butterisbetter

looks Delicious, but I would put a little fresh tomato sauce on top. Is that an option for customers?

I'll try to come up with a fresh tomato sauce (I'm guessing you're Australian and what Australians call tomato sauce we Americans call ketchup or catsup) today.

American and grew up on Italian American food. No Ketchup please!!! I thought you already had been making a sauce for your pasta dishes. I'm suggesting you put a little sauce on top of the sausages.

That's a meat sauce. Don't think it would be right for sausages. I'm about to make a simple tomato sauce that I think will contrast will with the sausages.

I just baptized a sausage in the new tomato sauce. So it's now available to whoever is brave enough to defy the rules that have apparently agglomerated around this peasant food. Anyway, I liked it. A lot.

There is a huge s/h motorcycle market at Meechoke Plaza every Saturday+Sunday ,but they are mostly over priced from what i could see.

Actually it's at Ruam Chok market. Mee Chok is where Rim Ping, McDonalds, etc are located. Ruam Chok is right next door if you're heading towards Mae Jo University. We got a good used motorbike there.

looks Delicious, but I would put a little fresh tomato sauce on top. Is that an option for customers?

I'll try to come up with a fresh tomato sauce (I'm guessing you're Australian and what Australians call tomato sauce we Americans call ketchup or catsup) today.

American and grew up on Italian American food. No Ketchup please!!! I thought you already had been making a sauce for your pasta dishes. I'm suggesting you put a little sauce on top of the sausages.

That's a meat sauce. Don't think it would be right for sausages. I'm about to make a simple tomato sauce that I think will contrast will with the sausages.

looks Delicious, but I would put a little fresh tomato sauce on top. Is that an option for customers?

I'll try to come up with a fresh tomato sauce (I'm guessing you're Australian and what Australians call tomato sauce we Americans call ketchup or catsup) today.

I agree you'd just have to make up some fantastic story about the origin of the name unless it was common knowledge that it was named after a well known Chef. (lost me on the Eva/Idaho ref.)

Eva Braun, Hitler's mistress. Idaha, home to lots of neo-Nazis drawn there by the overwhelmingly pale complexion of the general populace

Love those!! Where do you think I can get one in Chiang Mai???

The OP is selling them

http://www.butterisb...s-better-bakery

He did not say he was selling them.

What is a muffuletta

I was being coy and cunning. As for what is a muffuletta sandwich? The heart of the sandwich, what makes it special, is a salad with chopped green and black olives as its base. Other ingredients include our own homemade giardiniera (various pickled vegetables including cauliflower, celery, and bell peppers), roasted red peppers, olive oil, scallions, red wine vinegar, capers, garlic, and some other stuff I can't recall. Everything is chopped and left to sit in the fridge for at least a week to allow the flavors to blend properly.

The sandwich gets its name from muffuletta, a round Sicilian bread on which it is served in New Orleans. We use Italian.

We had a regular customer from New Orleans whose mother was a locally famous cook there. He said we had nailed the sandwich perfectly.

In New Orleans people typically pile all kinds of cold cuts on the sandwich and put the olive salad on top. Here we offer the sandwich with just the olive salad and the option to put ham and or swiss cheese on top.

The Italian sausage sandwich originated in North America and Europe as the "Italian Sandwich" (cold cuts, cheeses, veg and dressing) did in several different Italian American communities in the Northeastern United States from the late 19th to mid 20th centuries. Portland, Maine claims to be the birthplace of the "Italian sandwich" and it is considered Maine's signature sandwich. The popularity of this Italian-American cuisine has grown from its origins in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts to most parts of the United States. Now if you want to talk about the Italian roots of the three aforementioned discussers you may have a point.

There is also the greatest sandwich of all ever made since time began, the muffuletta, which was created in New Orleans by some Sicilian immigrants.

I don't know that it really matters much if a restaurant is named for the chef. If he or she walks out and the replacement maintains the food quality, who is going to care? If I were to open a place and call it Eva's, and it turns out I named it for Eva Braun, who will know? Unless, of course, I opened it in Idaho, where publicizing that connection would be a really big draw.

My family visited in late January this year and they definitely were charged the 150 baht fee. Maybe some systems are charged and others not. Or maybe it was a policy change that was quickly rescinded.

Dao, it looks fantastic! We'll try to get in to try both over the next few days!

Do you like your sausage sandwich greasy or lean? I'm in furious consultation with realthaideal to figure out how to up the grease content for those who like that sort of thing.

I'll come by this week to pester about how I'd do it -and in a more sanitary cost-effective way - at your location.

I bet Butter is Better can't wait!

I can see where you might draw some negative inference about realthaideal but the truth is that he is a sad and twisted individual who obsesses about food virtually all of his waking hours and some of the rest. He is also a terrific cook. Some of dishes he has created are so delicious that they ought to be exorcised. In fact, he came in 2nd place in the World Mr. Evil contest. And the only reason he lost is that the vote was fixed. Which is as it should be for a contest of that kind.

Anyway, I welcome his interference.

Didn't I suggest this to you guys ages ago ? Looks pretty good, though I'd have to say I prefer my peppers a little sloppier. I was lucky to have worked with a guy from Philly who would sautee his peppers n onions up on the center of the flat-top for awhile, then push the big pile of them off to the cooler side - grabbing them as needed as orders came in. Throughout the course of a few hours the peppers n onions would caramelize and mix with other meat juices off the grill. In the end they'd be really tasty all by themselves. It's pretty standard for good greasy spoons.

I'll come by this week to pester about how I'd do it -and in a more sanitary cost-effective way - at your location.

You putting those sausages in your spaghetti sauce too now, by the way ?

I grew up in a town in Northern New Jersey adjacent to the town Tony Soprano was supposed to live in. Population was about 50% eastern European Jewish, 50% southern Italian. There were rumors of some exotic class of hominid known as “white people” but we considered their existence to be about as likely as Bigfoot’s.

All of the local Italian joints prepared sausage and peppers the way you like it. On the other hand, Mrs. Cioffi,(pronounced show-fee) mother of my best friend, Ronnie, scorned that method as fit only for motherless goombas. (My great grandmother felt the same way about grivenes) Mrs. Cioffi insisted that the peppers and onions be lightly sautéed with only the minimum of grease necessary to get the job done. Which I guess makes you and me goombas, because I like the peppers and onion overcooked, aged, and greasy, too.

That said, there are the respectable readers of thaivisa.com to consider. Both of them. I didn't want to scar their psyches with photos of low down Sicilian soul food.

Also, there are public health issues. As much as I personally enjoy exposing myself to the risk of food poisoning, I'm not at all confident that this is the best way to operate a restaurant. In addition, we have to respect the people out there who consider their body a temple. Both of them. (Did I make that joke already?) Or maybe the world is ready for Sicilian/Napolidan soul food? Braised pig skin, anyone?

Still, if we can confound the laws of nature and come up with a way to make this stuff safe, I'd consider putting it on offer as an option. Even if that means getting an angry earful from Mrs. Cioffi at the next séance.

I should probably also make a tomato sauce (or "gravy" as Mrs. C. called it) for people who like their sausages that way. Maybe also serve sausage and peppers and onions and sautéed potatoes as a main course.

As for making a sausage based tomato sauce, when I made the sausage meat, that's what I had originally planned for it. But I had all this sausage making equipment lying around unused, including an absurdly large sausage stuffer that can hold enough forcemeat to satiate a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a meat grinder powerful enough to propel a small yacht. Anyway, a sausage based sauce should be easy enough to do. Which begs the question: is there such a thing as sausage overload? I know, I know, that’s blasphemy. On that point, at least, you and I and Mrs. Cioffi can agree.

I'd just like to thank all the people who contributed useful information to this thread. And even to the very few whose information wasn't so useful. I mean, it wouldn't be a thaivisa.com thread without some irrelevant contributions. It's kind of like fodder. Some of it is not digestible but if the content is too nutritious, it makes cows ill. I think my 60 year old brain would gag on a surfeit of germane comments.

As it is, I got a belt, and it seems durable enough. I went to Dawood's because it's very convenient to where I am. But I'm sure that the other suggestions were equally good.

Butter is Better is now making Italian Sausages according to traditional recipes.

We have 2 varieties:

• Sweet (not spicy)
  
• Mildly Spicy
  

Our sweet Siciilian sausage is made with Pork Shoulder, Genuine Italian Peccorino Cheese, Red Wine, Fennel Seed

Our Spicy Sausage is made with Pork Shoulder, Genuine Italian Peccorino Cheese, Red Wine, Crushed Mildly Spicy Chili Peppers.

The sandwich comes on our home baked italian bread and is served with fried red and green bell peppers and fried onions.

Half a sandwich costs 75 baht. A whole sandwich goes for 150 baht.

I found a great place for belts. Unfortunately the guy's business card must have been printed with invisible ink. When I took it out of my desk drawer just now, I kid you not, it is pure white with only a faint hint of the logo remaining! Very odd...

Any way it is called John Henry or John Hardy or some odd name like that. They make very nice belts to order, some with Western-style (cowboy) buckles. Price range is like 300-1200 THB or thereabouts for nice quality. They have a little kiosk on the road going from where Meechok Plaza is to Mae Rim if that makes sense. Basically if you are coming from Faham on the Mae Jo Road and are approaching Rimping, turn left. Go down that road about 2?? km and at some point there will be a turnaround. The turnaround takes you right to a large restaurant called Phitsanulok Thai Foods. In the parking lot are a row of kiosks. The restaurant owns a tour bus company and the vendors cater to tourists that come there on the tour buses to eat. So basically, they are not open too early or too late. If you go mid-day you should find them open although I believe the restaurant and the kiosks are all closed either Tuesday or Wednesday and also Sunday. Sorry I had hoped to provide you with the telephone number but can't.

I bought a very nice belt there 3 years ago. Still looks good (except my waist has expanded)!

Thanks. Your directions are very clear.

I'm looking for a durable leather belt. The ones I've bought in Thailand so far more or less disintegrate within a few weeks of use. I've been told that there is a really competent leather worker who has a shop somewhere in the vicinity of the Night Bazaar. Can anyone direct me to him or someone else similarly competent?

VIBE #124:

The argument that this is not the US is valid, well, because its NOT the US and the valuations are not the same, not the people or the culture.

Your friend paid 460K for a home. Thats crazy in my opinion and one reason why I do not buy in Canada because they are STILL in a bubble.

In CNX, we got a condo that was in the higher end of the range for just over 100K, and for 100 -150K you can get a very nice home here. That is not indicative of a bubble to me. And you do not see your average Thai borrowing to speculate on real-estate, which, fueled the bubble in the US. People financing the "new value" of their homes to buy more and more, it was plain to see what was happening. Greed is what was happening. So far, most Thais that we know who have bought have done so for a place to LIVE, which in my opinion is a sign of a healthy market, not one that is built on sand and fog.

With all due respect allow me to quote a few paragraphs from a “real estate bubble” write up.

“In attempting to identify bubbles before they burst, economists have developed a number of financial ratios and economic indicators that can be used to evaluate whether homes in a given area are fairly valued. By comparing current levels to previous levels that have proven unsustainable in the past (i.e. led to or at least accompanied crashes), one can make an educated guess as to whether a given real estate market is experiencing a bubble. Indicators describe two interwoven aspects of housing bubble: a valuation component and a debt (or leverage) component. The valuation component measures how expensive houses are relative to what most people can afford, and the debt component measures how indebted households become in buying them for home or profit”.

Again as you can see, it is the condition that is being evaluated rather than a territorial dispute.

Having said that please take a look at some of the Thai RE agencies such as Jasmine in CM- http://www.jasminehomes.co.th/, Town and Country http://www.towncountryproperty.com/, Pattya One- http://www.pattayaone.net/, and Thai Visa-real-estate for sale for that matter [there must be at least forty of them in Thailand]. Once you take a look at these listing and investigate the historical data (i.e. how long are they on the market) it becomes obvious that there are about 40/50 thousands [yes THOUSAND] houses for sale on the market for years. Now just assume that the average price of a Thai house is 1000,000 [a figure rather low in my opinion] than the number below will introduce us to some staggering numbers

1,000,000 x 1,000,000 = $ 50,000,000,000.00 Baths. Now should the inflation be just 1.5% annually, the money [the houses on the market] just lost mare

$ 7,500,000,000.00 Baths. In other words this is the “valuation component/debt (or leverage) component”.

This is incredibly frightening fact that $ 7,500,000,000.00 Baths annually was just flushed down the toilet. Just like that, no question asked. Hence my question is: How many flushes can the market afford before the Bubble plugs the toilet? Sorry it is not the most elegant comparison just could not come up with anything more eloquent at the monument.

Im sorry, but your logic about inflations and how it affects property is backwards and incorrect.

With inflation you have an increased money supply, and that increased money supply is what INCREASES the prices of items. You have a larger pool of accessible cash that is now fighting for the same limited pool of assets so the costs go up. Its supply and demand. Inflation does not decrease the price of real-estate.

DE-FLATION on the other hand will. But with all the BAHT that will be printed to pay for all the flood prevention infrastructure and with tablets computers being handed out like banana leafs, I do not see deflation as a foreseeable concern here.

Actually, increases in the money supply do not necessarily increase the cost of items. In the USA, the money supply was vastly increased after the wall street debacle but real estate prices have fallen dramatically. Japan has actually experienced deflation despite following Milton Friedman's advice to increase its money supply. Money supply is only one factor, and not always a determining factor, in regard to prices. We can see this exemplified every day in the commodity market where prices can fluctuate wildly irrespective of the money supply. Demand is not primarily a function of the money supply except during episodes of hyperinflation. There have to be buyers who want whatever the commodity is that's on offer.

As for the question of whether Thailand is in the middle of a bubble or not, anecdotal or personal experience really can't be definitive. I have no idea if there are sources of data about Thai real estate similar to what is available for U.S. other real estate markets. I haven't seen anybody invoke such sources so far in this thread. Does such data exist?

Verasu should have them. Several branches in Bangkok.

Yes you did, buy sweet potatoes that is, try Rim Ping they have good local un seet potatoes which seem to fry up better than some here. I found with many it is better to par-boil them first then fry, seems to get them crispier.

I doubt that the OP mistook regular potatoes for sweet potatoes. Thai sweet potatoes don't look at all like potatoes. And, in fact, when the variety of Thai potato most commony found here is fresh, it does have a naturally sweet taste. Supposedly their high sugar content makes them less suitable for making french fries or chips. Rim Ping is now carrying a variety of potato called Challenger. Supposedly it makes for excellent chips and may have more of the taste that the OP is looking for.

That said, I think the local potatoes are delicious.

Here are two maps on the subject:

Actually, these maps are for buses not songtaews. Do these bus services even exist anymore?

I bought some beef briskit from the local fresh market here in Hang Dong, 13 days ago. I made a brine with salt, sugar, salt peter and spices, and have been soaking it since then. Tommorow I am going to get some stems from 2 pineapples and chop them in the blender and add this to the brine and soak for 2 more days. I will post results here on this thread.

I did try making corned beef from local beef. It tasted okay but had a lot less flavor than grain feed beef because it has a lot less fat. That said, people did say it was good but didn't compare to our corned beef made with grain feed beef. The fat is where most of the flavor comes from in corned beef. Lots of high end chefs actually add brisket fat to their various ground beef concoctions to amp up the flavor.

beef being grain fed destroys the health of the animal (much like grains do to people) and the grain fed beef is no longer healthy, the difference is pretty amazing . Would love to find a local grass fed source.

Grains destroy the health of people?? 4:29am - I assume you were drunk when you wrote that tripe? As far as I have always believed grains provide a number of important nutrients, including dietary fiber, B vitamins (thiamin, riboflavin, niacin and folate) and minerals (iron, magnesium and selenium). And, as part of a healthy diet, whole grains can help with cardiovascular disease, diabetes and weight management.

Do you have any verifiable, non-nutjob, sources for your claim?

beef being grain fed destroys the health of the animal (much like grains do to people) and the grain fed beef is no longer healthy, the difference is pretty amazing . Would love to find a local grass fed source.

Grains destroy the health of people?? 4:29am - I assume you were drunk when you wrote that tripe? As far as I have always believed grains provide a number of important nutrients, including dietary fiber, B vitamins (thiamin, riboflavin, niacin and folate) and minerals (iron, magnesium and selenium). And, as part of a healthy diet, whole grains can help with cardiovascular disease, diabetes and weight management.

Do you have any verifiable, non-nutjob, sources for your claim?

In a 2009 study which was a joint effort between the USDA and researchers at Clemson University in South Carolina grass-fed beef was compared with grain-fed beef and researchers found that grass-fed beef is: lower in total fat, higher in beta-carotene, higher in vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol), higher in the B-vitamins thiamin and riboflavin, higher in the minerals calcium, magnesium, and potassium, higher in total omega-3s, higher in CLA (cis-9 trans-11) which is a potential cancer fighter, higher in vaccenic acid (which can be transformed into CLA), lower in the saturated fats linked with heart disease, and has a healthier ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids (1.65 vs 4.84).^[54]

On the east side of the iron bridge they have blue songtel's that go to Lampan.

Not sure of the cost or their schedule. There is almost always one there.

I thought that they followed the old Lampun road. Which is not the superhighway. But I'm not sure about that.

Raw chocolate is basically cocoa beans that haven't been heated or chemically treated in any way. Most cocoa powder has been exposed to alkali (Dutch process) so it isn't raw. In fact, even if it weren't exposed to alkali, it still wouldn't qualify as raw since it's been heated.

To get something notarized I use Legal & Business Associates at Hillside Plaza, 3rd floor, on Huay Kaew Road, Tel 053210527. To get something notarized it takes only about 10 minutes and their fee is only 500 baht.

Is it a US notary?