Sop Bakso  
Meatballs
1 lb finely ground pork *
4 cloves garlic, crushed & minced
1 egg
¼ cup tapioca flour (or rice flour)
1 tsp salt
A couple or three pinches of fresh ground pepper, preferably white.
*sub chicken, beef or lamb depending on which gods you’re afraid of.
Soup
2 cloves garlic, crushed & chopped
2 shallots, or …

a horseshit manner of vacationing on the other side of the earth. Resorts are for low-feature, close to home places like Florida. So around one o’clock we took off down the road, hoping to find lunch on less elegant plates. What’s the name of the road? Dunno, but it did go from left to right and we hadn’t gone right yet. Had an appetizer en route, from a pushcart at the construction site of yet another resort…

He was loving life & rearing to throw back a bunch of drinks to emphasize the emotion. I deeply involved with every minute as well, but there is this strange thing that happens to me when I travel: I’m never too keen on drinking a whole lot. Not to mention that multiple beers would have mandated peeing in the awfully nice pool.

My little girl hates underwear, refuses to wear it with an almost religious fervor.  Generally it ain’t a big deal, as long as she’s got some pants on.  But every so often the panty issue rips through my comfort zone like a runaway buzzsaw. Like when she wears skirt pajamas, falls asleep in mom’s …

First there’d been the encyclopedia of foods pregnant women could not ingest at the risk of delivering stillborns or flipper babies. Then came the forbidden edibles that would kill your children in their highchairs. No peanuts from conception until year-two of a baby’s life?

Our lessons in cultural confusion continued as E asked a waiter, a Balinese fella, for some chopsticks. He laughed, though not derisively, and said “Nooo, we do not have them. We are not Chinese!” She certainly didn’t want to challenge him on the nature of the menu…

No coke, however. Go figure, there’s too much karmic tuning here to have the real career threatening narcotics at hand…

Here’s a call out for some desperately needed advice: does anyone have any good ideas on how to effectively terrorize children? Other people’s children, that is….

use cold, cooked rice, as warm rice will stick to the wok and absorb liquid too quickly.
INGREDIENTS:
6 tbsp oil
6 shallots, peeled and sliced
6 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
6 oz chicken or pork, sliced*
8 oz medium size shrimp, peeled*
¼ small Nappa cabbage, shredded
3 eggs, beaten
½ cup sambal tomat
4-5 cups cold, cooked rice
2 …

Not knowing the place of vermin on the Karmic scale here, I wadded toilet paper into a catcher’s mitt, scooped the critter up gently and tossed it outside. Seemed like a fair compromise; I’d let it live but there was no way were going to be tub buddies.