Not onlyis she a whack job, but picking me of all people to stalk. Like I’m all studly beefcake, and a national heartthrob…
[Jimmy Buffett]
If the phone doesn’t ring, it’s me…
[/Jimmy Buffett]
Ok, rigs - ? Remember the Indian food thing? Right.
You wanna try to get something in a cream or a yogurt sauce, preferably. They should have a list of ingredients on the menu. Chicken Tikka Makhni (cuts of chicken marinated in yogurt) is good, so is Chicken Shahi Korma (literally: chicken for a king). They are way less spicy.
**
Avoid the vindaloo at all costs.** I don’t even touch the vindaloo, although I know our super-lurker **KeithT **loves the stuff.
And I’ve never had an authentic British curry. I can say, however, that I am extremely particular about curry and don’t like most of the types. Curry is a catch-all dish, that really isn’t too Indian…something the British sort of modified in their 300 years of rule.
Be careful not to go with anything too “dry”. Usually spicy, too. A Malai Kofta (Vegetarian ball) dish is usually saucy (don’t be saucy with me, Bernaise!) but very good.
Also most Indian dishes come with rice. If you mix them up well, it also dampens the spiciness.
Remember, “spiciness” doesn’t necessarily mean “hot”. It simply means “well-flavored”…when I cook food at home, I rarely make it too spicy. I use cayenne pepper but never any chilis or anything.
You can also request for them to mild it down. Most American restaurants star at a spiciness of about 5 (except for dishes like vindaloo) and can go up or down.
More later, if I think of it. Good luck!
Oh man, I love vindaloo!
There’s a curry joint in town that I’ll order it from. They always look at me sideways and ask if I’m sure. HELL YES.
And I assume you’re, well, not Indian?
Kudos to you. I can’t. Simply can’t. My dad eats chili peppers straight…I just watch him in horror.
Seconded. I mean hell, if it’s a matter of money, I will pay for it. Don’t leave! We like you and we want to keep you around! I’m friending you on LJ anyway.
Lissla, I was afraid of that. It’s a conspiracy I tells ya! :: slams fist on table ::
Sean, just keeping you on your toes. 
Mika, I’m sure they have those. I mean, they have everything from tapioca pudding to picked cabbages. Surely they have things as important as brains and lives.
For the record, I don’t like coffee. I was merely noting the contrast between the number of coffee shops and the number of bars in Panama City.
I’m definitely not Indian. For what it’s worth, while the vindaloo they make is HOT, it’s not OMGSUPERFIREHOT so perhaps the “real” Indian vindaloo is different than what this joint makes. I’m willing to accept that possibility.
One Jimmy Buffet mention in one little bitty post and all the Google ads are about Jimmy Buffet. Tres strange.
We just had a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig thunderstorm with hail and everything. May be having more before the night’s over. YAY! We need rain. I was gonna turn on the sprinklers in the back yard but now I don’t have to. YAY! So instead, while it was raining, I caught a bunch of rainwater in my watering can and watered all the back porch plants real good. I’m not real sure but I think they all said, YAY!
I wonder what the google ads would do if I were to mention Anna Nicole Smith.
I have lights! I just replaced my dead headlight and both running lights (one was burned out, so I expect the other will go soon) - so, who gets all hot and bothered over a woman with dirty hands using a torx screwdriver?? 
And I had ice cream - chocolate peanut butter - yum! Life is good…
Thhhhbbbttthhhptpt— nnnnneeeeeeeeeeerrr!
That’s me doing a fly-by posting since I just got back from Mom’s. Seven hours of severely boring territory to drive through but it’s worth it because you would not believe the awsome shoes I bought. And, y’know, seeing my family and all that.
Now to read the MMP properly, perhaps after something to eat and a nap. I have no vindaloo, which is so yummy I don’t mind the hot, but there is some dal palak I’ve been meaning to cook up. Y’all have given me some culinary inspiration-- thanks!
Well, I wouldn’t be all hot and bothered but I’d stand around and drink a beer while watching. 
Yeah, you would. And I’d expect no more.
scouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut, you can’t go!!! It won’t be the same without you!!! I’ll miss you too.
Dot, Puggy is right - you definitely need to talk to a trusted adult - but please let us know what’s wrong and bounce some ideas off of us so that you can figure out which adult and what to tell them. And hopefully it’s just something that seems big, but really isn’t. We were all your age once and at least one of us probably survived what you’re going through.
welby - there are just no words. Except maybe what MBG said.
Hi Ashes! Shoes…I like shoes too. So does Drae. Also Ellen. Who’d I miss?
Yay!!! Spats has a place to live. (10 weeks will go by fast, even if Panama City isn’t your dream town.) And yay for the good news from Amsterdam! Life’s pretty good when you’ve got Dartmouth as a back-up school, I’d say.
And yes, mâche is lettuce. It’s been my favorite lettuce for a while, but it used to be impossible to get here, so I could only get it when I was in Germany. Now it’s available most of the time among the pricey gourmet lettuce. And, no, there’s no paper involved, thankyewverymuch.
Well…today turned out way different than planned. Wound up hangin’ out with the niece and nephew most of the morning, which was fun. Only worked about 3 hours. Also fun, but it means I’ll be working longer than normal tomorrow.
Then I came home and was going to work in the garden, but…I was too sleepy. Really. Probably due to not sleeping enough last night. (Ya think?)
Well, there was more, but I’m sleepy again. Maybe I’ll call it an early night.
GT
VunderWife and I went to see the dietician at the sugeon’s office today, because we have an ongoing problem of not being able to eat the same things, and with the stuff we can eat together, we’re in a hell of a rut. A person can eat only so many tacos in a week (something she tolerates quite well, FWIW)…
Anyhoo, not a lot of help in the culinary department, but I did find out something I must brag about here. Both of us had to take off our shoes and step on this huper-duper scale like thingy that analyzed our bodyfat as a percentage of overall weight. Mine came in at 22%, and that is the upper limit of a normal percentage. For guys, the ideal is somewhere between 12 and 17%.
That’s the good news. Now, the bad. Since I weigh 230 right now, 0% bodyfat would have me at 182 lbs. I’m going to have a hell of a time reaching that ultimate goal of 199.5( 9.6% BF), just long enough for me to record it to say I went under 200. It also means my surgeon’s goal of 205 (at 12% BF) might be a bit low for a stable weight; 210 will probably be where I level off.
I’ve said for years that underneath the spare tire I was a gorilla; now I have objective proof. 
I haven’t read the thread, and won’t until tomorrow, while the photos are uploading, but I wanted to tell you I’m back and had a fabulous time - details tomorrow with photo links
Yesterday the Little Woman did something she’s only done three other times since we’ve been married. And I wasn’t even home to enjoy it.
She mowed the lawn.
Ok, ready for the next holiday?
March is Holi!
Holi is the Festival of Colors. I believe I have mentioned this before in the OP.
Holi is the only major North Indian festival that I have never attended in India.
First, why we celebrate Holi:
There are three separate reasons:
[ul]
[li]First of all, Holi is the day the Goddess Holika tried to kill Vishnu devotee Prahlad by seating him in her lap in flames, by order of his own father. She was immune to flames - or so she thought. As she sat there though, she burned up and he remained immune. [/li][li]Also, when Krishna was a teen and a young man, he used to play tricks on the gopis (cow-herding girls). Krishna’s skin was dark, his love Radha’s skin and the other gopi’s skin was fair, so he would throw colored powder onto them.[/li][li]Thirdly, it’s simply another harbinger of spring.[/ul][/li]
**How we celebrate it: **
Why, we throw color at each other, of course! Either dry powder, or mixed with water and shot from a pichkari, a special gun made to do so.
And of course we celebrate it by - you guessed it! dancing like mad people.
I’ve been told it’s “better I wasn’t in India at the time”, because apparently bad boys and bad girls take the opportunity to rub color all over each other, sometimes without benefit of a chaperone and *sometimes without benefit of color on their hands! * :eek:
And of course the most, or least important thing, depending on how you look at it: bhang. Bhang is a derivative of Cannabis, and a little bit is put in milk or lassi (yogurt and ice) and even relatively young people drink it right down.
Mmm, good. Will have to be in India sometime for Holi, methinks.
Mika --thank you so much. Now I can go confidently into any Indian restaurant and ask for the tikka chicken etc–and look for yogurt stuff, (I like plain yogurt) as well! I’ll breeze in like I do it all the time…Hey, what is Tandoori chicken and why is it pink? (the hospital cafeteria used to serve this and it was a neon burgundy color, if that is possible–I could never screw up the courage to try hot pink food! They no longer serve it, alas).
What is dal? (I only ask because in Bend It Like Beckham the mama complains that her daughter does not “even know how to cook dal!”)
And also, what is a full Punjabi dinner? that gets a mention also.
Oh, and what is the tunic like garment one wears over things that look like pajama pants? Not a sari, but a ?
Methinks we need an “ask the Indian-American” thread… 
Love the bits about the holidays–although frankly, it all looks like excuses to dance like mad and “behave badly”! (just kidding–no offense meant!).
Never a problem. And Tandoori chicken should not be pink, it should be a dark red. Think buffalo wing color. You marinate the chicken overnight in a yogurt marinade, with spices, and herbs and red food coloring. Then you bake it for a good long time, preferably in a tandoori oven, but unfortunately I don’t have one, so I use the broiler setting. Then it’s dark, dark red with charred spots. You serve it with bright yellow slices of lemon, and I usually cook yellow rice on the side, which is rice cooked with a 1 inch cinnamon stick, 3 cloves, and a little turmeric. Then when you lay it on the plate, it’s a feast for the eyes as well as the mouth…dark red chicken cuts laid out next to the bright yellow rice. It’s a party dish. Next time I make it, I’ll try to remember to take a picture.
Dal can be loosely termed as lentil soup. (The link says it’s a pulse, but to me a pulse is what the doctor takes.) There are different kinds of lentils. I do not like the yellow ones nor the green ones. I do like the brown dahl. Dahl is not always an easy dish to make.
Varies of course, but bread of some kind, roti most likely, with probably two vegetables on the side (maybe cabbage or beans or okra or turnip squash - a lot tastier with spices in it!). You also have rice on the table. And you will always have some yogurt, as well as achar (spicy pickled lime or mango).
Meat, when it is served, is usually chicken but if there is beef, it is well-cooked and never rare. Never pink. Keema-aloo, for example, is ground beef with potatoes.
Salwar-kameez. A picture. Styles change every 6 months…literally, the stuff my aunts brought me from India last year is way out of style. Not that I care!
I’ve thought about it, but I never really thought people would ask questions.
None taken. On the contrary, Punjabi people are equalled only by Rajhastani people and maybe Gujrati people in their propensity for having a good time. I was always damn proud of being Punjabi.
Some time maybe I’ll tell you some of the sadder parts of my history, like the Amritsar Massacre.
Well, I found me some half price peeps, Now I just need to melt some chocolate …
You know that Peeps are made by the Just Born company right? Well, as I saw my Peeps ring up the credit screen it said “Just Born Pee” … yum.
I also bought some Wasabi and Soy Sauce Smokehouse Almonds. If you like Wasabi Peas you’ll love these!
I splurged and bought a new microwave today. A nice stainless steel Sharp Carousel. My other microwave still worked but it’s at least 25 years old, I kid you not. I decided that it was time to retire it before it dies on it’s own. Although I plan to set it up in my garage and use it for craft projects until it goes to appliance heaven. It was also a Sharp Carousel, hence why I chose that brand again. It is huge and has that lovely faux woodgrain look. It was just too big for my tiny kitchen. Now I’ll have slightly more counter space. It wasn’t too ugly for my kitchen though, my kitchen is much uglier than the microwave - it’s pink. Not my choice. But I don’t want to repaint it until I can afford to do a whole remodel and get rid of the crappy cabinets and replace the stove and dishwasher. So it will probably remain that nauseating pink for some time to come.
Darnit! I didn’t win the Lotto. I had two numbers though! Meh.
I just looked at my lottery card. I had one with 6 numbers I picked (with the 2 numbers) and the other two were quick picks. All three had the number 5 on them. I have noticed that my quick picks always seem to have at least one number in common with my pick. That doesn’t seem very random.