June twentysomething: Thai Salad with Pork & Rice

Today I decided to clean out the chicken house and move the little chicks into the big house with the big chickens. This is kind of an undertaking. A filthy undertaking. It consists of me shoveling out all of the old wood shavings, rotting vegetables, and chicken poop from the chicken house- all of it- then cleaning their laying box and roost, then putting it all back, neat and clean and tidy. Mostly, it is a lot of dust. Finally, (after a bath) I put the little chicks in their new home to see what they think. I think they like it.

Only two of the chicks would let themselves be caught and put in their house, the other one was roaming around being lost and sad.

Audry also liked the new chicks' home

and wanted to play in the sawdust all afternoon.

Needless to say, after all of that, I was hot, sweaty and dusty and I needed to make something cool and exotic for dinner. So Thai salad it was.

First I made some rice and added in some broth to give it flavor.

Next I got out some ground pork and cooked that in a pan.

I threw in a bunch of seasonings: chile sauce, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, and what you don't see here, garlic.

That's when the lost chick came up on the deck to see if she could find her friends in the house. Peep peep peep! Chickens in the house. Ha!

I mixed the cooked meat & rice together and went out to see if I could gather up the lost chick and put her with her friends in the chicken house. When I came back, I discovered that Audry had gotten in the pantry and poured all of her rice cereal all over the floor. Yeesh. And to top it off, I hadn't even been successful at catching the little chick.

So I sat her down in front of her latest favorite, Old Macdonald. I try to only let her watch it at most once a day. If Audry had her way, we would have it on 24/7. I don't really like having her watch TV at all, but .... modern conveniences win sometimes.

Back to cooking, I grated a cucumber and a carrot and chopped up a green onion to make a salad. I often put radicchio in with this and or cabbage, but I didn't have any today. What you don't see in the picture is that I also chopped basil, mint, & cilantro very finely and threw that in there too. Heavy on the basil & mint if you can swing it. Yum!

I served it with butter lettuce, limes and a Thai peanut dipping/marinade that I found. Again, often I make my own sauces, but today wasn't the day for that. I'd had enough.

You can roll them into little lettuce wraps. Delicious!

Oh, and Willy caught the little chick. She was hiding under the porch. He used the hose to squirt water on her and then caught her when she ran out. Leave it to men to use tools.