Jill & Sada: Watch out: THAI FOOD ahead!

It's the FOOD blog! Are you hungry? Feel like cooking? Or ready to run out to your favorite Thai restaurant? These are some of our favorite or memorable dishes of the past few months.

Liz always asks me to email her some food, so I take pictures of the beautiful things we eat. At least twice a day at meals, Sada says, "I can't imagine eating anything more delicious!" Now here's some for you to enjoy.

It's all so delicious - in Thai you say 'Aloy, aloy!'

This is our lunch from a small vegetarian place we found. We had a spicy noodle soup with lots of mushrooms and different pieces of veggie protein, they are crunchy, stringy or chewy - and some look a little uncomfortably close to actual meat. The spring rolls are great, and the little banana leaf boat is a luscious concoction of soft tofu and mushroom topped with coconut cream and basil.

Our latest restaurant discovery is called Burmese Cuisine. Here we have a hot spicy soup and a plate of 'Tofu Meatballs' - crispy on the outside, tender & delicious inside, served with an incredible ginger & garlic sauce.

From another favorite place called 'May Kai-dee' we ordered this warm salad called 'Lemon Eggplant Salad Cashew Nut Spicy Juice'. That about sums it up, delicious! Also fresh rolls with peanut sauce at the top of the pic.

Around Christmas we went out to dinner with friends and this fish dish was ordered - a great presentation!

That same meal we all shared an order of crispy bananas with whiskey (in the glass). Yes, you pour it on & enjoy! (and then slurp the leftover booze off the plate!)

This was my meal at lunch out with the ladies at a Japanese place called 'Gigantea'. Each morsel was a different texture, crunch or flavor. Lots of fun - and delicious!

OK - this is a serious dish. A deeply warm, full flavored curry called 'Kao Soi'. It's the signature dish of northern Thailand & one of our top favorites. It's a yellow noodle soup with crispy noodles on top and chunks of potato, mushrooms & grilled tofu inside. Served on the side is a little dish of lime, scallots & pickled cabbage. So, so good & very satisfying. Aloy aloy.

Aren't these little spring rolls pretty?

Here's more seriously good eating. Khun Churn has a daily lunchtime vegetarian buffet! They have many hot & cold dishes, soups & curries. This first plateful has a lot of salad items including long strands of beet and pumpkin. At the bottom is a clump of crispy green papaya pieces, and baby eggplant. You can seriously over-eat at this place.

They also offer unsweetened teas beautifully served in large glass jugs with flavors like: lemongrass, chrysanthemum, bale, bluebird flower, and roselle.

And there's dessert too. Always a large bowl full of flavored coconut milk with various inclusions (this is hard to describe). One of my favorites was coconut milk with soft chunks of cooked pumpkin. The contrast of textures and flavors was fantastic. The bowl in the picture is large tapioca and little chunks of slightly crunchy Jackfruit (which has a flavor something like banana) in lemony coconut milk.

This was from tonight's dinner. On the left is a little Eggplant salad with tofu, garlic, egg, tomato & mint in lime juice. On the right is crispy morning glory greens and an utterly scrumptious dipping sauce. (a couple of the ingredients in the secret sauce are coconut milk & tom yum paste, mmm....)

A warm mushroom salad.

This is one of our favorite meals: Pad See Yew. Wide rice noodles quickly fried with veggies, squeeze on some lime, add hot peppers & ground peanuts. This nearby street cart does a roaring business every night. They set up a dozen small tables on the sidewalk and in the street, and when we sit down, they look over at us and ask 'Same, same?' Yes, is the answer. It's about $1 a plate. We eat here more than anywhere. Seriously good - aloy, aloy.

Every Sunday evening we go to the Walking Street market. The street is closed to traffic & is lined with vendors selling all kinds of stuff, and the place is packed with people out to shop or just look. The Wats (Buddhist temples) turn into food courts - here are some of the delights we find there. Pretty sushi, and a crunchy rice, peanut, ginger, mint & chili dish, yum.

This is a 'Salim' bar. You choose 4 or 5 items from the colorful bowls, then it's topped with coconut milk, syrup and crushed ice. Some of the things in the bowls are: fruit, beans, tapioca (in various forms), corn, little chunks of bread like croutons, and black herbal jello.

You know, stuff like that.