Mini Banquets

Lao Mini Banquet

The first thing you notice upon arriving at a Laotian home, both in Laos and America, is shoes. Lots of shoes strewn about at the front doorway. The more shoes the bigger the party. It is rude and improper to enter any Asian home without first removing your shoes.

In a Laotian kitchen you see lots of women sitting on their haunches or on low stools, each cutting, dicing or slicing the foods that will be served. In the main room you note a lack of furniture. Instead, you see in the center of the room a group of small mats carefully arranged in an overlapping fashion to create one big covered area. You note that the uncovered portion of the floor is impeccably clean highly polished teak wood flooring.

Haphazardly placed towards the center of the mats are dozens of small serving dishes each containing different food offerings. Prominent are baskets woven of rattan. Some large, some small and each containing sticky rice. You see a person reach into one of the baskets with their right hand taking a fistful of sticky rice. Transferring the rice mass into their left hand they break off a small chunk with their right hand. Compressing the small chunk slightly between their thumb and fore finger they reach into one of the dishes with the chunk of rice and scoop out a morsel of food and place it into their mouth. You notice that everyone is doing the same. One person looks up and sees you standing. He moves over to make room for you and beckons you to join in. This scene is repeated every day at almost all meals through out all of Laos and in the majority of the homes of the Laotian refugees living in America.   

Thai Mini Banquet
Many years ago, when I lived in Thailand, it was evident that there was a rural way of living and a city way of living. The rural way was very much as I described for the Laotian introduction above and most likely had not changed very much over the last millennium. The smaller cities had electricity, but it was only available from sunset to about 11:00 p.m. and running water was pretty much unheard of. Major cities like Bangkok and Chiang Mai, on the other hand, had both, on an almost uninterrupted basis. Television was a commodity that very few could afford and it was rare to see automobiles except on the main roads connecting the larger cities. The few city dwellers that did have the means to purchase a TV would place them on their sala, a patio area under their stilted homes, for all the neighbors to view. During those hours when electricity was available the neighbors brought their evening meals to the sala and shared with others as they watched American cartoons, dubbed in Thai, on the single TV channel their sets could receive. The assortment of foods was staggering. The street food hawkers, knowing those homes, would make it their business to wheel their carts to within viewing distance of the TV and make their wares available to all present at a discounted price. It was those times of socialization that I remember most fondly.

The main culinary differences between the Thai and the Laotian is that the Thai people prefer steamed white rice which they eat with a fork and spoon as opposed to sticky rice which is eaten with the fingers. The Thai also specialize in a wider variety of curry dishes than do the Laotians. In both cultures, chopsticks are rarely used except for noodle dishes.