Info about Making Food in the Dorm

Apparently there have been a few questions about how the girls make the food in the dorm. There are around 12 girls who live on each floor. Twice each week every girl is in charge of the cooking and cleaning. This means a full wipe-down of the bathroom, kitchen, hall, living room, etc on your floor in the morning (and I am talking 5 or 5:30am to start this). They also make breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They often buy the food the day before, though. Even though there is no refrigerator, there is a large cooler with a big piece of ice in it that is outside on the first floor. Instead of going to the market to buy the food (takes too much time) and instead of buying it from the local sellers on the street (it would take all of their food and then there wouldn't be any left for the other people who live in the neighborhood), they make a list of the food they want the day before and give it to one of the sellers. They seller then buys it and delivers everything to the dorm. To buy the food, each girl is allotted $25 per month. They claim that the leadership resident is included on this, too, and that is why they won't take any money from me. Each meal usually just consists of rice (from a rice cooker - each floor has one) and then a dish that usually is a combo of some kind of meat and some veggies. Sometimes there is a sauce to go with it, and sometimes there is soup instead. So far, I have only seen the same meal maybe two times. But, I think things are starting to repeat. They usually make a separate dish for me with just the veggies or sometimes a fried egg. Apparently the eggs are alduck eggs, but they look about the same as chicken eggs to me. Regardless, I have had more eggs in the past two weeks than I probably had in the preceding year!

Anything else.... They make everything by hand. Any leftovers (not very much usually) get thrown away because there is no way to keep them cool or away from the ants. The cooking almost always happens on the first floor. Thank goodness because it means all the flies are down there! Everyone knows how to make lots of food, and I have never seen any kind of recipe. And, the food almost always tends to have lots of flavor even though they use very few spices - salt, sugar, pepper, chiles, soy sauce, fish sauce, garlic, lime. I think that is about it.

Here is a sauce I really like - lime juice (pulp too), some chile, garlic, fish sauce. Very citrusy and refreshing (as long as it isn't too hot). You use the sauces very sparingly because they usually are very spicy or have a ton of garlic. Another good one involves pepper, chopped garlic, and maybe fish sauce or oil. I am not sure.

They don't really have fruit with the meals, but sometimes the girls bring them in just to eat as snacks. I have found a website that includes picture and the American names (like dragon fruit, lychee - apparently the Khmer names are totally different). I'll post some of those later so that you can see what kinds of fruits I have tried!

**This is an update posted on Thursday :) I have some more "strange food pictures." Wednesday night we had the craziest food for dinner. The top one with all the leafy green things are just assorted leaves and then banana flower leaves (they taste very strange!). Then below that are strips of tripe. Then, slices of green banana and some fish/chili paste. Apparently you eat that with the tripe. The bananas taste very bitter, like cardboard. Next to that (going up now) are some fried eggs (for me) and a few pieces of chicken (for the girls who don't eat beef). Above that...well, you will just see soon enough :) Then in the middle is prahok. It is a very Cambodian food - a paste made of fish. It looked really gross, and I didn't try it. I did try the banana flowers, mystery dish, and green banana slices. Of course, and the egg. One of the girls also went out and bought some delicious Vietnamese noodles for everyone because a lot of them didn't like the food either. It was sooooooo good! There were these crazy things that looked like sliced eggrolls, and I would have sworn had meat but apparently was just potato inside.



Hmmm, what could this be????



That is right, lots of tiny crabs. How cute are they? They buy the crabs whole and then break them into pieces and then mix them with things like chilis, garlic, lime/tamarind - they are served raw like ceviche.



As you can tell from this stunning picture, you don't actually eat them. You just kind of suck on them. You really don't get any sort of food from it, but it is fun. I think I now understand why my sister-in-law always takes the smallest crawfish when she makes them - the point isn't to crack them open and get meat but to suck on them!