Our Common Ground

Tonight for dinner my host family took us to a seafood restaurant. The 7 of us piled into the van, Dad drove, Bank the 16 year old son jumped in the front (sound familiar), Mom, Gift, June, Jenna and I climbed into the back. Once we arrived we decided to eat outside. It is “winter” now in Thailand and the evenings are quite nice. Thais eat everything family style. They order several dishes, some rice and some soup for everyone to share. So our host family selects our food for us. They want us to try everything. Thai people are so proud of their food. And they love to eat. It is a very social experience for them. There are very few small tables at the restaurant. Most are made for 5, 6, 7, 8 people to eat. I have also learned that they may order around 15 dishes for the entire meal. You have to really pace yourself because the food comes out at all different times. Very difficult to do when you are sitting in front of brand new dishes that you are dying to eat.

We all sat down and immediately the waitress (who was a lady boy) poured me a Heineken, Bank’s choice. He seems to justify ordering beer to drink because the “special guest” (me) drinks beer. The two of us split a liter of Heineken, which somehow turned into 2 liters. Tonight it seemed that we ate every type of animal that lives in the ocean. Mussels, Clams, Oysters, Crab, Fish, Shrimp, Scallops. Most of which still looked pretty much the same as when it was alive. The shrimp had a head and tail and legs. The crab was still whole. And the fish. It looked as if it was swimming just minutes earlier. But man was it delicious. There are so many sauces to dip and spread all over our tasty sea creatures. It was hard work freeing our meal from their hard shells but well worth the work. When I come home I will be an expert with a spoon and fork. (No knives in Thailand!) The waitress kept bringing plate after plate and by the end of the meal I was completely satisfied and a little drunk. I explained to my host family that Kentucky is very far away from the ocean and we don’t eat fresh seafood like this. Or this much of it!

Then the dessert came. We were served taro root in coconut milk. Surprisingly it was not too sweet! It was delicious. During dessert the conversation shifted back to the English language. Gift asked how to you say the sweet things you eat after dinner. “Dessert”, I said. Then she asked, “How do you say the place with all the sand, like Egypt?” “Desert,” I said. The table laughed. It sounds the same to them. We explained the word sounds different to us because of the emphasis of the stressed syllable. (We are back to this again!) In “dessert” the stress is at the beginning of the word. In “desert” the stress is at the end of the word. A very subtle difference.

At the end of the meal, (no it is not over yet!) we had juicy papaya, pina colada pineapples and the best watermelon I have ever had in the middle of November.

“Food is our common ground, a universal experience.” James Beard