Thai Party Platters

I recently took the Thai Party Platters class at PCC, taught by Pranee Khruasanit Halvorsen. I love her classes because she makes the best thai food. The food was very simple to prepare, but very flavorful and fresh tasting.

Here is her website. Her blog contains recipes and videos. She is also on youtube. She doesn't solely cook vegan, but the recipes are easy to veganize. My note taking was obviously wishy washy because I forgot to write down what to replace shrimp powder / fish oil with. I think it was dried mushrooms (probably shitake). UPDATE: Chessa also took this class and thinks it's salt or soy sauce to replace the fish oil. I agree :)

Here is an article about Pranee that has links to recipes on the righthand side. I'm already scoping out the soup, squash dumplings and cocktail recipes. mmmm... Tom Yum Martini.

It's pretty obvious that I'm part of the Pranee fan club. If you're in the Seattle area, you must take one of her classes. She does teach some 100% vegan classes at PCC (those are the ones I take).

Nam Takrai Saparod aka Lemongrass Pineapple Cooler. This was really refreshing. It also had some mint in it.
Satay Hed Horm aka Grilled Spicy Shitake Mushrooms. OMG. Spicy goodness in a mushroom.
Prik See Ew aka Spicy Soy Sauce. This is used in Thailand just like we use salt and pepper.
Kao Phad Takrai aka Lemongrass Fried Rice with edamame and tofu.

Phanang Portobello Mushrooms in homemade Phanang Curry

Makrua Pao aka Grilled Eggplant.

The Phanang curry is sitting on top of the eggplant in the picture below.

I'm definitely going to make this curry paste, because it tastes about a million times better than any other phanang curry that I've had before. When she added it to the coconut milk for the dish, she used a higher ratio of paste to coconut milk than you get in a restaurant, so it was full of flavor and not watery.

The whole class took turns grinding the curry paste for around 25 minutes. One poor guy got stuck w/ the majority of the grinding, so he deserves some props. Lets just say that the food processor is our friend :).

My crystal ball sees a Thai feast in my future. And it will be a feast because I have all the recipes from the other classes I've taken with Pranee :)

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Here's little Peepa worshiping the April sun on a battered up tarp in the cat cage.

I'm sure some of you will wonder where his collar is. He's not wearing it because he had balance issues from his seizure/stroke like episode - which he recovered from. The question is have I recovered from freaking out over him? Sort of.

He is now ok enough to wear a collar. I'm all about collars, tags and microchips.

Now I'm off to take Kobie to the park.

In Seattle, it's never too hot for soup

Ok, that's not quite true. there will be a few days this summer (maybe weeks?) where it will be too hot for soup. It has been scorching hot here a few days in April. Today, it's been heavy steady rain all day long. I'm blogging to fill time before the cat in the hat comes over and makes a bigger mess of the house.


Lately, I've been spending most of my time cleaning out the den. Soon it will become my exercise and computer oasis. I will be moving the computer to the den because I use it less. The other reason is so the living room will look less like nerd central with all of it's cables and computers.

Back on topic... I made 2 soups in April.

The black bean soup from the Real Food Daily cookbook. Ahhh-may-zing! It had tons of flavor and the jalapeno lime creme on top was great. I found the recipe on Amazon. I will try a couple more recipes and If I love them as much as this one, then I'll buy the book. This is my attempt at trying to avoid building a library wing filled with (more) neglected cookbooks.

I can't remember whose blog mentioned that they had made the ever so delicious Quinoa Soup recipe from Andrea's Easy Vegan Cooking. I thank you, mysterious blogger, and I also thank Andrea for sharing the recipe.

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Cats aren't always going to wait while you fiddle around w/ the camera. In this particular situation, the important thing was to capture the action. The Judge invaded Tubs' turf (on top of the cabinets).

He was groomed.

Tubs decided that he prefers his sanctuary to be Judge free, so he took off.