On our first trip to Thailand back in 2007, I went into a Seven-Eleven and bought myself a cinnamon roll. Or so I thought. Turns out it was made with raisins and pork floss. Pork floss? Is that even a thing? I would not have understood it, even if I could have read the Thai at the time.
Pork floss is shredded pork that has been dried. It has a medium brown color and looks like manila fiber. It is used in different foods, usually sweet pastries, and is sometimes used as an edible padding around fragile foods.
One time we bought some sweet breads to serve as a snack and found one filled with pork floss and raisins. (Though this time I could read and bought it intentionally.) You probably won't find that in your 7-11 in Canada or California.
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| Sweet bread filled with raisins and pork floss |
It turns out that things we think of as "sweets" or desserts aren't necessarily the same here. For example, corn is normally found in desserts of various kinds. Like this corn sundae that they used to sell at KFC.
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| Corn Sundae at KFC |
So now that we've been living in Thailand a long time, you think we would have this dessert thing figured out.
A few weeks ago, I bought a bag of mixed puff pastries. They didn't specify which fillings were included. So I try the red one, guessing it is strawberry and it turns out I guessed correctly. The dark one is a bit of a mystery though. Mulberry? Black sesame? Those are two kinds of fillings one might expect with that dark color.
But I was nowhere close. The mystery dark filling was...
(and you knew this already, right?)
...seaweed.
So now I have to differ with the writing of "The Preacher" who wrote, "There's nothing new on this earth. Year after year it's the same old thing." (Ecclesiastes 1:9b MSG)
There are a lot of new things we've had to get used to here in Thailand. Many of them have become normal for us.
So if we ever move back to North America, and we invite you over for dessert, don't be surprised at what you might be served.
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