Well, we made it home from Thailand safely. What a trip! I think it is safe to say we will most likely never go back there again. Overall we had a good time, but after some of the experiences we had, we’re not such big fans of how things work over there. Troy said a couple of times that he wanted to go to Phuket the next time we go to Thailand, but by the time we left to come back here, he was pretty adamant that he is never going to Thailand again. So, we shall see.
Our flight arrived here about 6:30 pm on Friday night and we didn’t do too much. It cracked me up that Troy said he didn’t want to unpack his suitcase until Saturday, but then he dumped the whole thing out on the floor. *sigh* Boys. WE both ended up doing that and after we created a little bit of organization of the chaos, we took it easy the rest of the night. We alternated between him playing video games while I puttered around the house and both of us watching shows we like.
Saturday, we slept until about 10:30. Neither of us plugged in our phones and they both died, so we were able to sleep until we woke up. It was really nice. After spending an entire week getting up early and walking (and climbing stairs) all day, it was nice to have a day where we could just rest. Of course, we needed food, so we ended up going grocery shopping, but that’s pretty much all we did on Saturday. It ended up being a repeat of Friday night, except I was doing laundry. lol. Troy bought dinner that was delivered because neither of us felt like cooking. We both ordered claypot chicken briyani, which was our first really authentic regional meal. Neither of us really like super spicy food and since Troy can’t eat wheat, we usually stick to chicken and rice places or Western restaurants. This food, oh my goodness. Wow, was it spicy! It was hilarious how neither of us could take more than a couple bites before we had to chug a bunch of water. We’re a couple of culinary sissies. haha. Troy ended up picking the boiled egg out of his and eating that, along with the chicken chunks. I discovered after a little while that if you mash up the boiled egg and eat it with the rice, it’s not so spicy. Since I had boiled all of our eggs before we left, I grabbed a few more and mashed them up. Still wasn’t able to finish all of it, but I ate more than Troy did. I ended up microwaving the left-over chicken I’d made for dinner the night before so that he was able to at least eat something.
Speaking of cooking, I experimented a little on Saturday morning. Before we left, Troy had mentioned wanting to try rice pancakes sometime, so I’d found a recipe for that and decided to make it Saturday. Might I recommend that you make sure you have ALL your ingredients before cooking? I have developed a habit of not reading recipes all the way and not checking to see if I have all my ingredients. In Oklahoma, it wasn’t such a big deal because it was a lot easier to improvise. I cooked a lot there, so I had tons of spices and other cooking/baking ingredients. Here, not so much. I just found yeast a week ago and I still haven’t found baking soda. Spices are almost RM10 per bottle ($3.25!), s0 we only have two spices along with the four spice blends I brought with me (which Troy had thought was silly at the time, but he doesn’t think that now lol). So, it’s not so easy to swap missing ingredients or fix mistakes. Luckily, I had cornstarch and was able to use that in place of the egg, so it all worked out. I was a bit short on milk, but is was less than 1/8 cup low, so I just added water. With whole milk, doing that doesn’t mess up the recipe, thank goodness. So, the rice pancakes weren’t too bad. Troy wants me to make it again with egg instead of cornstarch because he actually liked it and wants to see if it tastes better with the egg. I consider it a success that he liked it even though I goofed. lol.
I also tried to make gluten-free bread (from a mix…….again) on Sunday and this one didn’t turn out as well as the last loaf. This one, I’d consider a colossal disaster. The recipe called for 500g of the mix and had next to it (about 3 cups). That seemed off to me, so Troy looked it up online and 500g is 500mL, which is 2 metric cups or 2.1 US cups. Since I have metric measuring utensils, I did the 2 metric cups and stuck it in the oven to rise. When I went to check on it after the required 40 minutes, the dang thing had majorly overflowed. The bottom of my oven was covered in gooey dough. That was NOT fun to clean up. It ended up being a semi-good thing, though, because while I was cleaning it up, I knocked against the metal rack holder and it came off, reminding me that I had asked Troy to see if he could fix that the next time I needed to use it. So, I cleaned the bottom of the oven while Troy tinkered with the side of it and he was able to fix it so the rack won’t fall off the side anymore. Yay!
The bread, though, did not have such a happy result. I did exactly what the recipe asked for: I put water in a dish at the bottom (metal, not plastic) and I stuck the bread in the middle of the oven. I did add some frozen garlic cloves on the pan to infuse a little bit of garlic flavor into the bread. That actually worked out. The bread, not so much. It was supposed to cook for 50 minutes, but the last time I cooked bread, the top started burning about 10 minutes before it was supposed to be done. So, I set it for 35 minutes so I could check on it. At 35 minutes, the top was browning and when I stuck the knife in, it came out clean. I can’t remember why I left it in for another 5 minutes, but I turned the oven off and left it in there for a bit longer. When I pulled it out, it looked the same as before. But when I stuck the knife in again, the top was super hard and ended up cracking, exposing an empty cavern. Yup, the bread was hollow. The dough had overflowed the top and cooked to the sides of the bread pan. The top cooked, but the inside (what was left) was still kinda spongy. It still tasted good, though. We both ended up scarfing it all down with the spaghetti. I liked the crispy pieces and he liked the soft pieces, so it worked out really well.
Today, I was planning on trying to make the bread again, but I don’t know if I will. I woke up not feeling well and after I made Troy breakfast and got his lunch put together and sent him off to work, I went back to bed. My stomach hurt so much I couldn’t sleep, so I came out to the living room and watched tv for a few hours. That’s pretty much all I’ve been doing today: laying on the couch and watching tv. I threw a load of laundry in before I went back to bed (i figured i wouldn’t feel so lazy if the washing machine was working while I was sleeping haha) and it got done about two hours ago, but I haven’t touched it. My stomach doesn’t hurt as much as it did before, but I’m still really exhausted. I’ve got to find energy somewhere, though, because I told Troy yesterday that I was going to vacuum and mop today as well as finish the laundry, bake more bread and slice vegetables for his lunches this week. And I have a bunch of dishes to do. *sigh* A dishwasher would be nice today. Oh well. I feel better than I did a few hours ago, so hopefully I will feel even better in a few more. Troy won’t be home until just before 6, so I’ve still got 5.5 hours. I’m sure he’ll be just fine if I only vacuum today. He knows I’m not feeling well. I’m sure he’d probably be fine if I didn’t vacuum at all, but we were gone for a week and he was saying yesterday that the cat hair was bothering him, so I’d like to at least do that. I think, though, that I’m going to lay down again for a little bit and see if I can get some rest.
