When I turned the corner of the building today to eat my lunch (boring cheese and cuke sandwich on rye, a carrot and an orange, both looking a bit worse for wear), Yu Pa and Sup were sitting at the little table with a feast before them. Yu Pa motioned roughly as she does sometimes when she wants me to eat what she's eating, and I went back inside for a plate. Then I sat down to eat: jasmine rice, the central part of any Thai meal; some leafy greens in a chile-based sauce of some kind; prawns, oysters, and a strange squid-looking seafood that I think she called cuttlefish, or maybe kettlefish, anyway it tasted like octopus and looked like a curled-up little purple and white flower with tentacles; and a greenbean and coconut milk and chile salad. There was also plain chiles pounded into a sauce for dipping the oysters, but Pa said it was a bit hot for her, so I knew that if I touched it to my lips I would immeadiately roast them off, so I didn't have any.
We all three piled our plates with it and ate with our hands, its what they do most of the time, its the best way to squish up just as much rice as you want with sauce and its more fun. I will have to ask Yu Pa how to cook with chiles, as I'm getting addicted to the runny-nose afterglow.
(Another thing she does, for her dessert, is pound chiles up with fish sauce and sugar, then cut up fruit, like grapes or green mango, and dip it in. Burns off the lips and is strangely appealing.)
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