Pad Thai Diary

I have cooked Pad Thai on so many occasions which were important to me, it serves as a sort of life diary. Some comments are related to the dish, even

01/13/95	1/2 cup Fish Sauce is too much!
03/12/95	Primal Scream Hotness!
03/28/95
04/02/95
04/08/95	(Fresh) Tofu not recommended, adds nothing.
04/15/95	With 10 pieces spongy bean curd, 1/2" cubes, totaling 5 oz. The 1/2" size is too small.
04/19/95	Tried Bean Curd Foams (Sponges)
04/21/95	Try cutting each sponge into 4 pieces. At Garth & Leslie's!
04/24/95	No Bean Sprouts - It sure needs them.
05/02/95	Don't use plain bean curd - Tasteless!
05/11/95
05/25/95	Hot! But not for the Hot-Off!
06/15/95
06/24/95	Best proportions for Fish Sauce/Vinegar/Sugar are 3/8 cup each, not 1/4 cup as in original recipe. (Tried 1/3 cup too). The larger quantities are soaked up nicely into the bean curd foams. 1/2 cup sugar is too much.
07/12/95
07/20/95	"T-Zero" for the first Millicarat Gate Array.
08/14/95	No scallions. Missed them, but not a huge loss.
08/30/95
10/22/95	Forgot the limes. What a mess.
11/15/95	No Lime, no shrimp, no peppers. Well ... sort-of a Pad Thai.
01/06/96
03/02/96	Without Bean Curd. Better with them.
03/26/96	First Post-Nose Pad Thai!
06/02/96	With Z
06/17/96	Robots-Ho! House-Ho!
09/10/96	Back from England, Yum!
12/07/96	Our last night (almost) at 97A.
04/08/97	Must have been my first in the new house at 22.
04/28/97	Leslie's 47th birthday. 7 Oz Chicken and 7 Oz Shrimp. Good for carnivores.
11/14/97	First Snow. Next time, try more chicken.
12/12/97	After the Trees were cut
12/21/97	Tom's Solstice Party
04/30/98	May Day, with Bruce on back porch. How complimentary!
04/20/98	Springtime! Our 2nd! Almost Italy!
05/16/98	Artaway #1
08/18/98	Fly Evening? Warm, lovely.
09/06/98	After 22 Millicarat scales ... very salty!
12/14/98	With Jamie
02/13/99	Millicarat Power down to 2.5 mA!
05/10/99	With Ashley. Lemons. (Limes are better)
08/22/99	Forgot Peanuts. Missed them.
01/23/00	One week to Tucson - with Lisa
02/25/00	M in Baltimore. All shrimp, no chicken. Yummy!
03/21/00	Chicken Thighs instead of breasts. Not so good.
05/23/00	M silent, I tried 15 oz Chicken, no Bean Curd. well, it was OK.
09/14/00	NIST Ahoy! Without Shrimp, Cilantro, or Bean Curd Foams. Boring!
02/19/01	With Timmy
05/12/01	Slava, Xenia. Yum!
07/04/01
08/15/01	For Marian & Annie
09/25/01	Depressed. No Comment.
10/25/01	Slava's closing!
12/24/01	Christmas Eve, with Slave & Xenia
05/10/02	With Slava, Xenia, Marian
06/22/02	With Yano
07/29/02	After HD died. S, X, M. 12 Oz Chicken + 12 Oz Shrimp. Good.
08/18/02	Bella on her mat - a hot summer.
08/31/02	Double Recipe made in 3 batches in a small wok out on the porch in Mendocino. Tasted just fine although it is easy to lose ones focus - I forgot the shrimps for batch #2 when someone moved them inside out of my view. Perhaps I had not consumed enough wine?
10/20/02	Xenia's first try. Courageous girl, she did a double recipe. Turned out much better than my first one! Good Work!
02/05/03	Slava? No, but Connie Kantor's site got started, off to a bang!
02/16/04	Our kitchen had been down since last July, I fixed PT for her and Ryan at their place. A kitchen rarely used. Felt great!
06/02/04	My first meal fixed in our new kitchen. Drawers still non-existent, with Slava & X. Felt great. Slava commented, Look ma, no smoke! And I just had the vent on low.
04/21/05	With Kathy LN, Upstairs just floored, giving her Quartersawn Oak kids blocks. Boiling water for noodles, way overdone, dry limes! Decent flavor anyway.
05/10/05	Marian's Send-off to her gallery opening in Taos. Tasted great!
06/04/05	Sat eve with John Lerner and Slava, Xenia in Mendocino, George died on Thu. Delish.
06/10/05	Fri eve with Slava and X. Plane "delivered" today, instructor jerk, warm evening, first bathroom cabinets in with wrong positions
10/09/05	Fri eve with Slava and X. Must have been old noodles, they just wouldn't rehydrate fully. And 12-oz of "13-15 count" shrimp which were too darned big. And new steel wok, which heated fast and was good.
02/04/06	Sat eve with S&M and Ellen. Recipe 1.5x, using a full pound each of mongo shrimp and chix. Really yummy!
03/24/06	Fri Nite with S&X. Doubled the garlic (fine) and a full pound of shrimp for Slava.
04/28/06	Fri Nite with S&X. A full pound of shrimp for Slava and a full pound of chix for Marian. Too much of each, we became totally lethargic!
06/09/06	Fri Nite with S&X for my first Half-Birthday! A full pound of shrimp for Slava (who had forgotten and eaten earlier, oops!) and a full pound of chix for Marian (who was feeling veggetarian, oops!) I had been losing weight and even this didn't make me too lethargic, Sake and all.
08/27/06	Steve, Susan (who loved the protein), JC & Christine, M. 1.3 recipies or so, used Soy sprouts (not as good as mung).
12/31/06	M, after Zena expired. S&X didn't appear, beware old noodles which won't rehydrate and don't put foams into liquid first!
04/21/07	Kazuyo & Matt, 1.2x recipe with 4 eggs, about 30% left over, mmm.
12/30/07	Penultimate Day of 2007. No foams (sigh), but pre-sautéed chicken with garlic (yum!)
03/09/08	Xenia while Slava was in Tucson. Separate chicken cooking was marvelous!
05/23/08	Barb & Ro, 1 week before Marian's Hudson Opening. Noodles were Al Dente, Chili Pepper needed toasting but otherwise yummy! Barb said much better than Bangkok Pad Thai, which just has a fried egg on top.
06/26/08	Xenia after "break-up" with Slava. Gotta admit, I miss him. A good batch, tender noodles after 30 minutes in (initial) 160F water.
06/08/09	Rick and Bev, 30 oz bean sprouts - great!
08/01/09	X & R (his first), full pound of chix for M, 12 oz shrimp, 4 eggs, 10 oz noodles. Great!
01/05/10	Just me and M. Love that hot!
07/10/11	Xenia supervised from a safe distance, Richie watched closely. Has it really been a year?? Xenia's second lesson, only 9 years apart. Pre-dried the chicken. Brilliant!
01/29/12	Matt and Kazuyo couldn't make it, but Xenia and Richie scored a last-minute meal. Mini bean-curd foams are minimally interesting, it seems. Otherwise a success.
06/19/12	Solstice Welcoming! Huge shrimp ok, thick chix great, fresh raw hots not tasty. Overall lovely. Just M and Me.
08/04/12	Maria and Geoff, chunkier chicken, Vietnamese noodles (Who'd'a guessed?). Both were improvements. Loved the slithery noodle texture.
12/07/12	Alese and Bill, tried warming drawer. Dismal failure! chix and noodles turned hard, shrimp mushy. Never again. Ugh. Used "Chan Kee Fried Soft Tofu Pouch" from Ming's. Mushy, don't use again. Ugh!
08/23/13	X and R, short on noodles but I didn't compensate with less liquid. Mushy, beware. Ugh!
01/04/14	Doug and Karen, good except chix and shrimp hard. Next time gotta try cooking them both first and adding at very end.
02/28/14	Richie (Bday) + Xenia.
03/16/14	Matt Kazuyo Marcel. Rare chix (3/4 inch), shrimp excellent. Added 2 oz cloud ears (no value), best Bean Curd foam was the lightest one.

JB's Diary of Pad Thai