can also schedule a private workshop for a party activity or team building.

Their core business is selling handcrafted chocolates, chocolate desserts and drinks. Need a gift for your wedding guests, party guests or for corporate giving? They can do a large, custom order for you, too.

Where can you find Chocolate Passion?

• Straits Quay - Ground Floor Al Fresco area
• Gurney Paragon - Level 6
• Auto City in Butterworth
• Tel: 04-890 6121
• Website: www.chocartisan.com

If you're ever wondering what to get me for a gift, anything from Chocolate Passion will do. (Hint, hint Hubby. Valentine's Day is this Friday.)

This post is part of Foodie Tuesday on Inside Journeys. Check it out for more delicious inspiration.

Glowing Lanterns, Tasty Mooncakes, and the Mid-Autumn Festival

This post is dedicated to my mama. Thursday, September 19 marks this year's Mid-Autumn Festival celebrated with glowing lanterns and tasty mooncakes.

A variety of Mooncakes - Coconut, Starbucks Coffee and traditional Lotus Paste

Growing up, the Chinese custom of eating mooncakes is one of my cherished memories. At the time, Houston's Chinese population had yet to explode, and I felt like part of a secret society since, as far as I could tell, we were the only family who did this. My mother was born and raised in the Philippines. Despite never having set foot in China, this tradition is something that had been passed down from my grandparents through her, to me. I'm not sure where she procured them. Perhaps the Mooncake Supplier hung out with the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and blessed my mom with these pastries as a reward for being a good Chinese mama all year. She'd get really excited whenever someone would visit from Asia, Canada or California and brought her a box. I suppose these were a little fresher than whatever she could buy in Houston. We would just have one or two for our family of four, and she'd slice these palm-sized pastries into little wedges for us to share.

According to my mom, mooncakes are part of the Feast of the August Moon, occasionally called the Feast of the Harvest Moon. I would usually point out that it was September, sometimes early October, but never, ever August. My child brain may have chalked this up to a major time zone difference. California is two hours behind Texas, and Asia is a whole month behind. Later, I understood that it fell on the full moon of the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, not the Gregorian one I was taught in school. Even back then, I learned that just because something is different doesn't mean that it's wrong, a notion that would come up quite often in my adult, expat life.

Shortly after I arrived in Malaysia, I was amazed to discover that this "secret" tradition is wide-spread here. Pining for home a little bit, it was a shred of something familiar from my childhood.  In Malaysia and Singapore, it seems that everyone refers to it as the Mid-Autumn Festival or, less frequently, the Lantern Festival (not to be confused with China's version of the Lantern Festival which occurs during the first month of the lunar year).

Last weekend's trip to Singapore's Gardens by the Bay coincided nicely with the Mid-Autumn lantern celebrations they were holding. I have not seen anything on this grand scale anywhere in Penang.

A life-size house lantern floating on the lake

Lots of people came to Singapore's Gardens by the Bay to look at these large lanterns.



Something for the kids to enjoy

One of the winners of the lantern making contest

Mooncakes are all over the place in Penang. There's big displays at the mall, local bakeries and restaurants make them, and they're readily available at the grocery store. It was no longer a rare commodity. My Zumba instructor handed them out after Tuesday's class, and a friend had a box to share at the school playground. She said that it's traditional to exchange them with each other or bring them as a hostess gift when invited to someone's house.

I was raised on the traditional Lotus Paste with a Single Salted Egg Yolk mooncake. I brought one into my workplace in Texas once since it was staffed with adventurous foodies, and one friend described it as having a taste reminiscent of marzipan.  My hubby and kids don't really like them because, being a Chinese dessert, they only have a hint of sweetness, not the tooth-achey sugar rush you get from American pastries. Unfortunately, they are very high in calories.



Traditional Lotus Paste and pumpkin seed filling
No salted yolk because I always pick it out.

Oh my goodness, the varieties you can get over here! Malaysia offers an endless list of flavors from Pandan to Green Tea to Cookies and Cream. Even Durian filling is available. My favorite non-traditional flavor this year is Coconut which reminds me of Filipino Bibingka but with shreds of coconut throughout and no cheese.

Mooncakes are made by wrapping the filling around a cooked, salted egg yolk representing the moon and then wrapped with the outer pastry layer. Each assembled piece is pressed into a wooden mold to create the decorative impressions and then removed before baking. The round cakes are a symbol of family unity and good health. Somehow, the Skype session between my mom and I a few weeks ago ended with us each brandishing our own mooncake molds at the web camera. I'm not quite sure how that supports family unity.



Mooncake mold

Same shapes are specifically designed to appeal to kids. Sponge Bob or Mickey Mouse, anyone?

Chocolate Mickey Mouse mooncake

Whereas Starbucks aims to deliver the same espresso drinks no matter what store you are at in the world, they do offer special items that cater to the local palate. If you ever come across an Asian Dolce Latte, try it. It's like Vietnamese coffee and so very yum. In Malaysia and Singapore, they also sell mooncakes. In fact, the Caramel Macchiato and Tiramisu fillings they offered two years ago are probably my favorite of all the nouveau flavors I've sampled since moving here. Alas, their mooncake menu has changed, and these primo fillings have not reappeared.

Notice the Starbucks logo on top of their Tiramisu mooncake.

I was also introduced to Snow Skin mooncakes. Unlike traditional ones which are baked with a pastry outer crust and served at room temperature, snow skin mooncakes are not baked and have an outer layer of glutinous rice, similar to that in Japanese mochi ice cream. These have to be kept refrigerated, are served chilled, and are perceived as a healthier alternative to traditional mooncakes.

Strawberry Snowskin mooncake

Other international chains have joined in the mooncake frenzy and offer their own interpretations of this treat. Haagen-Dazs offers one with a praline base, ice cream filling surrounding a mango sorbet "yolk" and covered with a  hard chocolate shell.



Ice cream mooncake

Godiva Chocolatier sells one that's essentially a large chocolate candy. I know that you readers are desperate to know what one tastes like, so I bought one for the sake of the blog. The Duo Lait version has a top layer of milk chocolate ganache with hints of mandarin and red cherry and a punch of cinnamon and sea salt sitting on a bottom layer of California almond praline. It also costs about US$2.50 a bite. Pricey!

Godiva mooncake

By this time next year, I'll probably be back in Texas, so I'm enjoying all the mooncake madness while I can. Have you ever tried mooncakes?


This post is part of Travel Photo Thursday on Budget Travelers Sandbox and "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" on The Tablescaper. Check them out for more around-the-world travel inspiration.

SAM's Groceria: Upscale food store in Penang's Gurney Paragon

Penang has a new place to shop for groceries, SAM's Groceria, in the basement of the recently opened Gurney Paragon Mall. Another one is planned for KL Sentral. Even though all my friends had told me how wonderful this place is, I was still bowled over in amazement the first time I walked in. Everything is so clean, the aisles are wide, the choices are plentiful, and lots of staff was on hand to help.

This 30,000 square foot store pits itself against expat-fave Cold Storage and positions itself as the upscale, high-end option in town. At a glance, I'd say SAM's prices are comparable to or a teeny bit higher than Cold Storage. Even though over 60% of its 19,000 items are imported from the United States, Australia, Japan, India, Taiwan and Thailand, this retailer pays homage to its local roots since SAM is an abbreviation of "Saya Anak Malaysia" (I am a child of Malaysia).

Fine chocolates, Fruits
Enclosed freezer cases and Cheeses

The most exciting part of shopping at SAM's is the easy-to-use Self Scan system for shoppers with one of their free Family Cards. Just scan each item's barcode as you place it in your cart, and the unit tracks your purchases and displays a running total. There's a handy spot to store it on your trolley handle. My kids had a blast taking turns with it. When you're ready to check out, all you need to do is give the scanner unit to the cashier and pay. There's no need to re-scan everything. Self-scanning is optional, and customers are welcome to wait until the end for the cashier to scan everything for you.

SAM's Groceria has the largest selection of Organic products in Penang I've seen outside of a specialty organic store. It's also the first grocery store I've seen with a Diabetic foods section.

This is just one side of the Organic aisle. More goods are opposite it.

There's plenty of treats, too. One entire aisle is dedicated to Chocolate in addition to the display case of fancy, individual chocolates (RM16.00 per 100 gm). Imported foods are identified by country with Japan taking up the biggest share. Ummm...how proud am I that Americans can claim Pop-Tarts as their culinary contribution to the world? Actually, I was rather excited to see that SAM's carries Sahale Snacks which I dearly miss from the USA.

Yay! Another store where I can deny my kids' request for Pop-Tarts

SAM's offers one-stop shopping with non-food items, too. They also carry healthcare and grooming items, household goods, cleaning products, office supplies, automotive care, some hardware as well as baby care items. Many of the sections are clearly displayed. Although, I bet some people wish that it wasn't quite so evident what exactly they are buying at the moment.

Adult Diapers: Confidence and peace of mind and a giant sign telling the world what you're buying.

I didn't have a chance to browse through SAM's Deli located adjacent to the Groceria. Friends tell me that it has a good bakery as well as already prepared Western and local foods for you to take away.

I am definitely shopping at SAM's again. My daughter was even telling her dad that she needed to bring him there to show him the Self Scan system. It was such an easy shopping trip, and being able to see my running total bill kept me from going crazy with impulse purchases. This new store didn't have every single item on my grocery list. However, their customer service is happy to track requests to see how they can improve their selection.  I'm so excited to have this addition to the Penang food scene.

IF YOU GO:
SAM's Groceria
Basement level of Gurney Paragon Mall
Persiaran Gurney, Penang
Convenient parking Level B2 near section marked "Grocery Store" leads directly up to entrance
Operating Hours: 10AM to 10PM

Dine with Pearly: Homecooked Nyonya Makan Meal

Pearly Kee is one of Penang's doyens of Nyonya cuisine. Numerous friends have raved about her cooking classes, so I was quite excited when she invited me to be her guest at her new venture, Dine with Pearly. Once a month, Pearly opens her home so guests can savor delicious Nyonya comfort food cooked by her. Some dishes are simple to prepare but with outstanding flavor while others take so long to make that there's no way she could include them in a cooking class. What sets Dine with Pearly apart from a regular, never-see-the-chef, restaurant dining experience is that you have Pearly playing hostess regaling you with tales of her life in Penang.

What is Nyonya Cuisine?

Baba men and Nyonya women are Peranakans, the descendants of early Chinese immigrants in Malaysia and Singapore's old Straits settlements. Centuries before fusion food became trendy, these immigrants adapted their traditional, homeland recipes to incorporate ingredients commonly found in the new, tropical climate. With a bit of intermingling with their Malay neighbors, Nyonya cuisine was born. For those who do not have their own Nyonya grandmother or mother to teach them family recipes, Pearly Kee is the person to turn to.

Feasting on Homecooked Food

Pearly and her helpers worked in her kitchen for two days preparing all the food for the dinner. The yummy dishes were laid out on her veranda with helpful signs and explanations accompanying each platter.

Achat Awak - Mixed vegetables cooked in a spicy sauce

I enjoyed the crunchy vegetables and spiciness of this Achat Awak. Carrots, cabbage, pineapple, long beans and sesame seeds provided contrasting notes. Pearly was so kind as to pack some up at the end of the meal for me to take home for the next day, too. After marinating all night, the vegetables really did have quite a hot kick to them.

Chap Chai Char - Stir-fried vegetables, glass noodles and black fungus cooked with bean paste

The Chap Chai Char was my favorite dish because it reminded me so much of the homecooked dinners I've enjoyed in my Chinese aunt's kitchen in Texas. It was like the scene from Ratatouille  where the critic takes one bite and is suddenly transported back to his childhood. I've always enjoyed the crunch and flavor of woodear black fungus, and the glass noodles made of mung beans soaked up the flavorful sauce.

I also went back for seconds of the Kari Kay (Curry Chicken and Potatoes) with Roti Jala (batter drizzled across the griddle and cooked into a net-like crepe). I must have been so overwhelmed with all the delightful offerings because I forgot to take a picture of it. No time to snap photos! Must.eat.now. The Steamed Egg with Minced Pork came in individual bowls and had a salted egg yolk nestled inside. Nasi Kunyit (Sticky Yellow Rice) rounded out the offerings for the the main part of our meal.

Gandum - Wheat Porridge with caramelized tapioca tidbit

My husband said the dessert of Gandum (wheat porridge) reminded him of the very Western bowl of oatmeal he had for breakfast that morning except not as sweet.  I had to ask what the caramelized chunk laid on top was because I couldn't quite pinpoint the taste. When my table companion said it was tapioca, I didn't believe him because I'm so accustomed to eating it in its highly processed form of pearls from a box boiled into tapioca pudding. This tapioca was in its more natural state of just being cut off the tuber. While researching this blog post, I realized that tapioca is also called cassava which I'm very familiar with through all the Filipino food I ate growing up.



Kuih - traditional Nyonya cakes made of steamed glutinous rice

These kuih also reminded me of the Chinese Filipino dishes served at parties and special occasions during my childhood in Texas. The blue comes from soaking bunga telang (blue-pea) flowers in water to extract their vibrant color. A little dollop of sweet kaya (coconut custard jam) topped each one. The green and orange kuih on the right are steamed inside decorative molds to get their special shape. They are soft and shake "like a bowl full of jelly."

Sliced starfruit and guava were the other dessert course offerings. Once again, I was reminded of my Texas home as my mother in Houston used to grow guavas until an usually long cold spell killed off her trees.

Dragonfruit drink

A concoction of dragonfruit juice and Sprite sated our thirst. I was definitely gulping it down when I sampled some of the spicier dishes.

Relaxing with Conversation

While we dined, Pearly told us about Nyonya food and culture. In the olden days, families would have elaborate dinners to show off their unmarried daughters. The eligible girls would dress up for the guests and hold silk handkerchiefs up in front of their mouths while politely nibbling on tiny morsels of food. Only an uncouth young woman would dare to gnaw on food without shielding her mouth from view. Bite-size Inche Kabin (Lipstick chicken) was perfect for polite eating, not even mussing up their lipstick while they ate. Other stories were more personal about growing up in Penang. If you're very nice, she may let you take a sniff of the aptly named Chicken Poo leaves from her garden.

Pearly, in the red shirt, attentively listens to the other guests at the dinner.

The dinner turned out to be a very enjoyable experience of good food and delightful company. The group the night I attended in May was mostly local Penangites, a few good friends of Pearly, and a couple tourists who weren't able to fit into her cooking class. While I had feared that it might turn into an awkward dinner where we dashed after staying the obligatory amount of time dictated by decorum, Pearly's friendliness set everyone at ease.

She holds these Dine with Pearly dinners at her home once a month and charges RM50 per person. Her website lists the upcoming months' buffet menu which change for each dinner, but she sometimes makes additions if the she feels to urge or if someone has a special requests. Private dinners may also be arranged if she has time in her schedule.

A Nyonya Inheritance, Pearly's new cookbook

Her New Cookbook

Pearly recently released a cookbook of 35 favorite recipes entitled A Nyonya Inheritance. I've already bought a few copies to give as gifts when I return to Texas. She tells you a little bit about growing up Nyonya and gives a background about the cuisine. You can also take an armchair tour of the local wet market with pictures and introductions to the vendors she meets while shopping for ingredients.

The recipes themselves are well written, and I really like that she breaks the complicated ones apart with separate ingredient lists for the different components instead of running them all together into one long list. Pictures accompany each recipe, and she sometimes includes pertinent tips, too. She's realistic in that she illustrates the 11 steps of making coconut leaf parcels for Otak-otak (fish mousse) but ends it with an "if you're feeling lazy" alternative. Pearly gets extra bonus points for choosing spiral binding so that the book stays open while I'm cooking. Click here to get your own copy of the book on-line or while you are in Penang.

If You Want to Attend

• Dinners are the last Saturday of the month and begin at 7:30 p.m. at her Pilau Tikus home
• View each month's menu at Dine with Pearly as it changes each time
• Full cost is RM50 per person with a RM10 deposit at booking time
• Make your booking at the bottom of Pearly's Keep in Touch page.

Related Posts:
Penang Homecooking Class with Pearly Kee
Penang Cooking Schools
Dining Like a Local
Malaysian Dining in Houston, Texas
Mystery Fruit: Dragonfruit

Longing for a Chiang Mai Wet Market

Pennant flags, dry floors, and the pleasing wooden beams impressed me at this wet market.

"This is one fancy wet market." That was my first thought as my Chiang Mai cooking class walked through on a mission to buy ingredients for that day's dishes. It's funny because it's such a contrast to what I would have thought if I was fresh off the plane from America. That gal would have found the place exotic and rustic, not necessarily fancy.

Fresh produce laid out on leaves

The very first time I visited a wet market was about 15 years ago on my whirlwind, 4-countries-in-3-weeks tour of Southeast Asia. I remember my mom screaming aloud in surprise when someone with a very large knife brought an abrupt end to a fish's life. Now that I live in Malaysia, I hit the wet market weekly for produce that's 3 times fresher and half as cheap as the grocery store. I've always meant to take pictures of my local market, but frankly, the fluorescent lighting is awful, and I'm too busy carrying my cumbersome shopping basket.

The fish are very much alive in that large tub. Her grill is to the right. Now that's fresh!

When I was traveling in Chiang Mai, I finally had the luxury of two free hands for taking photos and a market with good, natural lighting. This one had wooden beams and supports as opposed to the industrial feel of concrete columns at my own market. As I walked around, I was impressed by how dry this wet market is. At my Malaysia market, I'm used to slogging through puddles of melted ice mixed with chicken blood and whatnot. This Thai market actually had gutters on the table edges that channeled the watery runoff down a tube, through a hole and, I assume, into some sort of holding container or floor drain.  No cacophonous coconut shredder whirred in the background. Goods were laid out neatly on charming baskets and trays. Some items were pleasingly packaged with English labels. It was like the Whole Foods of Asian wet markets.

Dried peppers, dried lemongrass and Tom Yum herbs

Snacks ready to grab and go

My husband suspects that this might be a market aimed squarely at tourists because of the lack of locals shopping there. I'm not so sure as it was late in the morning, and the local crowd may have peaked hours beforehand like it does in Malaysia. As someone who has had her own routine market trips interrupted by tour groups, I took pity on the locals since this market seemed popular with various cooking schools. Imagine being at your hometown grocery store, but you can't reach the apples because a tour group is blocking your way marveling at how picturesque the apples are.




For some reason, I laughed that Bananas in particular are labeled in English.

Grilled satay and other meats

I could gauge how well I've transitioned into Southeast Asian expat life by how many of the exotic fruits and vegetables I could identify at a glance. Hairy rambutan didn't stump me. I couldn't resist the memory of the taste of sweet, juicy mangosteens that burst into my mind as soon as I saw them on the tray, and I ended up buying a few for a snack. As our cooking school tour guide quizzed the group by holding up palm sugar, turmeric, galangal and torch ginger, I had to keep my mouth shut lest I spoil the fun by sounding like the class know-it-all. However, I did come away learning that the mystery veggie in my previous night's curry dish was a golf ball sized, baby eggplant. Raw meat sitting out unrefrigerated no longer grosses me out, but flies crawling all over the meat still does.

Remember my previous post about my dislike of organ meat?
Guess my thoughts on raw organ meat with flies.

Prepared foods

Now that I'm back to my regular routine of shopping at my local wet market, I find myself longing for the fancy one in Chiang Mai.



Various curry powders sold in bulk

Related Posts:
Dirty, Hungry Elephants
Chiang Mai Sunday Market
The Ruins of Chiang Mai's Chedi Luang Temple
Visiting the Long Neck Tribe
Getting Lay's in Thailand



This post is part of Travel Photo Thursday on Budget Traveler's Sandbox and Oh the Places I've Been on The Tablescaper . Check them out for more around-the-world travel inspiration.

Getting Lay's in Thailand

I blame the hunger. Otherwise, I would have played it safe. I would not have thrown caution to the wind. The hunger clearly addled my mind. How else can I explain the choice I made in Thailand while getting Lay's?

Some people claim that when you travel internationally, you should have an adventurous palate. Don't be picky and stick with what you can get at home.

I think it's extra fun to find the foreign spin on familiar foods. Hello, Starbucks Asian Dolce Latte, my new caffeinated friend. Only available in Asia Pacific, it's a double shot of espresso with condensed milk, steamed milk and espresso whipped cream. It tastes remarkably similar to Vietnamese coffee. See how I've justified visiting an American coffee chain while halfway around on the other side of the world? You can thank me later (preferably with Starbucks cards).

But I digress... Where was I? Oh yes, the foreign spin on familiar foods.

Enter the vast variety of Lay's Potato Chips I discovered in Chiang Mai, Thailand. First up was the traditional Original flavor I find in American stores.



Original Flavor
Accounts for 79% of the American market

Next were some flavors I recognized but the pictures showed them to be slightly different than their American counterparts.

Sour Cream &Onion
Notice that it's a regular onion, not a green onion.



Extra Barbecue
It's not Texas Barbecue; it's shish kebob!
The extra must be all the veggies.

Then, some truly Asian flavors started popping up.



Cheese and Chili
Chili = Thai Sriracha Sauce, not a hearty bowl of beef chili





Nori Seaweed
But perhaps not the rest of the sushi components pictured?

Hot Chili Squid
They can copy the squid flavor, but can they capture the squid texture?



Lobster Hot Plate
Not to be confused with a tasty Lobster Roll

Hot and Spicy Crab
No shell cracking utensils needed

That's a long list of seafood-inspired crisps.  Finally, there's the surprise flavor that should have been familiar to me, but I had never heard of it.

American Cheesy Paprika
Note the Stars and Stripes on the bag?


Has Cheesy Paprika taken over the United States since I last departed? There are tons of Thais walking around thinking how American these Cheesy Paprika Lay's taste.


So, what did I choose in the end? My sense of adventure led me to Hot and Spicy Crab. My reasoning was something along the lines of "I liked the Chili Crab in Singapore. Maybe this will taste just like that." I will give them credit for getting the crab flavor into every bite. I just couldn't wrap my head around it. True to the "Betcha can't eat just one" advertising, I had to keep trying it just to make absolutely sure I didn't like it. Partway through the bag, the verdict was in. Into the rubbish it went.

What flavor Lay's would you try? Any interesting varieties where you are?


This post is part of Travel Photo Thursday on Budget Travelers Sandbox. Check it out for more around-the-world travel inspiration.