Box of delights.
bento photo - click here

I've found a bit of a new passion for Japanese "bento" lunches. It's great - you can fit lots of tasty morsels into your bento box, and more often than not I pack up the left-overs from our dinner, and we take them to work the next day.

You can make all sorts of beautiful and/or cute designs: like this one
and this one
and this one
and this one.

Then there are all sorts of little accessories you can buy, so that you can put a tiny bottle of sauce in the box without it running all over, and so on:
this and this and this and this and this and this and this.......

Tomorrow, my bento lunch will be: left-over risotto (courgette and pumpkin), topped with a sliced tomato and some toasted sesame seeds, and for pudding there are chunks of heavenly Thai mango.........as seen in the photo.

I'm already looking forward to lunchtime!

But just look at these freakish offerings that someone has taken to work/school with them! I think I would scream if one of these popped out at me.

Magic Powers.
Last weekend we paid a visit to Chote Chitr restaurant, which was recommended to me by a local guest-house owner. (Here is their official website.)

We eventually found the place after a bit of a walk around, during which we came across this beautiful Wat (see photos). You can be walking along in Bangkok - in Thailand in general, in fact - and you suddenly catch sight of beautiful temples such as that one. Luckily, I had my camera with me.

We were a bit excited about eating at this amazing restaurant, and we took our table with a sense of anticipation. Apart from the young Thai couple sitting outside , we were the only customers. We ordered some drinks, and then tried to choose some dishes from the menu. We ummed and aahed a bit, and then Rob suggested that, as this was meant to be a real old-style restaurant, we could order a "Five Powers dinner".

What's that? A Five Powers dinner?

Let me explain. When we were living in Prachinburi, our local restaurant, the name of which translates as Five Powers, just happened to be a legendary one (declared legendary by us), widely regarded as serving the best food in Prachinburi. It was only a 2-minute bike ride from our house, and we dearly love the food there. As reading Thai is a skill that still eludes us, we couldn't read the menu (not even with the incentive of being able to order food did we learn to read). So we used to just point to random things on the menu, and in this way we discovered some fantastic dishes. We ended up with quite a few favourite things to order, and came up with some "set menus" of our own choosing, featuring a selection of things that went really well together.

So, to cut an even longer story short, at the restaurant on Saturday Rob suggested that we order one of our "set menus" and - risky, this - compare it with the same food at Five Powers. Now, if you clicked on the links earlier in this post, you will know how much people rave about Chote Chitr restaurant. But can you guess what I'm going to say? Yes.......the food at Chote Chitr wasn't half as good as Five Powers! It was a strange thing, to go there and expect to really love the food, and then be quite disappointed. Of course, it is a different place, and I don't think we will ever surpass the Five Powers! Best not to try that again. We are seriously missing that place - even with the diversity of food in Bangkok - so we will have to take a trip to Prachinburi soon.

A plank to spank.

Well! Today is pretty ace.

1) Yesterday was pay-day - our first since February, if you can imagine that. I did a little sales shopping after work, and we had a lovely Mexican dinner and couple of bottles of wine last night, and we are definitely basking in the afterglow of getting paid again.
2) Today is a national holiday! Could be dangerous with all this cash hanging around....
3) The plank of the title is the one Rob is about to go and buy within the next couple of hours. This is it: http://www.washburn.com/products/electrics/hollow/hb30_hb32.aspx
Woo hoo! It's a real beauty. He's been desperate to get his hands on it for months now, and has managed to hold on till today. So he will be rocking the house and annoying the neighbours. I will post a photo of the man and his axe as soon as I can.

Please click on the photo for an explanation.

first floods
Originally uploaded by sputnitchka.