Heading East

By Mr Robot

We’re having a bit of an Asian kick in the kitchen this month. Partly to finally overcome a gross deficiency in our skill set, and partly a (probably vain) bid to lose a bit of wobble from the waistline.

You see, in our two weeks in Burma we lost LOTS of weight - I went down a whole belt notch in a fortnight - with absolutely no effort at all. We ate pretty much as normal (i.e.: to bursting, and then some, plus all the beer they’d let me have) and though were doing a bit more exercise in terms of touristy walking round it wasn’t that much: most of the heavy lifting was done by car or boat.

So, stuff yourself silly, have all the beer you can get away with, and still lose weight? That’s clearly the diet for me.

I have a couple of theories:
First, the food was jolly tasty. Very strong flavours, lots of variety and - I can’t stress this enough - extremely rich. The curries especially were dark and intense; pickles were salty and tangy; everything spiced and subtle. So while rice was served in infinite portions (it just didn’t stop) and we ate until we ached, we probably consumed rather less to hit that full-to-bursting point.

You're not supposed to serve curry in a pickled tea dish, but it is pretty!

A bit like eating in a really swanky restaurant I suppose, though rather more manageable on a day-to-day basis!

Second, the starch was almost entirely rice - we had hardly anything wheat- or spud-related - and virtually no dairy either (much to the cheese-eating monster’s chagrin). Now I’m not going to go all mentalist/nutritionalist on you but it seems more than coincidence that cutting out the bloaty stuff left us less bloaty...

An experiment then - to spend a month or so revisiting that style of food in the hopes of living like kings and looking like models. Almost certainly too good to be true of course, but it’s got to be worth a go. At worst we should end up rather better noodle-whackers than we started.

Our primary inspiration for this is coming from:
MiMi Aye (Meemalee)
Uyen Luu
Ching-He Huang
Naomi Duguid

So thanks in advance to those lovely people, and we’ll let you know how we get on.

All images (c) PP Gettins