Yes, we have gift certificates!

We still have the pretty envelopes my sister Mem made to go with our True Thai gift certificates. The certificates are cleverly designed so that the "amount" is left blank, meaning you can spend as little or as much as you like! No matter how much or how little you spend, you get one handmade envelope with each card. We can also mail them out for you if you can give us the name and address of the recipient.

The best part about giving gift cards and gift certificates for Christmas? Think of all the money you save on wrapping paper!

FYI

Beady Eye loves loves loves our spring rolls. If you hurry, you can still catch them at First Avenue tonight. Or you can go to YouTube to see their latest video, The Roller.

Closed Thanksgiving Day

As usual, True Thai Restaurant will be closed on Thanksgiving day only. We will be keeping our regular hours on both Wednesday (Thanksgiving Eve?) and Black Friday. We hope you enjoy this holiday with your family and friends.

And remember — turkey is not indigenous to Thailand. True Thai is a year-round turkey-free zone. That's something to keep in mind when you look in your refrigerator this weekend for something to eat that doesn't have turkey in it.

Another thing to remember is that if you haven't visited True Thai in a while, there are seven (7!) new items on the menu for you to check out, all of which are guaranteed not to contain turkey (but there is tryptophan in our spinach and tofu dishes for people who like to nap after eating).

Looking ahead to Christmas

The fundraiser is over but we still have not opened the box that contains your donations to Ped's family. We are going to keep it at the restaurant until Christmas day, which is also Ped's birthday. So if you still would like to make a donation, the box will be at the restaurant.

We will then open it on Christmas when True Thai employees and Ped's family are going to gather to remember Ped and to open the donations box. I wish I could invite all of True Thai's and Ped's supporters to be with us, but this will be a family affair for Ped's family and coworkers. I'm sure you will all be with your families this Christmas day but if you have no place to go, talk to me and I'm sure we'll have room for you.

Our four-day fundraiser begins tonight!

Less than a few hours are left until the charity fundraising event for the family of Anousone "Ped" Phanthavong begins! Angel2Diva Boutique will be taking over the party room and will be offering designer jeans, shirts, purses and accessories for sale, with 20% of all sales going to the family.

If you are not into designer clothes, there will be envelopes and a box so you can still make a donation if you like. Anyone making a purchase or donation will get to try some free sesame ball appetizers.

The fundraiser begins tonight, Thursday, November 3, from 5 pm until 9 pm, and will continue each night through Sunday, November 6. We hope you can make it, and we hope you find something you like.

Confessions of a recovering sugar junkie

I thought I heard on the radio that today was Anti-Sugar Day. Since Halloween is tomorrow, that seemed to make sense to me but further research showed that the Internet has not heard of National Anti-Sugar Day, although there is a growing anti-sugar movement. The Internet instead says that tomorrow is National Candy Corn Day. I think the Internet is pro-sugar, especially since Friday was National Chocolate Day, this Friday is National Candy Day, Saturday is National Doughnut Day and Monday, November 7, is National Bittersweet Chocolate with Almonds Day.

I'm guessing the Bittersweet Chocolate day is to help Halloween candy junkies come down slowly.

I used to be a sugar junkie. I blame the Indians because they were the first to turn sugarcane juice into edible crystalline carbohydrates (i.e., sucrose, lactose and fructose).

When I was a sugar junkie, I would drink regular Coke (one ounce of sugar per bottle), and every meal was followed by dessert, usually pie or ice cream. I knew the best bakeries for cakes and pies, and, not surprisingly, I weighed half again as much as I do now.

I gave up sugar when I started working out. Ped was very good about cooking healthy meals for me with lots of protein, healthy fat and vegetables. (Hmm, sounds a lot like Thai cooking!) Eating right didn't make me lose weight, but eating right made sure that the weight I burned off through exercise stayed off.

Enjoy your Halloween week sugar binge, but when the sugar rush wears off, give some thought to restricting your sugar intake. The connection between excessive sugar intake and obesity, diabetes and other health problems is well established, but it takes will power to avoid getting too much sugar in your diet, especially since National Vanilla Cupcake, Indian Pudding, Spicy Hermit Cookie, Peanut Butter Fudge, Parfait, Cake, Bavarian Cream Pie, Chocolates, and Mousse Days are all coming up in November! (Trust me, you do not want to know about December's scheduled sugar.)

Undead posts!

No time to write a new post for Halloween, but here are links to past Halloween posts:

• Aaiiieeee!!!
• True Thai Halloween
• Halloween vs Loi Krathong

And if you think that's scary, I may rerun them again next year!

Add this to your calendars

True Thai is proud to be hosting a fundraiser for Anousone "Ped" Phanthavong's family. Here are some screenshots from the promotional flyer.

Angel 2 Diva Boutique will be donating 20% of their gross sales to the fund, and will have lots of designer clothes and accessories for sale but you don't have to buy anything — we will also be accepting donations!

We hope to see you the first weekend in November. 

Peppercornpalooza!

Something happened this week at True Thai that has never happened before. We put a new dish, Young Peppercorn Stir Fry, into the buffet. We had to refill that pan twelve times before the lunch crowd left. Twelve times? I do not know what the old record was, but I am sure it was in the single digits. Wow. You really like young peppercorns!

Here is the description we put on the "new items" menu insert:

Basil, young green peppercorns, hot peppers and bamboo shoots come together in a truly Thai stir-fry dish. Excellent when served very spicy, intriguing at any temperature. Served on the stem, you can eat these peppercorns with your fingers, or you can use your fork to blend the peppercorns directly into the stir fry. Either way it's a peppery new twist on a classic Thai stir fry dish.

Peppercorns come on the stem. The technical word for a "bunch" of peppercorns is drupe. Green peppercorns are immature black peppercorns, just like the ones you grind to get black pepper. Wikipedia describes their flavor as "piquant and fresh," which is a fancy way of saying that they taste peppery. Not peppery in a spicy jalapeño way, but peppery in an explosive black pepper way.

What happens when you mix spicy peppers with peppercorns? According to True Thai's lunch customers, the correct answer is that you make an extra trip back to the buffet for some more.

Another hit and run

I am sad to report that an Augsburg student was the victim of a hit and run accident over a week ago. So far no leads, no one has come forward, and the local news media seems to have already tired of this story. Is it true that hit and run accidents are no longer news unless the community rises up in anger?

Nineteen-year-old Jason Stevens of Rochester does not deserve to be forgotten anymore than Ped does. He was an honors student and an athlete. The Highway Patrol is investigating, but it sounds like this hit and run driver was not courteous enough to leave behind any clues.

I have to wonder if this driver was encouraged by the success (so far) of the Senser family's hit and run strategy. Does Minnesota law enourage drivers who hit pedestrians to drive off?

Mari, a law student at William Mitchell College of Law, contacted me recently to see if I would talk to some students there about Ped's case. I declined because I am very busy, but also because I have shared everything I know about Ped's case in my blog.

But maybe Mari's classmates could be motivated to study Minnesota's DWI and hit and run laws to see if they work the way they are supposed to. I do not get the sense that they do. If Mari and her law school classmates would like to lobby the legislature for stronger laws to protect the innocent, I'd be glad to serve them dinner at True Thai, and then talk to them to see how I can help to get a new law passed, one that will make the Twin Cities safe for pedestrians again.

• • •

I think I need to publish these posts more quickly. Here is yet another hit and run story. I'm sure if I look again, I will find some more. Hit and run accidents are up 15% in recent years, and one reason (aside from alcohol) is that there are more people driving who do not have licenses.

What's in a name

So many people who come to the restaurant to talk to me want to know more about Ped. Maybe the most interesting story about him is how Anousone Phanthavong came to be known as "Ped."

To begin with, Ped is not the nickname his family gave to him. They called him Pec. Pec is not a Lao word because it comes from the name of an American plane. Just as Anousone was born, a bomb exploded close by. People who saw the plane said the name "The Inspector" was painted on its side. From "The Inspector" came "Pec," Anousone's nickname. Pec as in boom!, a bomb just exploded.

I am not exactly sure how Anousone went from Pec to Ped when he started working at True Thai, but I think it is almost like a bad pun that his nickname went from boom to duck, which is what Ped means in Lao. Duck as in the bird, but in English it also means to take cover, a good thing to do when a bomb goes off.

It's OK when people say Ped's name the way it looks, but Ped is actually pronounced more like "bet," and Pec like "bek."

• • •

Thanks again to everyone who has (or is planning to) donate to the memorial fund for Ped's family. Recent news reminded me that this is not the first memorial fund I have promoted on my blog. More than a year and a half ago I encouraged readers to donate to the Seward Market Memorial Fund.

I was reminded of that terrible crime because the trial of accused murderer Mahdi Ali has just gone to jury.  A verdict will bring closure to the families of Osman Elmi, Mohamed Warfa and Anwar Mohammed, the three men killed at Seward Market and Halal Meats. Another man, Ahmed Ali has already pled guilty to three counts of attempted aggravated robbery.

The verdict is in.

Changes

I don't usually announce personnel changes on my blog, but I'm sure you'll all be happy to learn that Ped's nephew Shawn and his nieces, Cindy and Tiffany, are now working at True Thai. Having plenty of Phanthavongs around is a good thing.

True Thai: Lao powered since 2002.

That is kind of a joke. Yes, True Thai has always had Lao employees. And Hmong employees and Cambodian and Burmese employees, as well as some actual Thai, myself included. I know some foodies think that makes us less Thai, but I do not think they understand Southeast Asians very well. Having a Lao cook in a Thai restaurant is like finding out there's a Canadian in the kitchen at Perkins.

As the Buddhist teacher Atisha once said, "Do not be jealous of other's good qualities, but out of admiration adopt them yourself."

Yes, there are differences in how Americans and Southeast Asians run restaurants. In Thailand, hiring a new cook — even under tragic circumstances— means new dishes. In America, most restaurants "break" their cooks in, teaching them their recipes.

In Thailand a restaurant owner wants to see what new dishes the new cook brought with them. The owner and the other cooks sample everything and decide which ones should go on the menu. Sometimes there is spontaneous collaboration and a new cook's dish is modified to better complement what is already on the menu, other times it's a quick thumbs up or thumbs down vote. If you can't decide, you tinker with the recipe until you're happy (or not). You like a dish or you don't. Food can be hard to prepare, but it should never be hard to eat.

We recently updated our menu insert to add two new appetizers: crunchy Mini Sesame Balls and chewy Prawn Puffs. Now we need to update it again to make room for a saucy new seafood entree, True Tilapia, a filet of tilapia served with an irresistable sauce.  We're also adding a change of pace (for us) entree: Grilled Lime Chicken. Chicken, sliced lime, red bell pepper, cilantro and a light, slightly sweet sauce. Served with jasmine white rice. It's not like anything else on our menu, so I think this is a good dish to add.

More new dishes coming soon!