OYSTER TOM-YAM

Anybody for OYSTER TOM-YAM? When we ordered three dozen fresh oysters, we never thought much about how we were going to eat them except the usual 'squeeze the lemon, dip into zippy cocktail sauce, slurp the whole meat together with it's juicy goodness into the mouth and chew, chew, chew' ............fresh and raw! (A glass of Chardonnay would complement well though!) That, I think is the best way to relish such a delicacy. You get to 'savor' it's cucumber, melon and toasted-almond flavor with utter satisfaction! To create variety and choice, we had some oysters 'baked' where the Au gratin sealed in all the natural goodness! Crispy Garlic Bread made the meal complete. Everybody knows what Seafood Tom -Yam is all about. But 'Palm-sized Oyster Tom-Yam served in half-shell' beats the daylight out of me! You could see it's piping-hot (spirals of steam rising ), the distinctive lemon grass aroma, the succulent mouth-watering oyster meat immersed in half-shell soup (rich in flavor and taste to the last drop) and it's definitely more than a mouthful! That, to me is sweet CULINARY DELIGHT!

A Matter of Choice

Whatever you choose to give attention to 'will grow'! Our choice of focus of THOUGHT is important. If our pattern of thought is always along negative lines, then we tend to be negative somehow. It is easier said than done, some people may say..... but then it is a matter of choice! Nobody should determine whether we should be happy or sad, calm or angry. It is a matter of interpretation - we can either choose to think or accept that what another had said or done is offensive to us or not. If we choose to feel offended, you could 'fly off the handle' and do something silly and later live to regret it for the rest of our lives. The number of 'road-rage' cases in our country is clearly evident of such occurrences. In another case, because a father's choice of interpretation is self-defeating, his daughter ended up being splashed with acid together with her mother by him! There were many other case scenarios where unnecessary violence and damage were incurred because of the wrong choices of interpretation. The same principle may be applied to the masses where big numbers are involved - and that was how we ended up with street rioting and racial riots where extreme provocative 'fanning' was induced.