Since we decided to have Ramen noodles tonight, I thought a nice Thai Peanut Sauce would be great:
Thai Peanut Sauce Soup
- 150 g crunchy peanut butter
- 180 mL coconut milk
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 1 small onion
- 2 Tbsp fresh lime juice
- 1 Tbsp brown sugar
- 1 tsp curry powder
- 3 crushed dried thai peppers (or to taste)
- fresh coriander
- Chop & mix everything but the milk and peanut butter.
- Blend everything together 1 minute or until smooth.
Simple quick recipe, yes? Except we were out of coconut milk. Unfortunately, this isn’t South Caye, Belize with coconut trees, so we took a family walk to the local grocery and got some bagels and canned coconut milk. In the store I read the ingredient list and the amount — 13.5 fl. oz. | 60mL. So I picked up three cans figuring a touch shy won’t hurt, besides we never go completely by any recipe.
We got home and I chopped everything choppable and added everything to the food processor. In goes the peanut butter and all three cans of coconut milk.
Hmm… smells good, but that’s a bit thin. Oh well, tastes good, though not as sweet or as spicy as I like. Still this will work well.
As I’m sitting down reading the email from my independent studies professor, Tammy was working through how a sauce recipe could turn out so thin. She figured it out and said:
“Um, Eric, each can is 400 mL. The recipe only calls for 180 mL…you put in all three cans?”
I don’t know where I got that 60 mL from! And I never double checked afterwards! Doh! Fortunately, Johann noticed it tasted similar to Tom Kah Gai, so it became Thai Peanut Soup with a simple addition of warming for a couple minutes.
Tammy looked at the can again and figured out what must have happened. I read the front of the can and it said 13.5 fl. oz. I read the nutrition label for anything Tammy might be allergic to. At the top of the label it states that one serving is 57 mL. I somehow missed the next line that said there was 7 servings per can. And I know I totally missed the 400 mL next to the 13.5 fl. oz. on the front of the can.
Tammy said now I know how it feels to be given only partial information on important issues where huge misunderstandings could have been avoided, not to mention a lot of heartache, if I had just included that one piece of key information!
