The salesgirl said “Waan, waan” to us with a rising /\tone as Gary bought the popcorn. I couldn't figure out what “day” (wan with regular tone) had to do with buying popcorn. Gary wondered why the bag had less in it than usual. Then he said, "It's sweet!" and I realized what the girl was telling us. “Waan /\” means sweet!
Often foods we expect to be sweet aren't and foods we don't expect to be sweet are. The wheat bread from the store is sweeter than we've had. Gary had a sausage & baked rice dish yesterday that was sweet. I bought a little roll from the Lotus bakery that looked like it was cherry. It turned out to have a little hot dog in the middle. I ate it anyway, and it was sweet enough for me. Of the 6 small Chinese coffee cakes I've tried, only 3 have been sweet.
We bought a piece of decorated, thickly frosted cake from the neighborhood outdoor market. The cake part was sweet, but the frosting had little taste. Their donuts look sweet enough, and they are, except for the tasteless little balls grouped in the center of the top.
A man sells Chinese sweet steamed buns across from the AUA every day. I bought one this week. The outside was a soft, plain rice flour bread. Inside was a sweet paste made from red beans. A smaller, green one from the vegetarian restaurant had a green paste inside. They were ok, but I'm still adjusting to the idea of beans for dessert. Christer, from Thai class, said red bean flavored drinks are very good too.
A sweet orange juice we found is called Blood Orange Juice. We thought it might be
grapefruit juice from the picture on it. Once again, it was sweeter than we expected. The internet informed us this delicious orange is rare in the U.S.
Gary has been satisfying his sweet tooth regularly with the soft serve "ice cream" from KFC, the mix of chocolate and vanilla, but we had a treat of real, hard ice cream the other day. After experimenting with staying on our usual song tau past our usual stop, we ended up on the other end (North) of the city. Our walk to class then covered new ground for us. In our quest for a place to eat lunch we found a Wall's Ice Cream shop. We did eat lunch first before having
the ice cream. Then, Gary ordered a Triple Delight and I had the Thai special. His turned out to be a dish of three large scoops of Chocolate, Chocolate chip, and Vanilla ice cream over sliced bananas and with chocolate sauce on top. Mine was a scoop of white ice cream with chunks of sweet green fruity things in it and a yellow chunky, slightly salty topping. Finally I realized it was creamed corn! I always thought creamed corn was sweet. It doesn't taste quite so sweet on ice cream, though. It fits in with the Thai tendency to always mix salty and sweet things together. I'm not sure if I would have that for a topping again, but I think I would like a scoop of that ice cream!
:J
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