That's right. Houston. For 4-6 months. The country livin' dream is on hold for a little while.

Mark drove me down here and helped me settle in, then took the car back up to the Holler leaving me in Houston with Mighty the Cat and a bicycle. While together, Mark and I managed to try a few Mexican places and discovered the lovely green salsa of Houston.

From the Homesick Texan's blog, a recipe for this divine creation:

Ninfa’s Green Sauce
Ingredients:
3 medium-sized green tomatoes, coarsely chopped (you can substitute yellow if you can’t find green ones, but never use red)
4 tomatillos, cleaned and chopped
1 to 2 jalapenos, stemmed and coarsely chopped
3 small garlic cloves
3 medium-sized ripe avocados, peeled, pitted and sliced
4 sprigs cilantro
1 tsp. of salt
1 1/2 cups of sour cream

Method:
Combine chopped tomatoes, tomatillos, jalapenos and garlic in a saucepan. Bring to a boil (tomatoes provide the liquid), reduce heat and simmer 10 to 15 minutes.
Remove from heat and let cool slightly.
Place tomato mixture with the avocados, cilantro and salt in food processor or blender and blend until smooth.
Pour into a bowl and stir in sour cream.

Makes 4 to 5 cups

Looks like we'll try to make this in the Holler soon! I am happy to see that it does indeed include avocados. I was starting to get an identity crisis each time I tried to call this yummy sauce "Guacamole" and got corrected.
Photo from Wikimedia who states the following:  Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

The key to a successful Thai cooking experience is to prepare everything before you start cooking. Food is cooked quickly at high temperature, so you don't want to be trying to peel garlic while your onions burn.

Mark helped me prep the meal. We diced, sliced, grated and cleaned up. Here are the ingredients we used:

• 1 cluster of broccoli (not a whole BUNCH)
• 1 bunch cilantro
• 1 tiny zucchini
• 1 spike of celery
• 2 tiny peppers (I don't think they are the Thai green ones, but you can get these in the normal grocery store)
• 2 carrots
• 1/2 cup peanuts
• 1 pound white asparagus
• Some left over diced mushrooms
• 6 spikes of garlic
• 1 onion
• 1 tablespoon dried rosemary
• 2 fish fillets and one chicken breast cubed
• Half a package of rice noodles

Before dicing, slicing and grating
Rice noodles must soak in hot water (the package says hot tap water, I use cold water that has been heated on the stove) for 15 minutes. Set this up first so that the noodles are softened for the frying stage. Do not over soak, you will end up with gummy Pad Thai.

Asparagus prep
1) First I cut off the bottom inch of each spike

2) Next, I peeled the lower half of the vegetable

3) Finally, I cut it into bite-sized chunks

Cooking

First, I sautéed the onions on high in olive oil. Next, I added 1 tablespoon of rosemary, diced peppers and the diced garlic. After about 60 seconds, I threw in some cilantro and added dashed of soy sauce.

When the spice mixture was looking good, I tossed in the meat and fish. I added more soy sauce and covered to simmer for a bit.

I began adding in the veggies (longer cooking ones first) and threw in sauces for fun. Thai food often has fish sauce, but there is none in the house, so I used shrimp paste instead. Also in the mix: lime juice, red pepper paste, green curry paste, Thai red pepper sauce.

When the meats looked cooked, I tasted the sauce and added more spicy pepper paste and an extra spoonful of shrimp paste.

Finally, I added the softened noodles and fried the mixture for about 5 more minutes. For fun, I threw in a spoonful of peanut butter.

Note: I left 1/2 my cilantro and all the grated carrots and chopped peanuts out of the mix.

Meanwhile behind me, Mark set the table, decanted the wine, made a pitcher of ice water, and lit the candles on the table.

I serve Pad Thai Nicole Sauce Style (read: larger portion and Americanized) in a large bowl with fresh garnishes. Today, since we were out of bean sprouts, we garnished only with grated carrots, cilantro and ground peanuts.

Quote from Mark: "The thing that is so good about Pad Thai is the interplay between the fresh vegetables and the cooked ones."

While in Washington DC earlier this week, I discovered a gem: Sawatdee Thai Restaurant. It was the best Thai food I have had in this country. Qualify that with the following, however: I appear to live in a Thai food vacuum.

The food in Thailand is much better than the Thai food in most Thai restaurants in the US, but that is usually the case. It has, however, been a constant source of disappointment that most Thai places serve Vietnamese-tasting foods and/or substitute cow's milk for coconut milk in their recipes (yucko!).

So far in Nashville, I have not found good Thai nor Chinese for that matter. It seems the Asian chefs have chosen to avoid this fine region, or host special events like this lovely event for the Chinese New Year. Anyone reading this who has recommendations, please DO chime in!

We decided to use my skills gained in a cooking class in Thailand, and try to make some Pad Thai in Nashville with a twist - We only used what was in the house or available for purchase at Kroger's.

Pad Thai never tastes the same way twice when I make it, because I don't measure anything and have not had the "proper" ingredients around since moving to Nashville. Here is what last night brought:

What we already had
1) Thin rice noodles in a box
2) Onions, carrots, celery, mushrooms
3) A motley assortment of sauces

What we bought at the store:
1) Bamboo shoots
2) White asparagus - they hat if for $1.99 a pound!!

3) Broccoli, tiny peppers, zucchini

4) Peanuts - Mark grabbed salted ones, so we ended up washing the salt off...

Tune in later to see how we prepped the meal...