What does a White Giant in Cambodia eat?

I live in Cambodia, and other people cook for me, so I eat Cambodian food.

What is Cambodian food? It’s rice. It’s also pork, fish, beef, chicken, duck eggs and veggies. Usually stir-fried or in soups. Sometimes there are noodles, but often these noodles are served on top of rice — at least at my house. You can’t escape the rice. Dessert is fruit — usually fruit I had never heard of or seen before coming to Cambodia — or soupy, sweetened condensed-milk and tapioca desserts filled with goodies ranging from potatoes and bananas to corn, beans and fluorescent noodles.

Depending on the month, I eat my Cambodian food either with my host family or with the orphans and non-orphans who live with me at the orphanage.

What follows is my food diary for one week. The week happened many weeks ago, because of dengue delays. Edited out are my snacks — usually oatmeal or sweet breads and cakes or crackers.  Also edited out are my breakfasts, for the simple fact that they are the same every day: oatmeal, and usually tea. (I finally gave up coffee! Without even trying, of course.) Breakfast is the only meal I ever cook myself. 

This week was during a month in which I ate exclusively with the orphans. The last entry is a week or so later, when I ate dinner with my host family.

Here is my delicious daily breakfast: Oatmeal and tea. I eat oatmeal two to three times a day. Mostly cause I'm too lazy to buy snacks. 

And here's the eating room at the orphanage. There are 10 tables. Of course, everyone sits at the same seat every time. My assigned seat is at the head of the table of big kids. Big boy kids. They are high schoolers, and a couple, who work at the orphanage, are my age. I only sit at the head of the table when the French guy who oversees the place isn't at the orphanage. That's getting to be most of the time, since taking care of business is easier in neighboring, more technologically advanced, Siem Reap. I initially resisted sitting at the head of the table, cause it seemed like it was the special spot for the resident non-Cambodian person, and it made me feel like a white supremacist lording over the natives. But then I realized that making a fuss about a mere seating assignment was stupid. 

OK, now here's the food diary. Ready? OK! The picture is above its description. Obviously I haven't been trained in food photography. But any pictures are better than no pictures. Right? Right? Right!

FRIDAY, MAY 14

Lunch: Fried pork with beans, mushrooms and other green stuff. Rice, of course. Mostly sweet, kind of sour fruit, my favorite combination. I’m constantly forgetting its Khmer name, and I have no idea what it’s called in English. I’ve never seen it in the United States. Update: it's lychee! — I think.

Dinner: A fish and duck egg mixture that looks like canned cat food, but is good. Green beans and cucumbers on the side, rice.

SATURDAY, MAY 15

Lunch : A couple fried duck eggs, rice, and a spiky red and fluorescent green alien fruit called sow mao in Khmer, rambutan in English.

The orphans eat a soup floating with reddish fish bits, which the cook (my host mom) must have assumed I wouldn’t like. She’s probably right.

Dinner: Salad rolls! That means non-fried spring rolls. Meatless. Served with a peanut sauce. My tablemates tell me the salad rolls are Korean. Back in the United States, I frequently ate the same rolls at Thai restaurants. Regardless of their origin, the salad rolls are a special non-Khmer treat to celebrate the King’s birthday.

SUNDAY, MAY 16

Lunch: Because I’m at the Internet café trying to format this infernal blog, I miss lunch at the orphanage (on dessert day, too)! I eat instead at my usual downtown spot —a Cham (Muslim) place.  I get my usual — me cha in Khmer, fried ramen noodles in  English. The yellow noodles are topped with beef (no pork here!),  spinach, duck egg and sprouts. Tea is served, poured over ice and free, like at all Cambodian restaurants.

Dinner: Fried fish bits, peanut sauce and rice. Yellow market-bought cupcakes for someone’s birthday.

MONDAY, MAY 17

Lunch: Inedible baby fish — sardines — that are barely cooked, swimming in a soup also occupied by a watery green veggie. I take my bag of sow mao and retreat to my oatmeal.

Dinner : Pork fried into curled half-dollars over rice. I forget to take a picture.

TUESDAY, MAY 18

Lunch: Eaten with volunteer friends at a restaurant in town that we call red and yellow chairs. Guess why? I eat a sweet and sour stir-fry of pork, pineapple, mushrooms and green onions over rice. With tea, and unripe mangoes for dessert.

Dinner: Fried fish with pickles and rice, plus a sweetbread treat for someone’s birthday.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 19

Lunch: Eaten at a Three-Year-Death party. The party is to celebrate the fact that three years have passed since the death of the father of one of the teachers at my school. Several dishes are served, including Khmer cheese (cheese atop a pork and fish pate), chicken soup, A cold, noodly mixture of shrimp, octopus, etc, beef, a dish split of half white rice and half pink fried rice topped with duck egg. Water and sodas — Coke, plus Asian varieties such as lychee, winter melon,  grass jelly and coconut. Wafer candy for dessert.

Dinner: A couple hunks of fried pork, plus cucumbers and rice.

THURSDAY, MAY 20

Lunch: Pork with greens, and rice. Sow mao.

Dinner: Fried duck eggs and rice.

FRIDAY, MAY 21

Lunch: Pork and veggie mixture over rice. Veggies include carrots, cabbage and green onions.

Dinner: Pork with mushrooms and bamboo over rice.

SUNDAY, JUNE 6

Lunch: Bamboo and beef soup over rice. Plus a soupy dessert of rice, sweetened-condensed milk, tapioca and potato.

Dinner: With my host family! That's them, minus me. On left, host bro, Sothearith, who's 16 or 17, then my host mom, host dad, host sister, Banya, who's 8 or 9. It's difficult to keep track of Cambodian ages, cause they measure them by the Khmer New Year, not by when people were actually born. I don't really understand the system. 

Dinner for me is a mixture of tomatoes, fried pork, greens, yellow peppers and onions. I don’t eat the prahoc (fermented fish paste) and soup filled with unknowns.

That's the end of the diary, but here's an extra bonus! Sorry no pics.

Unusual (for an American) things I’ve eaten in Cambodia: Ants dangling with larvae, snakes, frogs, all kinds of innards, crickets, beetles, a tarantula leg, a grilled baby bird, and a turkey for Thanksgiving! (The last item is unusual for Cambodia.)