More Dhaka cooking :: by mama

I promised earlier that our next recipe experiment would be vegan, with no pasta. This sort of fulfills that promise: miso soup (with optional noodles).

As it turns out, there is a large South Korean population here in Bangladesh. I believe they are here largely for business, and mostly as part of the garment industry. In any case, there is a Korean shop here in Dhaka called Ko-Mart (really) that stocks all sorts of Korean goodies, from doughnut mix to underwear, as well as a few other Southeast Asian foods. They have sushi rice, nori and pickled ginger, wheat noodles, black rice, and miso paste, among other things. I had never made miso soup before but was a bit desperate for some variety, so I decided to give it a try.


I used a recipe from 101 Cookbooks, following the ingredient list pretty closely (with the sole addition of dried mushrooms, also from Ko-Mart) but increasing the amounts of everything. I ended up with a pretty full pot of very hearty, substantial, and tasty soup. Thank you, Ko-Mart!

How to make coconut milk

Coming from the States, I had only ever seen coconut milk in a can. As it turns out, coconut milk comes not only from cans, but from coconuts! Our lovely maid/cook, Kimbole, went to her home village over spring break and brought us some coconuts to show us how it's done.

First, you need a korani, a long metal instrument with short spikes on the end for shredding the coconut. It normally goes on the ground and is stabilized with a foot, with the person using it in a squatting position, but Kimbole demonstrated on the counter. (Actually, she had already done the work of shredding the coconuts by the time I showed up with a camera, so consider this a dramatic re-enactment of the events.)

This is from two coconuts. She used half of it for coconut milk and says that she will use the other half for payesh, a sweet Indian rice pudding.

The coconut goes in a pot on the stove with some water -- Kimbole used about two cups of coconut and about one cup of water -- until it is hot but not boiling. She then removed it from the heat, set it aside for about 20 minutes, and strained out the coconut. Voila! The result was coconut milk. She threw the cooked coconut away, but said that it could also be saved to use for cleaning. Apparently you can make a paste out of it, and it is good for scrubbing, especially for cleaning up grease and oil. Finally, she used the coconut milk to make a vegetable curry for our dinner. Yum!

Spring Break 2009 :: by mama

We are back from a 10-day trip to Malaysia for spring break. The trip was, for me, a perfect example of why we came to this part of the world: it was an adventure filled with things I never expected to see, in places I never expected to visit, at any point in my lifetime. Ever.

We spent six nights on the island of Borneo and three in Kuala Lumpur. I will freely admit that prior to this trip, I would not have been able to find Borneo on a map, let alone tell you anything about it. And the only thing I knew about KL before moving to Asia was that it was the home of the world's tallest buildings -- until recently, anyway -- neither of which I ever thought I would see in person. Surprise! I was wrong.

Our first stop was the beach, for four nights of relaxation (and, Chris would add, clean air). It was perfect, especially for Kaya: warm, perpetually shallow water with waves that were made for a three-year-old. (In other words, virtually non-existent from an adult perspective, but hugely fun-scary-exciting for a small child, in a totally non-threatening way.) Kaya loves the beach and could have spent every day of our vacation in the exact same spot, if we had let him.

:: Kaya now loves frangipanis (photo by Lorinda) ::

:: Blue skies + beach = happiness ::

Next, we went inland, into the jungle, for two nights. It was a 45-minute flight + 1 hour drive + 1 hour boat ride just to get there. Our accommodations were a wooden platform with a foam pad and a mosquito net. No fan, no electricity, no running water, no flush toilets. If we wanted to bathe, we could use a bucket of river water. Nobody bathed. The plus side to this was that we were surrounded by wildlife. Orangutans, gibbons, long-tailed macaques, silvered leaf monkeys, proboscis monkeys, a huge variety of birds and reptiles and amphibians and bats and, yes, insects. Scorpions and tarantulas and stink bugs, oh my.

:: Jungle trekking. Note the muddy boots and pants. Rainy season = mud. ::

:: Orangutan in the wild ::

:: Mystery water creature ::

Finally, having had the requisite nature experience, we went to the city, to KL. Chris and I agreed that this was the perfect order in which to do things, because never have I appreciated civilization as much as I did coming from the jungle (and from Dhaka before that...). Every bit of it was fabulous. Shopping malls, huge bookstores, Starbucks, heaps of restaurants, and a comfortable bed at the end of the day. I may or may not have shed a tear when it was time to leave. Yes, it was that fabulous. (And the power outages in Dhaka are that bad.)

:: View of the Petronas Towers from the observation deck of the KL Tower ::

Our travel companions, Andrew and Lorinda, were fabulous, and I think we are going through withdrawal from not spending all of our time with them every day -- especially Kaya, who loves "Miss Lorinda" to bits. Kaya has even picked up some Australian-isms from them, and he now greets them with a cheery "Hi, mate!" in a pseudo-Australian accent (it sounds more like "mite" than "mate," but he's trying). He may not be learning much Bangla, but he will soon have a rich vocabulary of Australian slang.  That has to count for something...

Easter Preparation

Kaya won't have an Easter basket this year, but he will be getting a few small Easter surprises. One of them is this guy:

I made him using a free wee bunny pattern from Wee Wonderfuls. I like that I was able to incorporate some of Kaya's favorite colors -- pink and purple, which are on the back polka dot fabric -- because they are Easter colors. Still, I suspect that he will be more interested in tying and untying the ribbon than in actually playing with the bunny.

Incidentally, guess what I used for stuffing? I started out with the scrap fabric and thread from the project itself. Then, when that wasn't nearly enough, I remembered the pillows from the ill-fated pillow cover project. I clearly won't be using them anytime soon, so... now some of their stuffing has a new home in Kaya's Easter rabbit. Happy Easter!

School of Dreams

As several members of our families have asked us about making donations to various causes here in Bangladesh, I thought it might be useful if I profiled local organizations that I feel are doing good work.

The first is StreetWise, a school for street children. StreetWise is a relatively new organization, founded in 2006. They have about 30 children, aged 4-15, who meet in a rented apartment near the slum area where they live. They are divided into two groups, a younger group and an older group, each with a teacher. They learn the basic subjects following a standard Bangladeshi curriculum. They also learn practical skills such as cooking and personal care.

There are many schools for street children in Dhaka, including several that are bigger and more well-known than StreetWise. However, one of the reasons why I believe strongly in StreetWise is because of its founder, Anita Aparna Muyeed. Aparna's premise and the philosophy behind much of StreetWise's work is that she wants to give poor children a world-class education. She doesn't want to simply teach them to read and write or give them vocational skills like embroidery, in the hopes that they will eke out a living making handicrafts. She wants to give them access to the same quality of education that children get at the best international-standard private schools in the country -- one of which she worked at herself as a teacher for several years.


Aparna's beliefs fall in line with liberation theology's concept of a "preferential option for the poor," which I first read about in the book Mountains Beyond Mountains, about Paul Farmer. My favorite description of the concept comes from one of Farmer's own books, Pathologies of Power. He is discussing charity and medical care and describes the common attitude as, "the homeless poor are every bit as deserving of good medical care as the rest of us." Sounds reasonable enough. However, he goes on to rephrase the sentence to represent a preferential option for the poor, writing, "the homeless poor are more deserving of good medical care than the rest of us." To me, that quote summarizes the concept. Substitute "a good education" for "good medical care," and I think you'll have something approximating the guiding philosophy of StreetWise.

Simply put, the homeless poor are more "deserving" of a good education than the rest of us because they need it more. They have nothing else to help them improve their situations: no money, no family connections, no resources, nothing. They have nothing else going for them and, quite the opposite, a whole lot working against them. When these children are not in school, they are surrounded by drugs, violence, and prostitution. They are victims of abuse on every scale, from the individual to the societal. They desperately need the safety, routine, positive role models and mental stimulation of a good school, much more so than the typical middle-class child. A good education can provide these children with a way out of a horrible situation -- physically, emotionally, and mentally. They need a good education more than the rest of us. StreetWise is working to provide that for them.

Aparna has big dreams for StreetWise: she wants to build an international standard boarding school where the children can live in a safe, positive environment and focus on their education without the distractions, obstacles and responsibilities of life on the street. Cynics will undoubtedly say that all of this is unrealistic or worse, possibly even a waste of resources. However, I would again point to Paul Farmer and the organization that he started, Partners in Health (PIH). PIH provides high-quality medical care to the destitute poor around the world. Good medical care is a lot more expensive and difficult to provide than a good education, so I think his work is evidence that Aparna's dream is very much in the realm of reality. After all, we all make preferential options for our own children; StreetWise believes that it's time to make them for the children of the poor.