My friend D called me last night to say that something had come up, would I like to take her place in a Thai cooking class? Well of course I said yes! I love Thai food. So this morning I got up early and hauled myself over to the class. Me and seven other women were there to learn how to prepare these delicious Thai dishes. A pair of us were assigned to each of the recipes and this is what I made.

Yes I know that this does not look like much, but, it is red chili paste, the basis for many different recipes. The hard bit is having all these weird ingredients on hand (galangal, lemon grass, shallots, chilis, etc.). I chopped thing up and then whizzed it into a paste with a hand blender (my partner had toasted and ground the spices).

This was being made by another group, and was for a pork and noodle salad (much tastier than it sounds).

This was shrimp and pineapple fried rice, served in a pineapple bowl. It’s a lovely presentation, but I am not the sort of cook who fusses much with the appearance. If food is good it quickly vanishes.

Here’s our tasting plates: shrimp and pineapple fried rice, laab woonsen (pork and noodle salad), tom kha gai (coconut chicken soup). And all of these were quite delicious.

This was the one I worked on, beef Massaman curry. It has thinly sliced beef, white sweet potato and onion, cooked in coconut and beef broth with the delicious red chili paste and other spices. It’s served with toasted peanuts, cilantro and chopped up hot chili. Although I had carefully chopped up the chili per the recipe, neither me nor any of the other diners added this to their curry.

There really wasn’t anything difficult about these recipes, other than they were multi-stage preparations with weird ingredients. So I think that I could make this again, after a trip across town to the local Asian market. I probably shall do this, someday, perhaps.

Since people first started doing agriculture, there have probably been harvest festivals. Here we have a similar event, the State Fair (without all the pagan stuff of the original harvest festivals).

Yes it features all of the essentials of a good fair, with plenty of free attractions, as well as the sort that cost money. Last November when I was taking the shuttle from the airport there were a number of folks travelling to Pueblo to pitch their acts. So I did hear quite a bit on the trip about the business of being a professional stage hypnotist. Apparently only one of the guys was hired.

This was a troupe of incredibly cheesy cowboy actors, who staged a little shootout between evil do-ers and the good guys. I was quite surprised to see that they had fans of their little melodrama, who knew? (Or imagined this was possible).

Also in the cheesy entertainment category are the racing pigs. Now the pigs themselves are adorable as they run around their racetrack, all for the prize of a cookie (surely it’s not good for pigs to be eating cookies). But the cheesy part of the show is the announcer. He gives the pigs ridiculous names that are puns on the names of various celebrities, while giving out a line of patter. To engage the crowd, he appointed one person from each section as cheerleader. If one’s pig won, the cheerleader was given a plastic pig’s nose to wear while doing a silly dance. It was a prize most coveted by the under 5’s.

What would a fair be without rides? It’s all part of the tradition.

And then there is the food; various foods that are fried or served on a stick, but are an essential part of the fair experience. This stand was serving up all-American Mexican treats, fried sticks of dough covered in sugar. Things that one might never eat if not for the fair, it’s all part of celebrating the bounty of the harvest (and perhaps an echo of the pagan celebration after all).