Cooking with lots of coconuts (July 17)

Still teaching in the other building today because Bu was still working on rearranging the classroom. I had 6^th grade and 2^nd grade today, the 6^th grade class was good but second grade was a bit harder to control—the fact that it is a really big class (~35 students) didn’t help…. In the afternoon I hung out in Bu’s classroom with some of the students doing some informal English and Thai learning. After school, we made coconut milk again for making another Thai dessert. For this dessert, Kai and Fluk harvested about 15 fresh coconuts and cut a hole in top of each one. Then I used a spoon to scrape the coconut flesh off of the inside of each one, leaving the pieces of coconut inside. But heated some water and sugar with agar agar powder (I will need to look up what this is, but it sounded like it comes from a fruit). Then we poured the water/sugar mixture into the coconuts, and then poured coconut milk in until they were filled with liquid.  We covered them with “lids” made when Kai cut a hole in the coconuts, and let them sit until tomorrow, when we will get to try this dessert. Then we went to the big Wednesday market to pick up a variety of foods. We got some fresh soy milk, which I really enjoy, and we got two large fish that were covered with salt. When we got back to the house, Bu grilled the fish over a fire outside, and we had one of my favorite dinners of the trip so far. To eat this dish, you take a leaf of cabbage, put a small pile of rice noodles on top, put a piece of fish on top of that, add a couple basil leaves, and then spoon a spicy sauce with peanuts over the whole thing. You then eat the whole thing in one bite (or attempt to do so).