Calamari and Chips (by Biggs)

I was feeling pretty good about life this afternoon so decided to celebrate with one of my favourite takeaways - Leefkas.

Unfortunately, I immediately had buyers remorse about spending money when I'm meant to be saving. Then the wait was long and there were some super irritating drunk chicks waiting for takeaway at the same time as me. It really harshed my mellow.

But, once I got back to my comfy couch with my beer and tasty takeaway I was immediately rejuvenated. Leefkas put something magical in the batter for the calamari....I think it might be salt. They also seem to use some sort of giant, deep-sea squid. The calamari rings were HUGE.

Satisfied.

PS: I'm well aware it's been a while since vegetables. I'll look into rectifying that soon.

Pink Rice and Pig Oinks (by G)

There's an expression 'to use the whole pig except the oink'. I discovered last night that the industrious ladies at Shop 3, Food Court 2, Mo Chit Bus Station, Bangkok have discovered how to use the 'oink' as well - because whatever I ate last night, it was not meat.

As I was about to take a bus I didn't have much option but to eat at the bus station and, having reviewed the options, I (incorrectly) decided to get my meal from this place because they had fried eggs - and in my opinion a meal is not complete without a fried egg.

I thought it would be cool to get some of the pink rice - I don't know that it is different to regular white rice but it seems more fun.  There were a few choices of what to go with it - I decided against bus station fish and  went with the pork.  There was a bit of trouble when I went to pay for the meal - I wasn't sure what the difficulty was until someone else came up to order and showed me that you have to pre-purchase vouchers for payment - so I left my dinner cooling on the bench while I dashed off to get some vouchers... at least I knew the exact value I needed to buy.

To complete my meal I topped it with some hot looking chilli sauce and some powder that I think was pepper.  The rice was okay - it had little shrimps in it which was a nice touch.  The egg was good, though a little opaque on top. The pork was about 110% gristle and very unpleasant to eat.

For this meal at least it was a case of 'get it down before it gets you down'.

Yangon Street Stew (by G)

One thing I like about Myanmar are the street food set-ups - like a poker table. The food prep person on one side of the table (the dealer) and a few players on the other side sitting on ridiculously small chairs like adults at a children's tea party.

Anyway, last night I was grazing again but with a bit more sit-down rather than eat on the run. Below is a stew with a whole hodge podge of things.  Noodles, vegetables, chopped bread sticks, a pickled onion all in a delicious savory broth.  The bread is almost like a straight croissant and what I thought was maybe pigs tail was infact some kind of fibrous vegetable.  This was delicious and only 35 cents.

I also had a pickled tea salad and another half dozen of those Quail Egg Fritters. Yes indeed - life is good.

Spring Rolls and Pork and Tofu (by Biggs)

Tonight I was out to dinner with the lovely Fi and Kirsten.....ummm, somewhere in Chinatown Mall. It was a cheap, cheerful and super low-key Chinese restaurant that I would highly recommend if I knew what it was called.

Dinner was a bottle of wine, vegetarian spring rolls, tofu something something and pork something something. One of us suggested we should probably order a dish with vegetables but this plan was side-lined almost immediately. We made a tokenistic effort though with vegetarian spring rolls and tofu. Admittedly both were deep fried and heavily salted but what were we to do?

Dinner tonight made me happy - perfect combination of food and friends.

Quail Egg Fritters (by G)

I didn't know what I felt like eating this night so I just wandered around grazing on street food while I decided and, in the end, that was my dinner.

Apart from the savory pancakes and samosas (which are always excellent) the highlight was the quail egg fritters (that's what I call them anyway).

The guy ladles a batter into super hot egg cup shaped divots in a cast iron pan then cracks in a quail egg, tops with chick peas (I think they are), garlic shallots and - when ordered - tops with a dusting of sesame seeds and flavour dust.

I'm pretty happy with my photo - literally shot from the hip while standing in the street - it conveys the joy that is Quail Egg Fritters. You can bet I'll be trying to replicate these when I get home.

Ploughman's Lunch (by Biggs)

Surprise, surprise, once again I couldn't cope with walking into a supermarket this afternoon so I had to work with what was available in the kitchen. After a quick poke around I decided I had enough supplies to conjure up a Ploughman's Lunch. I didn't seem to have any appropriate meats so I decided I should do some research.

Turns out, according to Wiki, that the core components of a Poughman's Lunch are cheese, chutney and bread so technically, I went with tradition. I also boiled up some eggs, fried up some onions, spinach and balsamic and included some capsicum dip with the lunch-dinner.

As it's traditionally served with a "drink of beer"  I thought it best to follow that exact formula.

Pork with Dried Chillies (by G)

I had been cycling around the Bagan area all day getting sunburned so when I realised the Indian restaurant I'd been planning to go to for dinner was just a few paces further than my enthusiasm I pulled off the road to this place - it is a bit of a dive and has the fruity name 'Power Five - Dagon Drag Beer & Restaurant'.

I'd seen this dish listed on a few menus over the previous few days and was intrigued - That could be good I thought.  When it came I was surprised to find that it consisted of chunks of pork, onion, beans, capsicum and cauliflower with a hand full of whole dried chllies (stems and all).

The group of drunk guys at the next table were (I think) anticipating some dramatic gagging as gasping from me.  It was hot, that's for sure, but I had to disappoint them.

'Look, face is turning red!'; 'No, it was like that when he got here - I think it's sunburn'.

This was an okay meal - putting whole dried chillies in a dish is wacky and ill advised.