In Which I Cook With Coconuts And Connor Goes Through Laundry

I decided to jump right in today on my Thai cooking quest, and made a pot of tom kha gai soup.  Basically it's a coconut-based chicken soup, cooked with a liberal amount of coconut cream that made this probably the least healthy thing in the entire cookbook I could have chosen to try.  Coconut cream is not exactly low on the calories or saturated fat.

Anyway, despite a slight mishap where the soup boiled over onto the stove (did you know burning coconut cream still smells delicious?) the soup ended up being surprisingly easy to make.  Some of the ingredients weren't things I was going to find down at the local Top Foods, though.  Luckily we live in an area that has a large Asian population, so I had a plethora of Asian grocery stores nearby to choose from that carry everything I needed to make the soup.  I even picked up a few things for recipes I plan to try later-- like some tamarind paste and some smoked chilies. 

Oh, and I couldn't resist grabbing some lychee just to eat by themselves.  I have fond memories of gorging myself on lychee at my next door neighbor's house when I was growing up, so whenever I find them ripe in the store I tend to snap them up.  There's no way I can grow them here in the Pacific Northwest, but believe me when I say that if I could, I would.

The one thing I couldn't find that the recipe called for was straw mushrooms; my guess is that they probably had them canned somewhere and I just didn't see them.  So I picked up some king oyster mushrooms instead, which aren't used as much in Thai cooking but are incredibly delicious. 

So the soup was delicious, even if one bowl of it probably had my caloric and saturated fat requirements for the entire day.  Next time I'll try cooking something a little bit healthier, and maybe a little more complicated too, like some kaeng som (a sour curry).  We'll see how it goes!

Connor tried a little bit of the tom kha gai and wasn't terribly impressed, but then he hasn't been terribly impressed with food in general lately-- he keeps throwing it up.  This weak stomach thing has been going on for about a week and a half now, which is long enough for me to think he probably needs to go see his doctor.  So first thing tomorrow morning I'll be calling and making him an appointment.  Hopefully he's not becoming allergic to his enteral nutrition or anything; that wouldn't be very good.  At least he isn't having any seizures or fever accompanying the issue.

Hope we can get this figured out soon.  It's sure as heck not fun for Connor, and it's not too great for me either.  You wouldn't believe the amount of laundry I'm doing right now.