June | 2015 | Snorkeling the ABC Islands

I make this green papaya salad, a Thai specialty, and I’ve gotten a few requests on how to make it, so I’ve decided to put in a blog post.

The salad ingredients:

Green Papaya (sometimes called cooking papaya – not a red or orange one)
A handful of green beans
tomatoes (the little “grape tomatoes” if you want, but I just use whatever tomato I have around.)
hot peppers – to your taste – I usually use two jalapenos
a handful of peanuts

The sauce:

two or three garlic gloves
the juice of a lime
Thai basil
fish sauce
salt
sugar (I use fake sugar – two packets)

To make it:

First, the green papaya. They come in varying sizes, so hard to put a figure on it, but say you get one about the size of two fists… Use half to serve 3 or 4 good sized portions. Cut the papaya in half. Take out the seeds, and discard them. Peel the papaya. Then grate it into a bowl.

Trim the beans, and chop into bite size pieces.

Chop up the jalapenos quite small, discarding the seeds.

Take about a cup of water, stick it into a two cup measuring cup, and slap it into the microwave for 3 minutes on high, or until the water boils. Drop the beans and the jalapeno pieces into the water and leave it for 20-30 seconds. Immediately rinse under cold water. Drain the water and throw the beans and jalapenos in with the grated green papaya.

Now make the sauce. Smash the garlic gloves, and chop them finely. Pour a half teaspoon of salt over the chopped garlic and let it sit while you juice the lime. I have a great gadget for juicing a lime, and so I just chop the lime into about 6-8 pieces and use the “squisher” and put the juice into a measuring cup. Add the two packets of fake sugar and about a tablespoon of the fish sauce. Now press your knife into the salt/garlic mixture and squish it. Then throw it into the lime/sugar/fish sauce mixture. Chop up about 8 or 10 leaves of the Thai basil and throw it in. Give it a good whisk with a fork.

Pour it over the papaya/green bean/jalapeno mixture and give it a good mixing.

Now chop up the tomatoes and add it to the salad. Let it sit for a bit.

When you go to serve it, just put it on your plates, and throw a few peanuts over the top of each salad.

Bailey in Green Timbers

Bailey and I have been checking out some of the local parks. We’re in the middle of a very hot, dry summer. But the salmonberry crop is amazing this year! On Pam’s days off, she has been coming with me and picking some berries while Bailey and I stumble around the back paths. They are terrific on simple vanilla ice cream!

We drove over to the mountains and ran up Lynn Canyon last week. There was a cougar sighting that day and they were warning people to be careful, but we didn’t see anything untoward, just lots of people and lots of dogs.

Bailey had a great time with all the other dogs and getting to jump into the river. She just loves to get into any water that is around. But for me, the trails were too hard. Very packed and hard on the knees to run on. I prefer the back trail type of running – like at Green Timbers.

I love to go to Green Timbers. There are wonderful trails through the forest, or you can go more paved around the lake and nature preserve, or you can head over to the lake and fish for the rainbow trout that is re-stocked into the lake, or you can go even further to the Nature Center and learn about the various trees and and animals that inhabit the park.