QUICK & EASY THAI: 70 EVERYDAY RECIPES by Nancie McDermott (Thailand)
About the author
Nancie McDermott (Thailand 1975-78)
Nancie McDermott (Thailand 1975-78) is a North Carolina native, born in Burlington, raised in High Point, and educated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has written 13 cookbooks.
Nancie’s first 10 cookbooks focus on Asian kitchens, Her three years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand gave her a lifelong love for the cuisines, history and cultures of Asia, and she has spent the last twenty years cooking, reading, traveling, writing, and teaching about Asian food.
Since moving back home to North Carolina in 1999, she has written three more cookbooks which focus on recipes of the American South, the place she fell in love with cooking in her grandmother’s dairy farm kitchen.
Now living with her family in Chapel Hill, NC, Nancie writes, researches, and teaches about both her beats, while serving as a contributing editor for Edible Piedmont magazine.
Nancie writes
I went to Thailand in the spring of 1975, to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer. My assignment was a secondary education program co-sponsored by the Thai government, the British Council, and the World Bank. I spent two years I spent teaching English as a Second Language to 7thand 8th grade students in a Thai secondary school. During that time, one Thai English teacher per semester went to Bangkok for enrichment courses in ESL at the British Council.
Practice teaching in Chiang Rai
My group of 30 volunteers spent our first three months in country in Peace Corps training, which meant intensive Thai language instruction, cross-cultural training, and practice teaching. The first portion took place in the Central Thai city of Nahkorn Sawan, and for the second portion we moved to the northernmost Thai province of Chiang Rai.
My school in Thatoom, Surin, in Northeast Thailand
After training, I was assigned to Thatoom Prachasermwit, a large, new secondary school in Thatoom, a small town on the banks of the Mun River in the northeastern province of Surin. The first semester I lived in teacher’s housing on the school grounds. Then I rented a large Thai-style house near the campus, inviting students from villages too distant to allow a daily commute to live with me during the week.
With 8th grade students at my school
After two years in Thatoom, I wanted to stay on in Thailand, so I extended my Peace Corps term for one more year. After six weeks of home leave back in North Carolina, I returned to Thailand and moved into an apartment in Bangkok with fellow Peace Corps volunteers. That year I taught English composition and literature at Silpakorn University, which specializes in the fine arts and all aspects of classical Thai culture.
With students by the river in Chiang Rai
In the summer of 1978, I completed my Peace Corps service and traveled home through Asia with my dear friend Mary Claire Peceny, eating, exploring and shopping our way through Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Japan and Hawaii, before arriving back in Greensboro, North Carolina, not far from where I live today.
Quick & Easy Thai: 70 Everyday Recipes
Nancie McDermott (Thailand 1975-78)
Chronicle Books
April 2004
232 pages
$2.99 (Kindle)
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