I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this here before, but I’m not a big fan of flying.  Like, in a plane.  I know that supposedly it’s safer than driving a car and thousands and thousands of people fly a day without anything happening and blah blah blah, but I just don’t like it.  The take off, the bumps, the weird noises and feelings, all of it.  So of course on our flight home from Mexico yesterday, I was assigned the seat next to the lady who was so nervous she was screaming during take off (no joke…screaming) and clutching my hand even though we had just met 5 minutes before.  I’ve never seen or heard anything like it, and this crazy but hilarious take-off was only the beginning of my 3 hour interaction with this lady.  It turned out that yes, she was a little left-of-center but she ended up being a really sweet lady.

We went through a lot together during our 3 hour relationship, this lady and I.  We bonded over our fear of flying.  She told me that she just couldn’t believe you can’t order a pizza in Mexico.  She cried while talking to me about her mothers death last summer.  I saw pictures of her grandson and her dog.  She even offered to give me her purse after I complimented it.  And when I say she offered to give it to me, she actually emptied out her little clutch while I wasn’t looking (probably needing a respite from the conversation) and put it on my lap, almost refusing to take it back.  To top it all off, she gave me a big hug when we parted ways. Needless to say, it was a flight I’ll never forget.

After our 15 hour day of traveling, we made it back from our week on the beach and are back in the real world.  Boo.  I wanted to make something fun for dinner tonight so I found inspiration for dinner from this months issue of Eating Well.  I took their recipe for Thai Fried Rice, and switched up the veggies and added a bit more spice to it.  I also added the scrambled eggs to it because to me, fried rice just isn’t fried rice without the eggs.

We loved this dish and all of the flavors in it.  If you can’t find fish sauce in your local grocery store, it can definitely be found in any Asian market.  It’s called for in lots of Thai recipes so its a good one to have on hand.  This dish has another one of our favorites – sweet Thai chile sauce.  We love it so much we even drizzled more of it on top of the fried rice.  You could also use whatever protein and veggies you like – shrimp, chicken, beef, or tofu would all be good, as would be bell peppers, peas, corn, or asparagus.