Pierrot

Sorry, doesn't work. You'll have to look for yourself ...

Actually there is an other forum where you may get good advises. Unfortunately, I may not be allow to name it, let's try

http://<URL Automatically Removed>/

I'm just about to open a restaurant, ... I wonder if anyone can give direction on how to fill the menu.

Any one with experience of this that can offer some help/advice?

Any help and advice will be great.

Many Thanks

I don't know what to say .... good luck !!!

That's good critical thinking. You should rest now.

Ooops.I did it again ....

Criticizing without critical thinking (challenging the answers not the questions) is easy. Especially for those who are used to letting the western media do their thinking for them.

How is your post relevant to the original post ? I’m afraid you shoot yourself in the foot.

Just choose from a soul food menu:

Meats

Country-fried steak, with baked beans and mashed potatoes with white gravy

Chicken gizzards, batter-fried

Chicken livers, batter-fried

Chitterlings ("chitlins") (the cleaned and prepared intestines of pigs, slow cooked and often eaten with vinegar and hot sauce; sometimes parboiled, then battered and fried)

Country fried steak, also known as "chicken fried steak" (beef deep-fried with a crisp flour or batter coating, usually served with white gravy)

Cracklins (commonly known as pork rinds and sometimes added to cornbread batter)

Fatback (fatty, cured, salted pork; used to season meats and vegetables)

Fried chicken (fried in grease with seasoned flour)

Fried fish (any of several varieties of fish—especially catfish, but also whiting, porgies, bluegills—dredged in seasoned cornmeal and deep fried

Ham hocks (smoked, used to flavor vegetables and legumes)

Hoghead cheese (made primarily from pig snouts, lips, and ears, and frequently referred to as "souse meat" or simply "souse")

Hog maws (hog jowls, sliced and usually cooked with chitterlings)

Neckbones (beef neck bones seasoned and slow cooked)

Oxtail soup (a soup or stew made from beef tails)

Pigs feet (slow cooked like chitterlings, sometimes pickled and, like chitterlings, often eaten with vinegar and hot sauce)

Ribs (usually pork, but can also be beef ribs)

Vegetables

Black-eyed peas (cooked separately, or with rice as Hoppin' John)

Cabbage, usually boiled and seasoned with vinegar, salt and ham hocks or fatback. More recently, smoked poultry (turkey or chicken) is also used as a seasoning.

Greens (usually cooked with ham hocks; especially collard greens, mustard greens, turnip greens, or a combination thereof. A wild green known as poke salad, which requires special preparation due to its toxicity when raw.)

Lima beans (see also butter beans)

Butter beans (immature lima beans, usually cooked in butter or combined with multiple regional sausages)

Field peas (seasoned with pork)

Okra (African vegetable eaten fried in cornmeal and flour or stewed, often with tomatoes, corn, onions and hot peppers; the Bantu word for okra is ngombo, from which the Creole/soul food dish gumbo derives its name)

Red beans served with rice or in chili

Succotash (originally a Native American dish of yellow corn, tomatoes, and butter beans, usually cooked in butter)

Sweet potatoes (often parboiled, sliced and then baked, using sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and butter, commonly called "candied yams"; also boiled, then pureed, seasoned and baked into pies—similar in taste and texture to pumpkin pie)

Fried Corn, sweet yellow corn, off the cob, sauteed in bacon fat, with other flavorings, similar to Maque choux.

Breads

Biscuits with honey

Biscuits (a shortbread similar to scones, commonly served with butter, jam, jelly, sorghum or cane syrup, or gravy; used to wipe up, or "sop," liquids from a dish)

Cornbread (a shortbread often baked in a skillet, commonly seasoned with bacon fat); a Native American contribution.

Hoecakes (a type of cornbread made of cornmeal, salt and water, which is very thin in texture, and fried in cooking oil in a skillet. It became known as "hoecake" because field hands often cooked it on a shovel or hoe held to an open flame)

Hot water cornbread (cornmeal mixed with hot water and fried)

Hushpuppies (balls of cornmeal deep-fried with salt and diced onions; slaves used them to "hush" their dogs yelping for food in their yards.

Johnny cakes (fried cornmeal pancakes, usually salted and buttered)

Milk and bread (a "po' folks' dessert-in-a-glass" of slightly crumbled cornbread, buttermilk and sugar)

Sweet bread (bread with a certain sweetness, presumably from molasses)

Dumplings (homemade flat square noodles boiled with stewed chicken (usually a hen).

Panbread (a type of unleavened bread made with flour salt, butter and water. It's cooked on top of the stove with an iron skillet. Similar to traditional flatbread that one finds within various cultures across the world.)

Other items

Chow-chow (a spicy, homemade pickle relish sometimes made with okra, corn, cabbage, hot peppers, green tomatoes and other vegetables; commonly used to top black-eyed peas and otherwise as a condiment and side dish)

Grits (or "hominy grits", made from processed, dried, ground corn kernels and usually eaten as a breakfast food the consistency of porridge; also served with fish and meat at dinnertime, similar to polenta)

Hot sauce (a condiment of cayenne peppers, vinegar, salt, garlic and other spices often used on chitterlings, fried chicken and fish including homemade or Texas Pete, Tabasco, or Louisiana brand)

Macaroni and cheese (never from a box, only cooked from scratch with cheddar cheese, milk, flour, and seasonings mustard is option but a rarity.)It becomes a casserole when meats, such as bacon or ham, are added.

Rice pudding, with rice and corn-based vanilla pudding

Rice (served with red beans, black beans and/or black-eyed peas, as "rice and gravy" with fried chicken, fried pork chops, etc., or cooked into purloo (pilaf) or "bog" with chicken, pork, tomatoes, okra, onions, sausage, etc.)

Sorghum syrup (from sorghum, or "Guinea corn," a sweet grain indigenous to Africa introduced into the U.S. by African slaves in the early 17th century; see biscuits); frequently referred to as "sorghum molasses"

Sweet tea, inexpensive orange pekoe (black tea, often Lipton, Tetley, or Luzianne brands) boiled, sweetened with cane sugar, and chilled, served with lemon. The tea is sometimes steeped in the sun instead of boiled; this is referred to as "sun tea"

Salmon Patties, a mixture of skinned & de-boned salmon, mixed with cornmeal, eggs, milk and onions fried in a skillet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_food

Sounds really great.

But if you have some foreign guests for lunch, you wouldn't be able to serve everything that you list. What would you chose?

Why do all the older expats tend to have it in for backpackers? Is it because they are jealous that younger backpacker guys can sleep with western women, for free?

well, I am old, and have been and still am a backpacker since the sixties when we could hitch hike all over the world and did!

I don't mind young backpackers as long as they are polite, which many are, but some are obnoxious and fake. But then so were many of the scrounging and vain hippies I stumbled across in those years - it's not that different now. And older guys can still pull young chicks if they want to without paying them - it can depend more on personality and consideration with Thais - more than in the west. Let's face it, it's not difficult in Thailand for young or old, it's just that older guys can afford to pay if they want to. What I find rather silly from some young travellers fresh from uni is the scathing remarks that an old fat farang and his young chick get from them. Not a lot of open-mindedness there. Probably some jealousy though.

A friend of mine hitch iked in the late 70's form France to India, through Afganistan, Iran ... . She still has the bus, hotel receipts... .I followed her (actually her trace) about 5 years later, but it was already an other world. BP at that time and now, it's not the same. I don't want to say one is better than the other, just different.

Cathay has direct flights to NY but I don't know if their prices are competitive or not.

[Now that you can eat very well is the USA, there is no doubt about it. But what would you call "American cuisine"? To make it simple, if you had to prepare an "American" lunch, what would be the starter, main course and dessert?

Boston chowder, fried flounder with hush puppies, corn on the cob and garden peas, and corn fritters with real maple syrup or wild blackberry pie.

Hush Puppies ? Is it some kind of hotdog ???

Sorry, this topic is mostly of limited interest to traveling Americans. As a non-American, you can choose to never travel to the USA.

Bitter? Not really. We know we are hated, nothing new, we are used to it.

Relation to Thailand: already mentioned multiple times! BTW, a huge percentage of Thaivisa logins are from the good ole USA.

Nobody hates you. Bitter was just a reference to the feeling you may have when custom officers treat you like a criminal when your only offence is willing to visit their country, feeling you may share now.

But as you say, one may always elect to stay home. "Free world", what a funny expression, anybody knows what it means ?

Why do all the older expats tend to have it in for backpackers? Is it because they are jealous that younger backpacker guys can sleep with western women, for free?

Jealous ? No, don't think so. I was one 20 years ago but I've the feeling we were more humble, open minded, trying to discover new countries, new ways of thinking.

On the other hand, 20 years ago it was ok to sleep on the ground with coakroaches running all around the room. Now, less than 5 stars, forget it !

Sorry PB but we seem to be talking about different things. I am talking about the constant barage of negative comments about Thailand. If the posts were more connected with individual occurences or people it would be more understandable, but I am talking about the frequent derogotarty comments about the Thai people as a whole. It would seem that a large section of TV agree with these comments (which is no suprise as so many do it) but it is nice to see that most seem not to agree with it.

Sorry Garro, but you're not new in this forum. In TV, there is a only a few people who make a real contribution, people you can learn from, especially in the "general" and "news" forums. In the sub forums it's a bit better.

Many posters are losers in their home country, hoping for a new life, but as a Swiss singer, S Eicher I believe, put it it rightly "On ne refait pas sa vie, on continue seulement"

If someone can translate, not only the words but the meaning, it would be appreciated.

A firend of mine, a hiker who has to face sometime some agressive dogs, told me the trick is to fill a water gun with a solution containing ammonia, dogs hate it and leave you alone.

The issue is about our constitutional rights as Americans and how our government has overstepped acceptable boundaries.

That's what I love about you "Americans". "Freedom" "Rights" ... it's just for you and you alone . And I'm lucky as I'm an European and not some "suspicious looking" guy from the middle east or Asia.

So now you have a taste of your own medecine? It's bitter isn't it ?

Btw, what's the relation with Thailand ?

I like KSR for the crowd and, as someone mentionned, it's a good place to buy cheap second hand books.

But one think I never understood, walking distance from there there is absolutely fantastic Thai restaurants but I never see any farangs there. Why travel half of the world to eat banana pancakes, it's something I'll never understand

BTW, I am not saying American food history/cuisine is the "best" in the world by any means. That is a matter of taste. I would probably vote for both China and France for that honor.

I found Chinese food absolutely overrated. What ever the angle you look at it, Indian cuisine is definitively superior.

Now that you can eat very well is the USA, there is no doubt about it. But what would you call "American cuisine"? To make it simple, if you had to prepare an "American" lunch, what would be the starter, main course and dessert?

As a kid, I used to spend my holidays in my grand parents farm. You never get bored in a farm, there is always something to do.

A few years ago, I started feeling bored in Bangkok too. Nothing much to do, spending our days in the mall was not my idea of fun, and so much time wasted in traffic jam. I was almost feeling happy on the way to the airport going back to work in China.

Then we bought this piece of land near Korat. It's not a farm, more a big garden. Our Bangkok friends ask us what we do there, there is nothing to do, no shopping mall, no restaurant, no movie theatre ... I don't really know what we do, but all I can say is we wake up quite early, usually no later than 6:00, and we are always very busy, no time to get bored. And when it's time to leave, we always have a huge list of things to do for when we come back.

Yesterday I was talking about my worries about the current situation in Thailand with an Italian friend of mine. I'm sure you will like his answer. "In Italy we haven't have a stable government as far as I can remember. Italy is home of the mafia. But it's still one of the best place to live in Europe. So what are you worrying about?"

What the USA think of "him" :

- He was "one of the most controversial leaders" of a country "known for governmental corruption and vice".

- A man "hated by many but respected by all at least for his personal style and the sheer force of his will".

- "Regarded by many as a political dilettante (amateur) who gained his high office only through use of his considerable influence on the national media".

And we're talking about .... Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7495754.stm

What about sendind the PAD crowd there ? Time they give us a break, don't you think

Steveromagnino, I have to retract one of my previous posting : some people who know do talk. Some of your posts should be a mandatory reading for anybody willing to join this forum, we would probably be spared some very dump comments.

Now your post is too long and I have too little time to try a smart answer. Anyway, it would be difficult to argue with someone I almost agree with. If all democrats were like you, I wouldn't mind to see them back in power. Unfortunately, I'm afraid it won't happend any time soon ...

A very fine piece of journalism can be find at :

http://www.bangkokpost.net/topstories/tops...s.php?id=128765

Please read fast before it disappears

I liked the first page of this thread.

It's the quality of people at the top that matters, not how they got there.

Usually it is assumed that democracy would eventually bring out the best governments, but if the best government is the goal, then I don't see why not accept fast shortcuts. In the long term shortcuts are unsustainable, true, but look at the time frame - ten years of bad governance can completely wipe the country off the map. There's simply no time for slow learning.

Surayud has been a disappointment, Samak will be a disaster - great choice.

Second page is descending into the usual TRT vs Democrats. My opinion is that this country is too corrupt to elect Democrats any time soon. A few bright people at the top there will never be accepted by multitudes of crooks and thieves that make up political scene here, and after Thaksin has successfully turned the whole region against Democrats simply out of spite, there's simply no hope for them winning the elections. Last December they had their best showing in history, btw, and the future is theirs, as demographics slowly change towards middle class and urbanites. That offers some hope.

Plus, you seem to be a difficult man to satisfy. But I believe I found the right party for you ...

Most farang who don't like Thaksin rely on the Post and Nation for their news. Enough said on that one.

And which Thai newspaper in English would the farang who like Thaksin read??

We can't read

Yesterday I was talking about my worries about the current situation in Thailand with an Italian friend of mine. I'm sure you will like his answer. "In Italy we haven't have a stable government as far as I can remember. Italy is home of the mafia. But it's still one of the best place to live in Europe. So what are you worrying about?"

I came for the first time to Thailand in 84. It was the time of the backpackers and (late) hippies. At that time the TV serie "Dynasty" was quite popular too.

I remmember talking to a Thai who was probably watching too much TV, and I never forgot what he said :" I know in the west people are rich, smart and beautiful, so why all the people that come are poor and dirty ?"

Edited for double post