butterisbetter

Butter is Better Diner on Chang Klan Road has just started making its own homemade Cumberland sausage. This is an authentic recipe. (We even went to the length of making our own rusks to use instead of breadcrumbs.)

To promote it we are offering it at 15 baht for a length that weights at least 100 grams. So that would come to about 68 baht per pound or 150 baht per kilo.

Limit is 2 per customer at this price. Full price per length would ordinarily be 35 baht. You can also order it from www.mealsonwheels4u.com at this special price. Just to be clear, this is for cooked sausage.

That photo of Yok doesn't look like Yok here. Is that a stock photo from their website or something?

yok has a new 2nd store near where the original one was

If you send a picture, I am pretty confident our cake decorator can do it. She's risen to all sorts of occasions in the past.

Our new hours are Monday through Saturday 8:00 AM to 7:00 PM

Sunday 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM

I bought a bottle of honey and when I opened it it kind of fizzed and lots of white foam, similar to a very light head on beer, came up to the top and is still a bit there a few weeks later. The bottle was not sealed very well. I've read that honey doesn't go bad but never seen this, anybody know what it might be?

Maybe it wasn't really honey? There is a lot of fakery in the honey business nowadays. There was an extensive article in the New York Times (I think) about so called filtered honey. If you filter honey, you take out the pollen grains the presence of which is the usual way to establish whether a syrup is honey or not. The only reason that makes sense to claim that what you're selling is filtered honey, is if it isn't honey at all. It could also be that they diluted the honey with enough water so that yeast could thrive.

About our black coffee. I am about to engage in what may well be the most unconvincing act of self promotion ever to disgrace the pages of thaivisa.com. (Which is saying a lot.) Unconvincing because I don't like the flavor of coffee at all. Someone above cited a coffee blended with a hint of tea. Well, if they were to replace all of the coffee with tea, that would be my idea of a palatable brew of coffee.

That said, I do recognize that lots and lots of people, including the entire family I grew up with, love the stuff. So when we opened Butter is Better, we knew we had to take extra care with the coffee. We started out by asking all kinds of coffee lovers about beans. Eventually we settled on the beans provided by the brother of the street vendor cited in the opening post.

But to make sure our black coffee was good, we bought what is supposedly the best coffee machine in the world. It's a Moccamaster machine made in the Netherlands by Technivorm. You can look up reviews on the internet. It's designed to brew coffee at the perfect temperature thanks to a huge copper heating element and lots of other refinements. It's also so ugly that occasionally our customers use it to frighten their children into behaving themselves. There's nothing hi-tech about it at all. It's hand assembled and so sturdy it could probably be used as a battering ram. It makes okay beans yield good coffee, good beans great coffee, and great beans yield...........great coffee. Well, how good could it taste? It's only coffee.

Anyway, we have lots of people telling us we have the best black coffee in Chiang Mai. Of course, it could be that they don't get around much. Lots of people have kinds words for our espresso based drinks too, but talking them up is an act of shameless self promotion I'll reserve for another day.

Post your GPS coordinates and I'll add you to my GPS and visit next time I'm in CM.

18.780400 98.999704

18° 46.825’ N 98° 59.982’ E

About our black coffee. I am about to engage in what may well be the most unconvincing act of self promotion ever to disgrace the pages of thaivisa.com. (Which is saying a lot.) Unconvincing because I don't like the flavor of coffee at all. Someone above cited a coffee blended with a hint of tea. Well, if they were to replace all of the coffee with tea, that would be my idea of a palatable brew of coffee.

That said, I do recognize that lots and lots of people, including the entire family I grew up with, love the stuff. So when we opened Butter is Better, we knew we had to take extra care with the coffee. We started out by asking all kinds of coffee lovers about beans. Eventually we settled on the beans provided by the brother of the street vendor cited in the opening post.

But to make sure our black coffee was good, we bought what is supposedly the best coffee machine in the world. It's a Moccamaster machine made in the Netherlands by Technivorm. You can look up reviews on the internet. It's designed to brew coffee at the perfect temperature thanks to a huge copper heating element and lots of other refinements. It's also so ugly that occasionally our customers use it to frighten their children into behaving themselves. There's nothing hi-tech about it at all. It's hand assembled and so sturdy it could probably be used as a battering ram. It makes okay beans yield good coffee, good beans great coffee, and great beans yield...........great coffee. Well, how good could it taste? It's only coffee.

Anyway, we have lots of people telling us we have the best black coffee in Chiang Mai. Of course, it could be that they don't get around much. Lots of people have kinds words for our espresso based drinks too, but talking them up is an act of shameless self promotion I'll reserve for another day.

When I first came to Thailand about 7 years ago, Rim Ping supermarket in Chiang Mai had it in stock. I bought the last bag and haven't seen it since.

We ran out today due to a) strong demand and 2 faulty batches. The first was my fault: too much salt. The 2nd failure was due to the staff's belief that they didn't really have to exactly follow the recipe. So between my mishap and theirs, we ended up with some flat and unappetizing objects for which maybe some use can be found in the upcoming discus event in London. On Thursday, we will distribute whatever edible crumpets we manage to make (so far 28 pieces) among our 3 stores.

Or, recommend a place where only guests stay with proper personal hygiene standards.

Bedbug transmission is not a matter of personal hygiene. The bugs don't live on people. They just live off them, like mosquitoes. They generally get around by hiding themselves in clothing other personal effects and hitching a ride.

Crumpets are usually eaten toasted just like a piece of bread. If you eat them without toasting you will probably think you are eating a dough ball.

I disagree. I think an unheated crumpet tastes more like a sponge made out of flour but not as tasty. The first time we succeeded in making a reasonable version of a crumpet, I ate one after it cooled and thought it was another failure. They really do have to be toasted.

What exactly is a crumpet? Sorry about my American ignorance. From the photo, they look like what we'd call "English muffins", which indeed are great with all the toppings mentioned. I'm not too sure about the marmite though. That sounds like something you use to grout bolts into a concrete wall.

Well,they are made with a batter but they don't taste like a pancake. Nor like an english muffin. The hard part about making crumpets is creating the holes. The holes are are crucial since once toasted the butter that you then slather on completely saturates the crumpet via the holes. But it's not easy coming up with a recipe that gets those holes to form and then to remain. I tried and modified lots and lots of recipes before coming up with one that worked. Even now, we have to throw away a few from each batch because they are too blind (too few holes).

I forgot to mention that they cost 15 baht each.

Available starting today at our Chang Klan Bakery/Diner and at our Mee Chok Branch. Our Nim City Branch is closed today but will be open tomorrow complete with crumpets.

I gather you no longer send the italian baguette-type bread to the Rimping branch. Do you send it to Nim? Do you bake/have it at your diner/shop every day?

We have it for sandwiches at the shop but we don't sell it anymore. The reason for that is that some days it just didn't sell at all. Others it sold out. But on balance, it wasn't worth it. Maybe some time we'll try again. As for the staff saying "mot lao" (see elektrified's comments) i guess they were trying to save face on our behalf.

I have seen popcorn salt for sale at Bakersmart in Chiang Mai. It's on the Lamphun road about about 200-300 meters south of the highway overpass

Our diner/bakery on Chang Klan Road will be closing at 3PM on Sunday July 15 and will be closed for all of Monday, July 16. Our 2 bakery outlets at Nim City (next to Rim Ping) and Mee Chok Plaza (inside Rim Ping) will be open for the usual hours.

Rim Ping definitely used to have it. At least at the Nim City branch. I haven't noticed it in a while but I haven't been looking for it either.

I have seen sour (tart) cherry juice for sale at Rimping just recently. I think it was at the Mee Chok branch. It may be available at the others, as well.

The only place I know of that still had big slow cookers as of 1 month ago was the Central Department Store at Gad Suan Kaeo. It was oval shaped in the same way the Dutch ovens are. I think some of the large slow cookers mentioned above are hybrid rice cookers/slow cookers.

SO what is the price per piece or for pie and is at at any shop or one shop better than the other to find this treat ?

As for where to find it. Usually we have pie at all 3 of our branches.

Our bakery/diner is located on Changklan Road just a bit south of the intersection where Pantip Plaza is. GPS 18° 46.825’ N 98° 59.982’ E

We have a bakery outlet inside the Rim Ping Supermarket located at Mee Chok Plaza. GPS 18° 49.424’ N 99° 0.625’ E

We also have an outlet at Nim City right next to the Rim Ping supermarket there. Nim city is located across the Mahidol Rd from Airport Plaza. GPS 18° 46.316’ N 98° 58.641’ E

You can call our store to find out where and what kind of pie there will be. That phone number is 053-820-761

Mr B is B can you actually get 'wild' blueberries here?

I thought they needed a winter period to become dormant.

Wild blueberries are a fantastic food!

We put on our hiking boots, gird ourselves with a basket and go to the frozen food section of Makro. Okay, it's a shopping cart. But what is a shopping cart if not a basket on wheels? You're right that wild blueberries wouldn't grow in this climate. There are cultivated blueberries being grown not just here but even in Indonesia. I haven't tried them because even if they were delicious, the cost of a pie made with them would be astronomical.

SO what is the price per piece or for pie and is at at any shop or one shop better than the other to find this treat ?

How much ?

Apple pies 60 per slice or 320 per pie

Strawberry rhubarb or blueberry 65 per slice or 350 per pie

(6 slices to a pie)

Just in case you thought flaky buttercrust pies were mythical objects, here are a couple photos of a slice from Butter is Better. One photos is about as close up as the rules of common decency allow. The slice in question happens to be Strawberry Rhubarb. But we also regularly make blueberry pie (when we can get wild blueberries - domestic ones, even when organic, don't have much flavor) and apple pie. We occasionally do cherry pies and we're planning on doing an apricot pie, too.