Chaing Mai and The Man

TeeHee! I can’t wait for The Big Time VP Electrical Estimator And Engineer to get home from work. Two electricians were here today from Staff Electric, where The Man works. One is mounting fixtures in the ceiling. So I ask him, “How’s it going? Looks like you’re almost done.” He says, “Well, I’m waiting for your husband to bring me some more light fixtures.” HeeHee! The Professional Estimator Man Who Can Add Twenty Numbers In A Column In His Head didn’t buy enough fixtures for the electrical plan HE designed. And, of course, this is what he does for a living – count fixtures and miles of wire to estimate the cost for the electrical work for big buildings like hospitals and sewage treatment plants. So he needed 12 light fixtures for my kitchen and only bought 9. The electrician tried to cover for The Man, saying, “I’m sure they told him the wrong amount were in each box,” but I’m not for one minute going to let that deter me from givin’ him the biz.

The electrician will be back at least one more day. Houses the age of ours just were not built with the number of circuits we need for our cuisinart, our toaster oven, our expresso maker, our slow cooker, our blender, our microwave - all stuff no one had when this house was built in 1957. And the existing circuits service rooms from one end of the house to the other, including a few outlets in the kitchen. So if the circuit breaks from some problem with the cuisinart, you can’t take a shower, read in the dining room, or operate the TV in the living room. Soon my house is going to be SO in the 21st century.

Until then, we opted for a different ethnic cuisine at Chiang Mai Café last night. And what a surprise! For a small storefront establishment in the midst of a shopping center, it has good Thai food.

The huge menu has 76 items – all numbered, in case you don’t wish to try to make yourself understood saying, “Dang Phooey” or some such. Some of the items are Thai, others are Chinese. Following my new rule: don’t order wine when everyone else is drinking beer, I had a Sapporo beer with my meal.

For dinner I ordered Panang Nau ($11.25), which the menu describes as beef and cabbage in a curry paste with coconut milk, ground peanuts and sweet curry paste. It was somewhat zippy, but tolerably so, and I love the coconut/peanut combination that is used in some Thai cooking. The Man Whose Idea Of Edible Vegetables Runs To Peas, Beans Or Corn, had Pud Prig Khing (I didn’t make that up) - stir fried pork with curry, ginger and string beans – lots of them, it turns out. This was delicious - period. With all entres comes a crispy egg roll, a choice of two soups (both were good), a beverage (soft drink, coffee or tea) and dessert of a large plate of deep-fried wontons drizzled with honey. As is often the case with Chinese restaurants, you’ll have plenty of food to take home for your next night’s dinner.

The bathroom is a single room, I would call it spartanly decorated, but it was CLEAN! Yippee! No overflowing waste containers here.

Chaing Mai had 5 tables filled at 6:30 PM and perhaps another 5 people came in to pick up take-out orders while we were there. So they’ll probably still be in business if you decide to try this establishment when you're kitchenless someday.

Kitchenless in Brookfield