fedification.com

Bangkok, Thailand – There was a period of time many years ago when I was devoted to getting more fiber in my diet.  I settled on making old fashioned oatmeal for breakfast before work.  Old fashioned have more fiber than quick oats, but take longer to cook and I would busy myself putting on makeup, getting dressed or putting on makeup while the stuff bubbled on the stove.  Inevitably I would often burn the bottom on the stove and so in addition to forcing down a bowl of gruel I had to scrub a sticky pot of oatmeal every day.  Eventually I moved onto high fiber cereals or homemade bran muffins, preferring the butter-loaded bran muffins, sometimes made with mixed berries or flavored with orange zest.  To this day, the thought of oatmeal makes my throat clench.

These days, though, I’m not thinking about fiber and I actually look forward to breakfast.  In addition to the ubiquitous rice noodle soup (kuay tiaw), I really love stir-fries and I don’t think I’ll ever tire of pork.  One of my most common breakfasts is stir-fried pork with holy basil (krapow muu).  The lady outside my building knows how I like it, phet phet (spicy) and mae sai pencharot (no msg).  One morning when I felt like something a little lighter I pushed past my normal breakfast spot to the food court down the road and sat down with some fresh Vietnamese spring rolls (goi cuon) stuffed with herbs, glass noodles and a little pork. Lately I’ve gotten into green beans stir fried in a dry red curry with pork and sometimes chinese broccoli.  I’m hooked on these lunch-like breakfasts.  When my friends here tell me they have cereal for breakfast my throat clenches.  What a depressing way to start the day.