Roommate + Asian Food Products = Awesome

On her most recent trip to Thailand my roommate brought me the best present: Thai tea! 

If its logo is a thumbs up, it's gotta be good.

The last time she went she brought back juice boxes of the stuff and I fell in love.  It took us a bit but we found a restaurant near us that makes awesome tea.  Of course, I wanted to try making it at home.  The internet claims you can make it by just steeping a lot of strong black tea with some various spices like star annise and vanilla bean, but when I tried it ended up tasting like Chai tea.  Similar sound, different taste.  But, being Thai and all, this stuff is the real stuff!  Make a single serving in the French press, add way too much sugar, some ice and a healthy dose of evaporated milk and you've got heaven in a cup, my friend.

Heaven is apparently a beautiful pumpkin color.

Also Asian food and roommate related, this weekend was our eighth friendiversary (thank you, Westmont, for bringing me a delightful bud and awesome roommate).  We ended up making Indian food and watching a Bollywood movie from the 90s which prominently featured big hair, a climactic bike race, and someone punching someone else approximately every five minutes.  It was my first foray into Indian food and I was quite excited. 

This is what you need to make potato and chickpea masala and lamb tikka: 

I was going to make rava dosas (sort of like crepes) to go with the potato chickpea masala, but Liz made naan, so I've still got the semolina and rice flour.  The masala was so darned easy to make and sooooo delicious that I'll just have to make it again soon and make the dosas this time.  Next time I go to a BBQ I want to bring this instead of potato salad. 

This pic isn't as well-staged as I'd like, but can you blame me?  I was so busy

starting to stuff my face that I completely forgot about photos!

I'm Gonna Wife the HELL Outta This...

I'm psyched for domesticity, y'all. A while back a friend found out that I really enjoyed cooking and he told me (with a good deal of embarrassment) that I'd make a great wife. I think he thought that I'd be offended. Hell no, I'm not offended! I'm going to make a TOTALLY kick-ass wife.  Sometimes when I'm cooking dinner I just think, "Damnit, this is AMAZING!" and I wish I could communicate how  beautiful and enjoyable and satisfying and calming and invigorating and lovely and robust it can be.  Have you ever noticed how beautiful a halved blue potato looks next to green onions or felt how cool rice flour is or smelled toasted cumin seeds or used turmeric and watched that marigold color just bloom in the pan?  That kind of thing just fills me with awesome.  Since I can't capture emotions, sometimes I take pictures (Joanna, here's some more food porn for you). 

Last weekend I went to the farmers market and saw these guys and couldn't resist making a classic Sunday dinner: roast chicken.  I'd never roasted a chicken before, but how could I say no to that tragic little carcass, looking all vulnerable and delicious?

I'm gonna wife the HELL outta this stuff.

I made some tasty lemon garlic butter to rub under the skin.  This dim picture can't really do justice to the fresh, happy look of the butter, but trust me, it was summer in a bowl.

Now, in order to butterfly the chicken for roasting you have to turn it so the drumsticks are facing you, then cut along both sides of the backbone, removing the spine.  Two weird things: (1) You may not realize this, but when plucked, the chicken still has a tail - a floppy, weirdly unsettling little triangle of flesh. (2) The chicken was looking coyly over it's shoulder at me.

Gaaaaah!

Let me tell you, you do NOT want something looking over it's shouler at you, WATCHING you while you grab it by the ass and slice out it's spine.  You just DON'T.  Once the butterflying process was done, the chicken looked decidely...relaxed.   I couldn't stop laughing because it was just so limp and stretchy and pathetic.

Once cooked on a nice bed of potatoes, though, it just looked plain ol' delicious.  Fortunatley it TASTED delicious, too. 

Darcy Tested, Mother Disapproved

Cupcakes, cheese, coffee - NOT a part of a balanced breakfast.

My Life (or parts, at any rate)

My first sweater!

Two color knitting = super fun
 

It's not very flattering, but I made it and it's mine!
 

Now, to stitch up the armpits... 

This is the cat who came to visit.

She just wandered in...

And then it was bath time.

Goodbye, kitty.

The Greening of My Thumbs

Things I Found To Be Lovely

Well whaddayaknow?

Interesting (probably only to me) note: I am currently at the exact same new vs. repeat reading percentage that I had last year: 59% new to 41% repeat. I wonder if this trend will pan out through the end of the year?