Spaghetti Sauce!

I have some very exciting news! I moved into my coworker Andrea’s house this past week and so now I have a kitchen, a washing machine, more space, a wonderful roomie, and I will save a little bit of money!

This morning was the first weekend morning that I had free (after the film crew left) so I did a lot of cleaning and then decided to go on an adventure for grocery shopping.  I had one goal. Find ingredients to make tomato sauce from scratch.  I realize that tomato sauce is not the most difficult food item to make. I myself have followed Pete’s Famous Tomato Sauce recipe (aka my Dad’s) and made tomato sauce basically from scratch using various kinds of canned tomatoes.  However, in my defense,

1) I wanted to start off making something I’ve made before and so I would know I made poison by mistake

2) I wanted a comfort food and tomato sauce is super duper expensive here compared to everything else.  It’s about 50,000 kip ($6 USD) for one jar of tomato sauce, and not even a big jar, which doesn’t help me because I can go through one jar in one meal.  To put in perspective, if you go out for fried rice with chicken or pad thai or any other basic Lao dish, you pay $15,000 kip ($2 USD) and that’s for a full meal.

3) Going to the market here is a challenge because I don’t speak the language, everything is bought by kilo’s, I wasn’t sure if I could find most of the ingredients I needed so I might need to improvise.

The guy here was trying to take a nap but also use a long
stick with a bag on the end to swat flies away from his meat

With my stomach doing a happy jig and my mind determined, I set off.  Oh, and another few things I forgot to mention - my bike has a flat tire so I will be walking the approximate 3 mile roundtrip with my backpack, and I will be going to Phousi Market, the largest outdoor market in Louang Prabang.  Just to make things fun. 

When I arrived at the market, I first went to find my veggies.  I walked up and down the vegetable stalls trying to find my tomatoes, garlic, onion, carrots, and eggplant. At the time I went, around 1:30 in the afternoon, I had two things to look out for. 1) look for veggies that look fresh and don’t have flies all over them and 2) find a stall that the owner is not sleeping. I kid you not, half the people were having siesta time.

Interesting place to buy suits

Spices galore!

Got garlic?

I went to four different stalls and got some great items for great prices. 

5 skinny eggplants (1 kilo) for 8,000 kip ($1 USD)

~20 medium tomatoes (2 kilo) for 20,000 kip ($2.50 USD)

4 huge carrots (1 kilo) for 12,000 kip ($1.50 USD)

3 onions and 1 huge garlic – I forget how much I paid for these

Stand where I bought my 20+ tomatoes

I then lugged these veggies and a few other things I bought (like peanuts for trail mix) home, turning this shopping trip a workout as well. When I got home, I promptly started making a mess in the kitchen. Who knew that if you put tomatoes in boiling water for 10 seconds then in cold water, the skin peels off! Super awesome tip I got from the internet. As we only have 1 pot to cook in and our oven is a toaster over, I cooked for the next 3 hours, between prepping the tomatoes/onion/etc, to boiling the water, to roasting the eggplant.  But, it was all worth it in the end!

Yummmmmm