She is a long way from Thailand, her homeland, where she first learned to cook from her mother. “She would awaken me at 5 a.m. saying come help in the kitchen.” Sumalee Gallagher, though moving to this country when she was 19, hasn’t lost what she learned from her mother and what she taught by herself with trial and error. Sumalee said Thai cuisine falls into four categories: tom, yam, tam and kaeng, and she uses them all. Cooking her native country’s dishes just comes naturally. Sumalee and her husband Steve live in the Cardinal area of Mathews in the home he had purchased some time ago while working for the Newport News Fire Department. He is now retired. When these two were much younger they were once engaged; at the time, the movie “On Golden Pond” was popular. They agreed that one day they would have a home on a golden pond. But they separated, each going their own way. Later, Sumalee married a military man. “We traveled the world over. I learned a great deal about cooking.” She w...