Sarge

Bangkok Post on-line and feature printed article, about April 2005. It was a study done by Thammasart on farangs living in Thailand, especially those married to Isaan wives. They had figures for every province in Isaan. Enlightening article. I think I safely assume the figure has probably grown rather than diminished since then. These were year-round residents of Mahasarakham Province.

mmhhh interesting stats, maybe you can publish the link to that article, if is still active after 3 and half years. As an aside I did notice a lot of Swiss guys involved with local lasses, kind of married with kids, built house for them while they work and live in Switzerland, visiting the muban twice a year. I've seen this only in Isaan, nowhere else in Thailand, certainly not on this scale. I've always wondered why they only got focussed on this region

mmmh zeppole bring back warm memories of home made pastries. Originally from S. Italy, they're made daily and consumed when still warm, melted icing sugar sticks on your fingers.

Ingredients:

white flour;

soft fleshy boiled potatoes;

creamy farm butter;

free range whole eggs;

caster & icing sugar;

golden lemon peel;

vanillin;

pinch of salt;

cinnamon

Deep fried in nutty oil and here the final result

running along his left leg

out of stock

marinated in garlic

my campaign said HUSSEIN obama

Interesting...If that's the case, I am curious how they get all the pork jowls? I mean, from a supply standpoint, there's only about, what, 3-4-lbs from 2 jowls per head or so, whereas I would understand them substituting pancetta for supply assurance (ave. pork belly is around 15-lbs or so).

you lovin' it, aintya? sussing out trade secrets whilst pushing the thread up all the time. lol no more free advices mate, I'll invoice you if you want to know further .....ah I take quality currencies only, like £ Sterling and € Euro

Don't get excited, now. I think you may have missed my main point, or perhaps it wasn't clear enough - that being that my family is not alone in the usage of "nana" amonst Italians born in AMERICA.

Anyway, I finally found an MP3 pronunciation on-line so I could actually hear it correctly. And it appears the Italian way is indeed more like "nō-nah".

I've been trying to study Italian on-line, but its quite difficult to sit down and concentrate with a new baby, work, etc... Thanks for the dictionary link, by the way.

bloody typical with ABIs (Australian Born Italians - American Born Italians) and BBIs (British Born Italians) and any other [ _ ]BIs, they can only speak an unintelligible form of Italian learnt from their parents who speak the lingo even worse I've seen it so often. I can't even be bother to speak in Italian to them (both parents and [ _ ]BIs), I politely ask them to switch to English ..... but even then, I need to train my ears to decipher their peculiar version of Queen's English

Edit: I did find a meaning for "nana" in Italian, its a feminine form for "nano", meaning dwarf.

My Italian grandma was about 4'10 LOL

Fortunately, my grandfather was 6'2", so all the men in my family are about 6' even.

so doing the average you must be 5'5" tall and barely can see over the head of Thais, or do I have wrong way round and you actually are 5'5" wide

This is all in good spirit ........ and puff this thread goes on top yet again

There are very few foreigners living around mahasarakham city, mostly involved with the university. I could go for several days before I meet one. Most of the foreigners just have a house and wife there, they come visit from time to time. Like to know if there is a get together among foreigners around the city of mahasarakham.

Mahasasarakham Province has over 1,200 foreigners living within the province (count as of 2005). Only about 50 are involved with the university.

Most are tucked away in little rice villages and seldom come to town. In one village alone, over a dozen Isaan women are married to Swedish farangs and the town is overrun with little blond-headed, brown-skinned "luek-khruengs" scampering about.

You gotta rattle the bushes.

where did you get those figures from?

as I said a lot muban (mine included) have some locals married to foreigners who mostly live abroad and only come here visiting. My query is about foreigners being based and actually living full year round near and around Mahasarakham City and if there is some kind of informal monthly get together.

Christmas tree erected in October!

they put up a massive, sickly yellow coloured, xmas tree in front of Taksila hotel in Mahasarakham City in January this year, well past xmas 2007 and when I left in June, it was still there. It took away 8 car parking spaces. Will be back in January 2009 and I'm curious to find out if it's still there one year on ... lol

I don't normally trust front label photos... but it does say bacon on the back in English. Usually I look at the Italian ingredients if they are listed, but I don't recall seeing guanciale. I'll have another look next time I am in Bangkok as well.

If label is in English, as it should, I wouldn’t expect them to use the word guanciale. It’s either all English or Italian. There isn’t a straight conversion in English and that’s why manufacturers (wrongly) translate it into Bacon. I said look at the photo on the label because if you know what guanciale looks like then you know that this is the case. I’ll make a point to look for their sauce as well as yours. I’ll sample test your Amatriciana and if I find it worth the trouble, I’ll get 2 or 3 jars and take them with me in Europe and have them lab tested in greater details.

Not that I needed to, but I wanted to see if there were any dialect options.

Must you be so demeaning?

However, the word Nana keeps popping up with "grandmother", usually in Italian-American context it seems - predominantly East Coast. So I'm thinking there is something to it in an Italian-American context, which is not really related to the baby-talk for "nanny" that some Caucasians use.

As noted in above link, and here (Boston) http://photos.northofboston.com/gallery/61...389566884_QHSu3

and here (New Jersey): http://www.inmamaskitchen.com/FOOD_IS_ART/sicilian_nana.html

QUOTE

I was feverishly recording ingredients for Italian Easter bread, as my grandmother made the dough. "What's next nana?" I'd ask. And since she was a nana, she baked as nanas do - by eye, by feel, by instinct. "But nana, how big is "a shot glass full of oil?" I'd implore? And, "How do you measure "a handful" of flour?"....

Ah-ha, found something that hopefully might clear this up... it seems that the two spellings may actually be pronounced the same way, according to Yahoo:Answers

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qi...14233609AAsmycj

QUOTE

In Italian it is Nana but in English pronounced Nonna or I would say Nahnah and in the U.S. many spell it Nonna.

I think they may have their spellings reversed, but is that essentially correct? ... that Nonna is pronounced as Nön-nah (or nah-nah) as opposed to nō-nah ?

If so, then that explains it.

I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. One thing is to say: “look in my household in ........ [insert the country] my immigrants parents speak this dialect and cook this way” and another to say: “in Italian language nana means grandma, Pizza was invented in NY, authentic Italian Amatriciana is made of blah blah”. I don’t have a problem with the former but I say STOP at the latter. Because it’s not only blatantly untrue but also mislead people into believing it. Look at that yahoo link you provided , the posting there is pathetic, and said without any authority or knowledge. Unfortunately this is happening more and more, people with zero knowledge of Italy, it’s food, language, culture and history involuntarily spreading MUD (misinformation, uncertainty and doubt). If one wants to find out about something just go directly to the source and not rely on online chatters. Here’s a link to Garzanti, a well known and authoritative Italian publisher, its dictionary and thesaurus are widely used as reference tool at universities and high schools across Italy. It’s free to register and use, and it’s worth the effort

Actually I do know a bit about outsourcing (albeit not in the food industry) .... I worked in the semiconductor industry for 10-years... with an OEM in the US and with a subcon here in Thailand. At the moment I would be hard-pressed to trust anyone here (not a Thai anyway), especially in the food industry, to honor a confidentiality and non-competition agreement... and risk losing my IP (my recipes and process)... and then there is the Thai legal system...

And I do appreciate you sharing your knowledge with me.

At first I thought you might be a competitor phishing around... or something.

I hear your concern about outsourcing but I wouldn’t worry too much about the IP in this case. Also it could be done outside Thailand and with different temperature processes (i.e chilled and / or frozen), but as they say in Thailand: “up to you”

......and puff the thread goes back on top again

Alice Waters cooks

so do the mods

your visa stamp?

for not voting Mr Hussein

money makes happy

bloated by khao niao

thai food better food

som tum not spicy?

for canned refried beans

bit of a trek from north of mahasarakham city, about 120km. Do you guys actually live there or just visiting?

There are very few foreigners living around mahasarakham city, mostly involved with the university. I could go for several days before I meet one. Most of the foreigners just have a house and wife there, they come visit from time to time. Like to know if there is a get together among foreigners around the city of mahasarakham.

anything about food & cooking, just 4 words. No other subject allowed. anyone digressing from topic, will be confined to eating quorn burgers & soggy chips for a week

ok let's start

slow food high gastronomy

voting for Thaksin

my baby daughter has typical farang features (white skin, green colour slightly slanted eyes, straight nose & brown hair) and with a personality to match. She weighted 3.7kg at birth, biggest baby in mahasarakham hospital and now 21 months later she's 94cm tall and 15.3kg, and not an ounce of fat. The attraction of the muban and we get movie star treatment every time we go into town. She's already picked up a vocabulary of Isaan, Thai, English & Italian words. Top baby, she loves eating chocolate. She's the apple of my eye and I love her mak

regarding Amatriciana ingredients: yes, pecorino romano would be more appropriate ...and we may switch to that given I can locate a good supply.

Have you had a look at the Amatriciana by well-established Italian brand, Agnesi?

They use bacon as well - and no cheese. Extremely sweet; I couldn't even finish my home taste-test portion, but I imagine Thais might like it that way.

It was originated from a small town called Grisciano a few km away from Amatrice. You may not know but a couple of centuries ago (when your country was in its inception) it was called Gricia and had no tomato in it. I think Agnesi uses guanciale, they may wrongly translate it to bacon. Look at photo on the label, that’s a give away. However, I’ll check when I’m in BKK and talk to their Thai importer / distributor

There is another one from New Zealand, Leggo's... they didn't even get the name right, "Matriciana".

To borrow your word: Classic ...since the city the formulation originated from is Amatrice.

Precisely. That’s what I’ve been saying here so far. Every man and his dog jumping on the opportunity to cash in on Italian food & cuisine. Regarding Leggo, a brand competed against in OZ & NZ when I was based in Sydney. A sauce I wouldn’t feed my dog. It has a sizeable market share in that part of the world partly because is cheap and enjoyed a head start of not having competition (i.e. genuine products from Italy). They dropped a couple points in the market share (source: Nielsen Australia) in the time I was there. The company was founded in Vic (Australia) by Italian immigrants and carried forward by subsequent generations. It’s now owned by Simplot Australia, a subsidiary of JR Simplot Co. in USA

Yes, I know the std commercial practice is to pick tomatoes green, and they ripen on the way to market.

We made the mistake of using those with our first test batches.

This is why we currently get all our tomatoes from the north, and they are special ordered from the farmer to ensure they are vine-ripened. We had to work out special logistics as well to get them in good time for production.

I’m confused here, I thought you implied using Thai tomatoes. Do I take it to mean you that you purchase tomatoes from N. Italy or is actually N. Thailand?

If you look at all the on-line translators, yes, it replies "Nonna".

However, that's the way it's been in my family ("Nana"), and I can find other references on the internet - such as here for example: http://marcdoni.com/enamel-charms-c7/nana-...charm-p286.html

I am not sure of the origins, but perhaps it might be a dialect thing?

Or an Italian-American thing?

lol ... and are you using an online dic to find translation of grandma into Italian? For what is worth, nana has no formal meaning, in this context, in the Italian language. I’m extrapolating here, it may mean an unorthodox affectionate term used for a nanny, someone who takes care an infant or maybe used in a situation of your nonna Mary sweet talking to you when you were a toddler” “kirk fai il bravo, a nanna! (be a good boy, go to sleep)”

Thanks for the suggestion. Yes, I have thought about ultra high-end offerings, but some ingredients are difficult to get in Thailand and very expensive - custom importing is another issue that would require us getting an import a license. Another issue is high-end packaging, custom jars/lids and their molds, high-end label design, etc.... A bit over my budget at the moment.

This is true... but capital outlay... aye, there's the rub.

there are other ways to do it and worth exploring, like outsourcing and or licensing the recipe to 3rd party manufacturers. I stop here otherwise I’ll have to invoice you for all these professional advices. Not to mention that all these posts are pushing the thread on top every time, for anyone to see. Which is what you’re really after. Marketing, marketing, marketing ......

before was then, now I'm Thaksin's accountant, here in leafy Surrey. Being creative with numbers is one prerequisite for the job, perks include fine dining at London's top Thai restaurants, free corporate hospitality tickets for Man C matches .... ah and occasional Thursdays shopping jaunts with his offspring & mates down in King's Rd. Best career move for a decade