Thai Noodles with Peanut Sauce, Tomato Salad, Tom Yum Soup

I'm back to cooking! Today my gums seemed to be ready for more substantial food, so I put together a simple and soft meal with toned down spices ... and, it so turned out, no added salt or oil!

I started by preparing a Thai tomato salad, similar to a recipe in my self-published cookbook that my students make when we do Thai and Indonesian cooking. Into a metal bowl, I diced a lovely large heirloom tomato into small pieces (maybe 1/4"), and added 2 teaspoons each of ume plum vinegar and a lime juice mixture that includes lime oil (lemon or lime juice would also have been fine).

At the annual sale that we have at a nearby gourmet food store, A Southern Season, I picked up very inexpensively a small ceramic plate with rough center by a company called Grill Friends; this "super grater" can be used to quickly and easily grate garlic or ginger (after moistening the plate with oil or water), as well as, dry, nutmeg and chocolate. I gave it a try with a clove of garlic for the tomatoes, and it worked well! I also added about a quarter of a jalapeno pepper and about a half dozen fresh basil leaves, diced finely; I mixed the tomato salad and chilled it for at least a half hour, covered.

I made a simple rice noodle dish by boiling rice noodles just a few minutes till they were nice and soft. I made a sauce by putting into a small pan 2 1/2 tablespoons each of creamy peanut butter and bottled Indonesian peanut satay dip, as well as a tablespoon of water. As I gently heated, stirring over low-medium heat, I added one and then a second tablespoon of water (for a total of 3 tablespoons), stirring all the ingredients together. I mixed the sauce into the noodles and served.


Before my dental work, I had purchased some prepared Tom Yum soup that came in a foil package that just had to be boiled for 5 minutes, and I also made that; it was actually quite good with nice, tasty mushrooms! Dinner turned out pretty good - the salad was excellent, the soup surprisingly good, and I liked the noodles, though my wife thought they could have been more spicy. It's great to be cooking - and beginning to be eating somewhat normally - again!