Justin had planned an awesome elephant adventure for my birthday, but since it started the day after my actual birthday we needed something to do on the day.  The solution was to do another Thai cooking class!  This time in Chiang Mai, a town in northern Thailand.  We found one that looked good on the internet and would highly recommend it as the class and the food was AMAZING!  The school is Thai Farm Cooking School.

Choosing our recipes to learn

They had a great system – they picked us up in the morning and handed out menu selection paper.  We each got to select five courses and each course had three choices of dish to cook.  We tried to pick different dishes so that we would have the widest selection we could make in the future.

We had a quick stop at the market where they told us about Thai ingredients and showed us the different varieties available.

Thai market

An ingredient I'm not wanting to use

The farm the classes were at was beautiful with ponds with lotus flowers and gazebos to cook in.

Awesome farm scenery

Ready to cook!

Out in the fields learning about Thai plants

Once we arrived at the farm we went through the gardens to learn about the plants used in Thai cooking.  They even gave us nice gardening hats to wear!  This was very useful because we got to see all the plants, taste some of them raw and learn what kinds of flavors each of them provide.

Making our curry paste

Fresh Produce

The instructor had a great sense of humor and all of our dishes turned out spectacularly.  We were really full by the end of the day.

Soup

Green Curry

Lunch

Break for more scenery

Jungle!

They even made me a birthday “cake” – people don’t really do desserts in Thailand, so this was the improvised cake.

Happy Birthday to me!

It was a wonderful day and we’re really looking forward to recreating some of these recipes when we get home!