Burmese Ginger Salad Recipe: Jinn Thoke

Most of my knowledge of Burmese culture comes from my super-weird family. I can't attest that I have any special insight into the customs and habits, but one thing that I have gathered from my family and from the trips I've taken to Burma is that eating is a very social event!

I've spent many an afternoon with my Burmese side of the family, sitting around the living room listening to them gossip, sip pots upon pots of freshly brewed tea, and munch on light snacks for hours on end.

Burmese salads are commonly served to keep the socializing from ending. The salads are intensely flavorful, and wonderfully paired with a subtle black tea. My favorite Burmese salad is jinn thoke, a surprisingly quick and easy ginger-based salad that's absolutely delicious and refreshing, even for someone like me who isn't typically a fan of ginger.

Ingredients: (serves 4)

• 3 tbs pickled ginger slices
• 1 tbs sesame seeds 
• 1 tbs chickpeas, fried
• 1 tbs lima beans, fried
• 1 tbs yellow beans
• 1 tbs peanuts, crushed
• 1 tsp yellow bean flour, lightly roasted 
• 1 tbs olive oil
• 1/2 tsp lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp fish sauce (can be substituted with salt if you wish)
• 1 small green chili pepper, chopped
• toasted garlic

Preparation:

Toss all ingredients together until mixed. Season to taste. Place in bowl, garnish with toasted garlic, and serve.

Give my mom's jinn thoke recipe a try and see if it doesn't inspire hours of conversation with your loved ones!

© Connie Hum 2012

The Passion for Food: It's in the Genes

Every time I'm back at my parent's house in California, I fill up on all the home-cooked Burmese and Chinese food I can possibly stuff myself with. I consider myself extremely lucky that my mother is such an amazing cook and that from a very young age, I was exposed to "exotic" food (she was always getting recipes from her friends at work and trying them out at home).

Mom trying out fried sardines in Istanbul

Of course, at the time, my conforming child-self wished I could have meatloaf and TV dinners like all my "normal" American friends were having!

Now I see how fortunate I was. My passion for food and eating came from my mother. She showed me how flavors and colors can enhance not just your dining experience, but your life as well. Eating with my mother was always a social affair full of friends and family, stories, jokes, and laughter.

My mom and I traveling in Bagan, Burma

I love my mother so much for teaching me how to enjoy and appreciate food in and of itself, and for teaching me to share that joy with others.

For the longest time I had wanted to get her recipes down on paper and share them on my blog. Unfortunately, I was always traveling and whenever I visited, it was only for a short amount of time. This past month I was in California for several weeks and finally managed to get a couple recipes to share! Be on the look-out for them in the next few weeks!

Thanks, Mom, for having the patience to cook with me in your kitchen as I try to frantically scribble down the ingredients and take photos before everything burns! I'm sure my readers will also appreciate it, especially once they try your recipes!

© Connie Hum 2012

Montage Monday: Travels with Mom

In celebration of American Mother's Day, this Montage Monday features travel with my own mom! Thanks for everything, Mom! I love you!

The last time I saw my mother, we were traveling in Burma in January 2010 with my two aunts (my mother's two younger sisters) and my maternal grandmother to visit our family who still live in Burma. It was a fantastic month-long journey and I had a great time spending quality time with my family, especially my mother.

I flew my mom out to Istanbul to visit me when I was living in Turkey back in 2009. It was her first exposure to a completely different culture and she did well in embracing it. There were a few trying moments during the two weeks we traveled around Turkey, but all in all, I had fun showing my mom around Istanbul and Turkey. Here, my mom and I are walking across Istanbul's Galata Bridge, with the New Mosque (Yeni Camii) in the background.

My first major travel with my mom was to Burma in 2005. If you can believe it, this was also my first international trip as well! To be very honest, I didn't want to go to Burma and my mother basically forced me to go to Burma to visit family. I'm not sure why I didn't want to go to Burma since I was very much interested in traveling. I suppose it was because I wasn't sure what to expect in Burma and the uncertainty scared me. In any case, I'm glad that my mother made me go.

Just another reason for loving my mother all the more: She forced me to get over my fear of traveling to an unknown foreign country!

Where's the BEST place YOU'VE ever traveled to with YOUR mom?

© Connie Hum 2011

Montage Monday: Burma 2005

Take a walk down memory lane with me on this three-photo montage highlighting my best memories from past travels!


My first night in Burma and my extended family took me to the beautiful Shwedagon Pagoda. So much going on, especially at night, when the temperatures have cooled and you can leisurely walk barefoot (it is a Buddhist temple after all) without the pain of burning your feet like during the day. What an awe-inspiring and peaceful place! It's quite big as well so you have plenty of nooks and crannies to explore.


Riding through Inle Lake with my Burmese grandmother and my first cousin, Ko Ko Gi, whom I had never met before this trip! Inle Lake is such an amazing place to visit with traditional fishing houses and villages lining the perimeter, seagulls chasing after your longboats, Burmese fishermen rowing with their legs alongside you and the big, beautiful sky above you.


Yup, that's me in the middle. My mom really wanted family portraits, but why in ridiculous Burmese costume, I have no idea. Silly? Yes, but it ended up being a fun day at the photo studio with my parents, getting all dressed up and having people apply tacky make-up on our faces and fake hair onto our heads.

© Connie Hum 2010

Fortune and Doom

The other day I decided to go with my mother and her sisters to get our palms read. I don't really give fortune telling much stock since I'm a firm believer that you are in charge of your own destiny and that you can make your own luck, but I thought it would be a fun and interesting experience.

My fortune, as told by a Ph.D. in Palmistry (does that really even exist?) is as follows:

• I will meet my future husband this year (talk about pressure and expectations on every boy I meet!)
  

• There will be 3 suitors and I should choose the one my mother chooses (hmm...wonder if there was any bribery taking place?)

• I will get married by the end of next year

So if indeed my future is literally in the palm of my hands, everyone should be getting ready for a pretty awesome wedding party next year! Haha!

Now for the doom part. Don't worry, it has nothing to do with my fortune! For some very odd reason, my month in Burma has been plagued with inexplicable illnesses. This is rather puzzling to me as I usually do not get ill, especially while I'm traveling. So far, I've had three days of hotel confinement, moving only between the bed and toilet, a short but ferocious bout with dengue fever and now, a horribly itchy red rash spreading all over my body! The only thing I can think of saying in response is in Burmese: "Dohk kah beh!"

The year is still early so we'll just have to keep an eye out to see if my fortunes come true. Only time will tell. But then again, I too am a player in this game of life and my future will be what I want to make of it. In any case, this just keeps things a little bit more interesting!

© Connie Hum 2010

Little Buddhas

The other day I spent an afternoon at my family's temple in Sagaing, a city of high concentration in temples and meditation centers within a country already full of temples and meditation centers. A large group of children between the age of six and fourteen took a shine to my digital camera and started following me around, asking me to take their picture. They were absolutely over the moon every time they saw themselves on my little screen.

I taught them how to use the camera and they were each excited to have their turn at being a photographer. Unfortunately, the excitement led to my camera slipping between little hands and the result was a stuck lens. The little Buddhas looked at me horrified and apologetically. One of my cousins saw this and jokingly asked which stick he should hit them with for breaking my camera. The little Buddhas found the smallest stick on the ground and said to use that one. I laughed and the lens was shoved back into working condition.

The little Buddhas begged me to come back the following year and bring them printouts of their pictures. As most novice monks are there for only a week at a time, I asked if they would still be at the temple next year. They responded that they would. That was when I realized that they were all orphans that the temple had taken in. They would still be there the following year because they had nowhere else to go.

Most people in Burma are quite poor and lack the means to take care of their growing families so many children are left in the care of temples by parents who cannot afford to keep them. It’s such a sad situation and I really feel for these kids. There were about a dozen of these orphans at my family’s temple, but there are hundreds of temples like that in Burma. Think of how many children that means are abandoned by their families.

I promised the children I would come back soon to see them again and take more pictures of them.

© Connie Hum 2010

My Burmese Days

Before I left California, one of my cousins asked me, "What do you do in Burma? Just go to temples?" Well, yeah. There ARE a lot of beautiful gold-laden pagodas in Burma. That's true.
But there's so much more to Burma than just the temples.

Being back in Burma has been great for me. For all its faults and wrongs, I love it here. I really do. There's something about its peaceful chaotic-ness and the novelty in the everyday that I love about Burma. Every day, every thing, every moment is a (mis)adventure!

Taking a ride in the cars in Burma is a constant source of amusement for me. I find such joy and hilarity in sitting like packed sardines, bumping around in the cars whenever we hit the many potholes in the streets that I'm pretty much just laughing the entire time I'm in a car. Chinese fire engines have nothing on the Burmese! I've never seen cars and trucks filled to the brim like this before! Most times, I'm laughing through the fear that the people (myself included) will just come spilling off onto the road.

A majority of the homes in Burma do not have hot water to shower with. There's a basin filled with water and you take a small bucket, douse yourself with water, lather and rinse. Given that the air is rather hot and sticky, this is a refreshing treat. The only problem is that the first couple of douses are usually a bit shocking to the body. My aunt calls it dancing around and it's true. You're quite literally dancing around for the first few splashes until your body gets used to the cool water. Then it's pure bliss.

My favorite thing about being back in Burma though is definitely seeing my family that lives here. Since I rarely get to see them, it's always fun to hang out with them, especially my younger cousins.









© Connie Hum 2010