A Khmer Cooking Class

I like to cook.  I love to hostess.  I enjoy offering beautiful and tasty things from the comfort of my home. That said, I must confess that I really haven't cooked much of anything here in Cambodia.  Our kitchen is basic at best, a bit dark and of course it's hot here.

So I've been  living vicariously through Pinterest this past year.  

I do enjoy Khmer food.  Mr. Buny Chan is the cook at our campus.  A fabulous fellow really.  I love that he asks my opinion about his cooking, "Do you like it? Is the soup too sour?"  He's even given me a recipe for his pepper sauce.

Last month a few coworkers and I took a Khmer cooking class downtown.  We made four dishes.  It was fun, informative and everything we made turned out great.  I'd like to share our experience with you.

 First we went to a local market, Psaa Kandal, to buy our ingredients.  

It was the cleanest, nicest market I've seen so far.

These are pods from lotus flowers.

I would be nervous if I was still living at this point.

Fish on sticks

 or Cambodian fish sticks, as I like to call them

Our work space was on the top floor of a building so we had a nice view.

We made fried taro spring rolls for our first dish.

The taro had to be washed several times.

Rebecca rolls hers up.

Susan sends hers swimming in the wok to get toasty brown.

We made that dipping sauce too

Next we made chicken and banana flower salad.

This is the banana flower.

We used the dipping sauce from the taro rolls as the dressing.

It was light, fresh, completely delicious, not to mention beautiful.

Next on the menu was fish amok.  Amok is a traditional dish, almost like a curry with a coconut base.

We pulverized turmeric, kaffir lime, chilies, garlic, lemon grass in a mortar and pestle.

We used banana leaves and folded them into little bowls.  Once filled with our amok they went into a steamer.

Lastly we made mango and sticky rice for our last dish.

I learned a new way to slice mangoes.

A palm sugar caramel is drizzled around the outside and mixed with freshly grated coconut.

~The fabulous four of Cambodian cooking~

A Year in Review: The Great Reformation

Well, we have had our last day of school and the another year has come to an end. 

I don't always post about school, but since this is my purpose for being here in Cambodia, I thought it would be appropriate to do a year in review.   I have affectionately termed this year with my students 'The Great Reformation'. They came to me as wild things, but they left me as regular second grade students.

There came a day in April when everyone was working quietly on independent work and the only sound was pencils on paper.  I looked around and thought, "What's going on?"  Then I thought, "They're doing it!  It's happened! We've made it!"  and I could have burst into happy tears right then. Was everything smooth sailing to the end?  Of course not. On the last day of school everyone went berserk-o while they waited for parents to pick them up. Jason had his best buddy in a choke hold.  What happened to the last ten months of training?  It flew right out the window apparently. It was like someone put a weather machine in my class, then hit all the storm buttons at once: hurricane, tornado, blizzard, etc. 

Anyway, by the grace of God we have all made it through.   Here are some pictures of some fun lessons we did this year.

 Building 3D figures out of toothpicks and marshmallows

Kesar labels her models

As part of a poetry unit they wrote acrostics using their names.

This was the simplest cut and paste activity making the Ten Commandments, but it was their favorite.

Jason came to school one day in one sneaker and one flip flop.

I think this is one of the coolest activities we did this year.  The lesson was about using grids, being able to navigate on a grid, listening to and giving directions.

First the team captains had to make maps of the grid and find a path to the treasure around various hazards.

Then their teams came out and had to follow the captains' directions exactly as they moved through the grid.

Only one team was attacked by pirates, all the others made it to the treasure.

This was during book week.  Jason and I dressed up as the same character.

We gave a small performance including fun facts and a few selections from  Dr. Seuss.

It was too cold for swimming (70 something degrees) so we played soccer on the Logos field.  Sovichea is showing me how many points his team has.

This was a graphing lesson.  They had to take a survey, create a graph, then write out 5 questions about their data.  Then they had to present their graph to the class and ask their questions. 

Making nativity scenes at Christmastime

Sheep for the Christmas production

These were 'Our Place in Space' projects.  

We used the outdoor space again for ordering and comparing numbers.

This was a creative writing project.  I made spinners for characters, settings, and problems.  They had to spin for each of the story elements then use them to write a narrative.  Some of the combinations were pretty bizarre: a unicorn on the planet mars with a volcanic eruption or insects at the beach getting lost.  The crazy combinations are what made it fun.

And here they are in all their glory.  Really a great bunch of kids.

I'm looking forward to hearing all about them from their teacher next year.