Day 2 of the monk party got off to a later start, with the
music starting around 7 am. We got an early start this morning to go and see
the family rice fields. They have three rice paddies, and grow all their rice
(which given the amount of rice they eat, is a lot)! The rice paddies were
about a five minute drive from the house. Bu’s parents were already out there
working. Right now they are transplanting rice: the rice has grown to be a
couple feet tall, but is very crowded, so they dig it up and divide it into
clumps and plant the clumps about a foot apart. They also tear off the top half
of the leaves. I helped plant some rice for awhile, which was fun. In order to
protect themselves from the sun and bugs, people wear long pants, jackets, and
big hats. Also, some people wear ski hats that have only a slit for the eyes.
Working in the fields all day in that outside must be very hot and tiring! I
often see truckloads of rice farmers with ski hats driving by the house as they
go to/from the fields.
After awhile, we headed back to the house for breakfast.
When I opened up the sticky rice basket, the rice was blue! I assumed that they
had added some food coloring for some reason.
Bu had planned that
we would make some desserts today, so then it was time to chop up some
coconuts! While there are many coconuts sitting in the trees in the backyard,
which we pick sometimes to drink fresh coconut water from, for desserts, they
use coconuts that have been picked and aged for about 6 months. Getting them
open is quite difficult, Fluk and Bu were hacking at them with a big knife and
a metal club. Since they have been aged, the coconut water inside has
congealed, and we ate this for a snack. Then we still had to get the coconut
flesh off of the outer shell. The coconuts had been hacked up into chunks, and
then you would take a chunk and hit it with a knife to pry pieces off. Once we
finished this, we used the coconut pieces to make coconut milk (this is my
third time making coconut milk in two weeks!).
Then I learned that the rice at breakfast was blue not
because of food coloring, but because of some flowers that had been added. It
was a really bright unnatural-looking blue color, though! They had picked
another bowl of these blue-dye flowers, called “an chan” in Thai, so I made
some blue liquid for the dessert. You add some water to the flowers, and then
squeeze them in the water for about 10 minutes to extract the color, and then
you are left with a bright blue liquid (that is natural!).
Kai added the blue liquid to some sweet rice flour to create
a bright blue dough, and then added some coconut milk to another bowl of rice
flour, to create a white dough. After this we rolled hundreds of small blue and
white balls from the dough, each about the size of a marble or smaller. This
took a long time, and I wasn’t really sure where this dessert was heading, I
had never seen anything like this before. Once we finished this, we heated a
large pot of sweetened coconut milk, and added the blue and white balls. After
stirring it for about 10 minutes while the balls cooked, we added about 6 eggs,
and did not stir again until they set. Then the dessert was ready to eat! It is
called bua loai kai wan, and it was very tasty and colorful! Bu also took some
of the blue sticky rice from breakfast and cooked it with coconut milk and
sugar to make a second dessert. After filling up on blue desserts, I learned
that we were heading to a restaurant for lunch. I wished I had known that
before I started eating desserts! We went to the lakeside hot pot restaurant
again, although this time we had noodles instead of the hot pot. There was a procession going from the monk
party to the monastery, however, unfortunately we missed seeing this because we
were at the restaurant. Then back to the house, where I took a nap and read for
awhile. Around 4, we headed to the big Sunday market to pick up a variety of
fruits and veggies, although I was too full still to indulge in any snacks.
At dinner, when I looked into the rice basket, we had blue
rice with white polka dots added!
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