Cooking in Cambodia

Angela from Vietnam, Theresa from Indonesia, Elliot from California and Adam from Texas

I spent last Monday out in the village for a cooking class put on for my CouchSurfing friends. Da and I had planned a pretty hefty menu of 4 courses including:

• Fried Spring Rolls
• Samlor Majou Groen (sour soup with beef and morning glory water spinach)
• Beef Lok Lak
• Pumpkin Custard
  

The steamed pumpkin custard. Yum!

Five Couch Surfers participated, though some were a bit more active than others. There was a lot of garlic that needed to be peeled! I hopped on that one right away.

Angela giving the beef a stir.

Da's brother Houy just so happened to be up visiting from Phnom Penh, so he helped with the explanation of things, too.

Houy helps out and keeps things organized!

We ended up eating the spring rolls after the soup and Lok Lak. I would have rather not used dried shrimp in the spring rolls, but that's what his mom decided to use.

Wrapping the spring rolls.

Here's a video link showing the beef Lok Lak being cooked.

What a fun day!

Rubbing me the wrong way

Getting a massage in Cambodia is commonplace. Some even come with happy endings (at least ones that are offered to men). I generally don't get massages because I don't really like the idea of someone I don't know putting their hands all over me.

But, worse than that, I haven't really ever had a great massage.

I remember one time I got a massage where I felt worse coming out than when I went in. I felt like I was beaten and bruised during the whole ordeal.

I sincerely believe Cambodians don't really understand how to massage a foreigner. Either you're being pounded and stretched like you're on a medieval torture device, or they just push some skin around and snap your fingers.

Tonight I had another disappointing massage.

I was really expecting something better because it was a friend's place, and he had really talked it up as being great. In the end, nothing was really massaged. I just had some fat pushed around, not my shoulders and feet worked on like I was hoping.

Oh well, I guess I'll keep looking and hoping...