Cafés, Cake and Ice Cream

Right now I have my butt planted at what may well become my usual table in Footprints Natural Foods café. The internet here is very poor but the community is wonderful. I head straight for the fridge of raw vegan desserts as I did last time and Chef Aivan of Italy is there to explain the day’s offerings, which seem to be getting more eclectic as time progresses. Two days ago I gobbled up a piece of masala chocolate cake and now my mouth has the pleasure of enjoying the creamy richness of some lemongrass cheesecake.

Fast forward three days and I’m back here again. It’s evening time on Saturday and tonight is the weekly Raw Pizza Buffet and Live Music night. There is no AC here and the fan’s are not doing the trick this evening but I love walking in and being greeted as a regular. I’m in my spot once more. Each time I have come here the price of my dessert has gone down a little bit, which could very well have to do with the type of cake I’ve gotten, but I like to think that it has to do with my forming relationships. We’ll go with that. On Wednesday when I was here last, despite having not slept for some 36 plus hours (Full Moon Party on Tuesday night. Google it.), I had a great conversation with Chef Aivan about his conscious ingredients sourcing, some of the challenges he faces and the solutions he has found. For a sweetener in his desserts he opts for coconut palm sugar. In fact coconut makes up a large part of the meals here. Coconut cream as a cheese substitute, coconut flakes as a pie crust, coconut milk in drinks… It seems a more sensible choice for this region of the world where piles of coconut shells line the streets. The coconut palm sugar used here originates from an organic producer in the Philippines.

Speaking of coconuts, guess who stumbled upon totally vegan coconut milk-based ice cream on a small island in the south of Thailand? Yes. I’ve hit the jackpot. Sam and I were scooting along up the main road that cuts through the middle of Koh Phangan, heading North, when we pass a sign that reads “Homemade Coconut Ice Cream.” Could it be? I wonder aloud to Sam if perhaps this sign could actually mean coconut-based ice cream, not just coconut flavored. She is doubtful, as am I, but I retain hope and curiosity about this homemade ice cream parlor. Well a week later, after our group hike up Khao Rah, we decided to check out the place. The vegan gods smile favorably down upon me. Over half of the flavors on the menu have a coconut milk base, and many flavors utilize locally prominent ingredients. Jackfruit, mango, taro, coconut, pumpkin… I opted for two scoops of pumpkin and taro, and have since gone back to buy a $3 tub of the pumpkin. It’s now stored in the Phangan Project freezer and ready for me when needed, which it most certainly was yesterday but more on that later…The main reason I returned to the ice cream parlor (in addition to getting my pumpkin ice cream) was to ask the staff if I might be able to apprentice in the kitchen for an afternoon. Just help out, talk to them about how they started, learn about where they source their ingredients, see the process. As you may be thinking while reading this, it didn’t work out. Labor laws would not be okay with me, foreigner, “helping out” in the kitchen. I asked the same of Footprints. No go. C’est la vie. Or more fitting: Sabai Sabai. So while I may not have gotten a chance to help out in the kitchen, my inquiry to do so piqued the interest of the staff and I had a nice, though broken, conversation in Thai and English with the brother and sister pair.

I have picked up some very basic conversational Thai while here. Hello. How are you? What’s your name? Thank you. Nothing extravagant but just these little snippets make a big difference in communicating and making people more receptive to conversing with me. I learned that the parlor opened 10 years ago and they source a lot of those unique flavors from Thailand. Yesterday evening Sam and I chatted with a market vendor as he cooked our pad thai. He worked in a restaurant on Koh Samui (the larger and more  commercial island adjacent to Koh Phangan) for 23 years but came here so he could “be his own boss.” Now he offers the best pad thai at the market, so says popular opinion of all of the Phangan Project volunteers. He cooks the dish right in front of you with fresh ingredients and you can tell him if you want more spice, or less peanuts, or extra cucumbers. I got mine without egg and shrimp and he put it in the glass jar container I brought along with me. Want to know how much it cost?

30 baht! That’s about 1 USD for a big jar of pad thai. Amazing.

I know keep talking about other people in my blog posts. Perhaps I am even doing this more than sharing my own stories, but it’s hard not to. The people I meet largely define what I learn, see and do.

So expect more stories!

Now I am contemplating a piece of raw cake… Is three in one week too much??

Kelly