Pad Thai

Cousin Mart is staying over with us while he works on building his masterpiece violin. For dinner yesterday, Ave made Pad Thai for us that was also a masterpiece. I didn't get to take a picture, but it certainly looked like the real thing, and tasted even more so.

I was supposed to make hamburgers tonight, but it turns out Mart will be working late on things musical. He will miss the burgers, then, but I've yet to meet an Estonian who likes my burgers much, so maybe he lucked out.

Notes on shopping

I'm not sure how this came to be but this Saturday I got Mike to go shop with me. We visited one of the major shopping centers in town and bought a bunch of warm fall sweaters in this season's hot colors and patterns. OK, and afterwards I demanded we go check out a relatively new (about a year and a half or two years old perhaps) neighborhood grocery store/cafe at the border of downtown I had been meaning to check out for quite some time. It is one of the few innovative small food businesses over here that sell and promote locally grown produce and organic and "clean'' food from other countries. They also prepare and serve dishes that are made of the same clean ingredients and can perhaps be found in a menu of a fancier restaurant but not in your everyday cafe or lunch spot. Dishes like risottos and quesadillas, pureed soups, and salads with bulghur, couscous, or chickpeas. Sound good, don't they? And taste good too, I suppose, to the collection of supporters and praisers they have gathered. To Mike and me, the sandwiches were good, not great and the service was a bit lacking in attention, maybe due to the compactness of the dining area that caused it to be noisy at the ordering counter but perhaps because for the young lady the switch to English came unexpectedly. I was greatly disappointed they didn't have any chocolate chip cookies ( I only wanted to see and judge them) or butternut squash but I did enjoy the freshly squeezed carrot juice and was satisfied with their, say sun-dried tomato and grains selection.

Was one day of new grocery experiences enough for me? No! So on Sunday I dragged Mike to the newly opened entertainment center as they call themselves, the bait being a grocery store announced to have the best selection in town for non-seasonal fruits and vegetables and international delicacies. Well, yeah, trying to make our way from one isle to another, zig-zagging between all the other first-look takers, we only managed to gather two bell peppers and a bottle of fish sauce (no yams, no green beans, no coconut milk, no curry paste) before giving up. I don't expect we would have found dried red chiles or star anise, not to mention lemongrass or even peanut butter for that night's intended Cambodian curry. Had to make another trip to our "home" grocery chain and get what they had, which turned out to be enough for the tasty dinner. And I don't think I'll be going back for the German sausages and yogurts to that other store. Okra? Hmmm...