butterisbetter

anyone find albacore tuna here? I can only find the bluefin.

Don't think you're finding bluefin. That's the most expensive species of tuna. I'm guessing you mean skipjack or some other cheaper variety. I haven't found albacore but I think the Thai canned tuna compares favorably now to what you find in the usa, at least. The quality there has declined markedly in the past 15 or 20 years. Probably due to overfishing.

First off, I won't say entirely dismiss the negatives that inevitably will be offered by various parties, but keep in mind that Chiang Mai is consistently rated as one of the best places for Westerners to retire to. For better or worse, you can live in as western a way as you want to. It's a very easy place to live in.

As for international schools being expensive, the ones that are accredited by associations such as Cambridge for the UK are currently running from $5000 to $6000 per student per year. Certainly not expensive by western standards. Anyway, since you are planning on home schooling your children, this isn't much of an issue.

And the Thai food here is wonderful. And if you need a fix, western food is available as well at the Rimping supermarkets which put most supermarkets in the USA to shame.

There are also options to do various kinds of volunteer work which might be a good way for you wife to meet people and make friends. Though, she would ultimately have to get a special visa to be allowed to do that kind of activity in a serious ongoing way.

There are developments which offer a communal pool. Renting a house with a private pool would obviously run you a lot more money. There are also some very nice public pools which are inexpensive to use. And because the Thais fear the darkening effects of the sun, during most of the day the pools are nearly deserted. Membership at hotels with use of gym and pool is another option.

One thing to keep in mind is that some areas of Chiang Mai are liable to flooding. There is a map that regularly gets offered which shows how liable a particular place is to be flooded. If I find it, I will PM it to you.

And as noted above, the air can get bad in the latter part of the dry season. It depends on how dry the dry season gets.

Also, you might want to rent a house close to public transportation.

ANd if you ever want to visit Burma, Cambodia, or Laos, Chiang Mai is about as good a jumping-off point as you will find.

...just caramelize some sugar, dilute it in water and throw in the salt and keep in the fridge.

I 'll try it. Though for the life of me I can't remember any sweetness from this elusive sauce.

If you caramelize it enough it won't be sweet. Just bitter. But in the amounts you need for coloring that shouldn't matter.

As I've noted in another thread in this forum, I make my own cure. If you have a gram scale it's really easy. Just mix whatever percentages of salt & nitrite or salt & nitrite & nitrate, then add enough water to make a slurry. Mix well and heat until water has evaporated. It's good to keep stirring at the end so the cure doesn't turn into one hard solid mass. Not essential, though, A blender should be able to turn it into powder.

Butterisbetter thank you for the information of where Issangeorge can find packaged pickling salt. Maybe you would know where I could buy "brewers yeast" in Thailand?

Wayned, an old blender motor with the small top container is what I use to grind my spices, I just call it my spice grinder that is what I use most of the time, I used to use my Food processor to grind spices but now use the blender, thank you for the advise.

Cheers:

Sorry, I've never seen Brewer's yeast in Thailand. I have seen frozen cakes of fresh yeast (or, at least, undried yeast) at Bakersmart in Chiang Mai.

I am not a big tea drinker, certainly no connosieur, but having been to Mae Salong to sample the wares countless times, I was far more impressed with Mae Aw (Baan Rak Thai) north of Mae Hong Song up at the border. Like Mae Salong, it is also an older KMT tea growing village. Sitting along the resevoir drinking good teas was as pleasurable as it can be. But beware, I have been told that some of the tea shops will serve you great tea but do the old switcheroo trick when they sell you the large bag of leaves to take back home.

Yes. That was done to me once in Mae Salong.

Kikoman, where do you get your pickling salt from? Thanks.

Sent from my i-mobile IQ 6 using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

I get my pure salt from a laboratory supply house called Union Science. It has locations in Bangkok and Chiang Mai. The salt comes in 50 kilo bags for 450 baht per bag or in 1 kilo foil pouches for 15 baht. It's sold as sodium chloride.

I'm going to take a wild guess and surmise that you are located in Isaan. See if you can find a laboratory supply house in the nearest big city. Often they are located near the major hospital.

Have you tried Choke Charoen at the airport? Located on the ground floor in the domestic arrivals sections. They are eager to give you free tastes. They grow tea in Mae Salong Chinese style green and oolongs.

Bi Lou Chun! Chinese green tea.......my pic in cmai at my secret little tea house as im not up to disclose location on TV

Seems they send their tea guy to India to score the steas they ahve --darjeeling-genmai-jasmine--bi lou chun--etc..

I go back and drink until im going to pop....nice cozy thai teak house in the old city--prices have been going up tho

You've been in the restaurant and food service business so you know how hard it is to make a buck. But you don't want to help these people. I don't understand.

Yes, and I do not really understand this thinking either.

I for one am looking for some good quality Chinese green tea (qingcha), and wish to buy at a fair price.

A fair price is, for me, about 200 - 250 Baht per 100 grams.

If anyone can please suggest a source in Chiang Mai, then please do.

I have no more tea.

Good green tea is all I need.

Thank you very much.

OCH

(I do not want to buy via internet source. I already know about Monsoon, but am still looking due to price considerations.)

I clicked on the link and it shows that basically, it's just a caramel solution with a little salt and preservation. If you can't find it, it should be easy enough to make a substitue.. Just caramelize some sugar, dilute it in water and throw in the salt and keep in the fridge.

A little bit hypocritical of China voicing concerns about a few of their citizens outside of China when inside their country hundreds die in mining or other accidents that could probably have been avoided.

Yes, but you are missing the point, the first of which to be pedantic is that, all accidents can be avoided. The second of which, these people don't pay good money to visit to be murdered or to be charitable die because of the actions of some idiot.

"...all accidents can be avoided" Realy???

Or do you mean only the ones that happen on purpose?

Can I ask where you got the digital scale and how much it cost?

I like the idea of putting the cases in saran wrap and freezing them. I had thought to wind them around shortened chopsticks but didn't think abaout the saran wrap.

Makro Hang Dong generally has digital scales in stock downstairs near the bakery. They run about 700 baht. Can weight up to 5 kilos in 1 gram increments Yok also carries some. I bought one there, too, because it measures 1/10's of a gram.

My experience with casings purchased from Makro is that sometimes a package is fine, and sometimes not.

any reason for mincing the meat in the food processor rather than in the meat grinder?

When you need a really fine texture, like in frankfurters, meat grinders won't get the meat finely ground enough.

Please find attached a picture of the "Red Limestone Paste" (Bpoon Daeng) that was purchase this morning at the village market for 5 baht a bag.

IMG_0955.JPG

It is food grade as Thai use it while chewing Betel nuts, in the making of Thai rice wine and in cooking.

Cheers:

First off, I was wrong. You can also use calcium oxide to nixtamilize corn. Another name of calcium oxide is quicklime, the stuff that criminals use in detective novels to more or less melt or burn a corpse into unrecognizability. You wouldn't want to get that stuff anywhere near your mouth. When you add it to water it produces a lot of heat and decomposes into calcium hydroxide.Once that's done, you can use it just as you would calcium hydroxide.

Also, I'm a little confused. First you wrote that your wife purchased lime (whether calcium oxide or calcium hydroxide) at a construction supply house. I'm guessing that wasn't food grade. :Why would a construction supply house sell something that is unnecessarily pure, hence unnecessarily expensive?

What exactly is Bpoon Daeng? It can't be pure calcium hydroxide since it's the wrong color. Is it just some kind of food coloring that is added? It could also be sodium carbonate which is somewhere between sodium hydroxide and sodium bicarbonate in alkalizing potency.

Anyway, what you're doing sounds great. What about nixtamalizing corn meal? I looked it up on the internet and found one page that discusses it but not in a very exact way.

Bi Lou Chun! Chinese green tea.......my pic in cmai at my secret little tea house as im not up to disclose location on TV

Seems they send their tea guy to India to score the steas they ahve --darjeeling-genmai-jasmine--bi lou chun--etc..

I go back and drink until im going to pop....nice cozy thai teak house in the old city--prices have been going up tho

You've been in the restaurant and food service business so you know how hard it is to make a buck. But you don't want to help these people. I don't understand.

I forgot to note tat the correct chemical name for lime is calcium hydroxide. So that's what you would want to ask for if you go to a laboratory supply store.

You might want to consider getting your calcium oxide (lime) from a laboratory supply house. I know that another chemical, sodium hydroxide, lye, is often used as in ingredient in the boiling pretzels and bagels. But the lye you buy in a hardware store, which is meant for unclogging drains, is generally contaminated with heavy metals. I don't know if a similar problem affects calcium oxide. But I'm sure it's a cheap chemical, even at reagent grade, which is purer than food grade. Generally you can find laboratory supply houses in the vicinity of a major hospital.

Any elephant that is under the care of human beings needs to be trained in order for it to be given proper veterinary care.

pasteurize or not ..milk has a very lively and strong flora that can take care of most the bad bucks..perhaps not all but there are other dangers in life .You more likely to catch Dengue than get sick from fresh raw milk here in CM

The most suspicious thing is homogenizing ,I read a research 20+ years a go related to homogenizing.... breaking up the fat cells,

Back then there found out that in doing so the blood was more likely to assimilate the broken up fat cells,Fat cells are quiet large and will float,and that da's not look good on the milk and also unhomogenized milk makes a skin when heated.Again lots of people don't like that.

But could homogenizing be a contribution of high cholesterol?? i Am pretty sure it is..'Milk is the nectar for as mammals it can only be perfect if we don't abuse it to much, in manipulating and over eating it

Then lets make the milk look good and long term consequences are ignored.Typical for industries

During pasteurizing the calcium will precipitate as well, there for u get "calcium enriched milk''.Aren't we after the calcium in the milk?

And not the one out of the lab that there ad

I have been a dairy farmer for over 20years and we never pasteurized and never had problems,of coarse it needs the right husbandry with the animals and the adequate hygiene.

I know I sound like I'm shilling for Dacheeso but their milk is not homogenized.

"..of coarse it needs the right husbandry with the animals and the adequate hygiene"

Which is precisely what is at issue here. Again, the cheesemaker who warned me about the raw milk from this place practiced for many years in a European country known for its high standards of hygiene.

Still looking! Any advice would be much appreciated!

Cheers,

T

What's the reason you prefer dry active to instant? The only difference I find is that you need less instant yeast than you do dry active yeast to achieve the same results.

i like raw milk, too. That said, a half year or so ago I got some cheese from a person who had made cheese for a living in Europe. He visited one place here that sells raw cow's milk and said the conditions there were very unsanitary. They were planning on buying new equipment to upgrade the facility, but until they did, he wouldn't recommend drinking their milk raw.

As for milk in thailand, I haven't seen any refrigerated milk pasteurized via the UHT process. And I know that unlike UHT pasteurized whipping cream, the whipping cream sold here whips up easily and holds its shape for days.

I believe that Dacheeso pasteurizes its milk using the old fashioned low temperature pasteurization method. It certainly tastes like milk that I used to buy in an old fashioned small dairy in Connecticut that used the low temp process. Very, very similar in flavor to raw milk.

Can you buy rennet in Chiang Mai? If so, where?

Hi,

I'm long time home cheesemaker.

I.m italian and I have some few extra rennet, calf liquid and goat in paste, imported from my country, as unable to find in Thailand.

I produce weekly "fior di latte" (mozzarella from raw cow milk.)

PM me if I can help you

cheers !!

I've tried JohnJohn's mozzarella and it's first rate.

Maybe you should post your inquiry here: http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/forum/142-organic-farming-smallholding-and-kitchen-gardening/

I live in CM so I posted on the CM forum. I'm not making a trip to Ubon or Udon for seeds. I'll look for seeds that are produced local and used local.

Thanks

Well, it may be that some people in Chiang Mai who are interested in agriculture may visit only that forum.

The buffalos raised in Thailand make a very poor milk though. First of all they don't produce even half the amount of milk that the traditional buffalo does. The fat content isn't as high either but you could adjust by adding powdered milk with a higher fat ratio.

You don't want to buy pasteurized milk either. You need raw milk and you need to have the right bacterial cultures and liquid rennet but I assume you have that already. CMU and Mae JO agricultural departments both used to sell raw milk. Like another poster said by the kilo. I thought it was 22 baht a kilo not 18 but I haven't done it for a long time.

The real problem you will face is getting the humidity and the temperature right for extended periods. A wine fridge isn't a bad option but pricey. Overall you will spend a lot more making a few kilos than you would if you flew it directly from Europe. The average novice cheese maker will ruin about 100 kilos of milk before they successfully make a product worth eating. But it is fun trying.

Actually, the milk from the swamp buffalo, the kind that is native to Thailand, is richer than the riverine or Murrah breed. The swamp buffalo just produces a lot less of it.

As for making mozzarella, it's a fresh cheese. Maybe a little bacterial activity is good to make lactic acid, but not a lot. Like a very, very mild yogurt. Essentially, it's a curd cheese like cottage cheese. You don't want to age it. The fresher it is, the better it tastes. We used to make it at an Italian restaurant I worked at.

Here's a link to the original article, the source of all my formidable expertise about the water buffalo,from the bangkok post. It's actually located on another website now. http://www.learners.in.th/blogs/posts/82698

Traditionally, I believe Mozzarella cheese is made from buffalo milk. I see lots of buffaloes around. Must be some milk somewhere.

They're all sick.. Didn't you know this? There's a farang run NGO trying to help their plight, but it seems never ending.

The Royal Project used to make buffalo milk mozzarella. For all I know, they still do. It was superb. They are still making buffalo milk yogurt which is delicious. So I guess that, they, at least, still have some healthy water buffaloes. About 5 years ago, there was an article in the Bangkok Post about various private interests starting up buffalo milk dairies. Some were importing water buffalo from Europe because they are more prolific producers of milk. Sorry to hear they're not thriving.