The Curry Pot

After thinking that my husband was taking me to lunch today (he's not) & this was our designated place of preference, I clicked on their website. To my surprise, there were some reviews that I didn't agree with. I decided to write my own. Yup. It's that good.

http://http//currypotcuisine.com/

The Curry Pot on Lee Highway is the stuff. We drive an hour one way to eat there, and they have some items that have scorched such a memory into my foodbrain that I just have a hard time eating other Indian food, always comparing. Within a 2-3 miles radius, there are 3 Indian Restaurants on this same highway, all with lunch buffets. I'd been to India Mahal, but it's not Curry Pot. Reading the fuss about Sitar, we decided to see. It wasn't the Curry Pot either.

This is where I discovered the subtle things that make the Curry Pot stand apart.

Mint Chutney.

I could drink this stuff. I could devour gallons. It's magically minty and thick, green and spicy at the same time. (Sitar's chutney had a watery texture and a sweet onion taste).

Rice Pudding. Yeah, you probably had rice pudding, and it seems nothing to write home about, right? WRONG. The Curry Pot's rice pudding has a very noticeable essence of rose water. (Yeah, that's right. I not only plant roses- I want to eat them too. For reals).

And I want dal, chickpeas, paneer, tandoori chicken, Curry Chicken, Chicken Makini(?) & all the other spicy veg that's on the buffet. Even if I don't eat them, I'm comforted by their familiar faces. (The two things I might add to this already perfect buffet would be the sweet carrot dish, and changing out one of the daily soups to Mulligatawny. Then, it would be more than perfect.)

The buffet is big, and cheap. I read complaints on the decor, and can say that I like it. It feels cosy & swell. I prefer booths to chairs. It's well lit. Strip mall? So what. You'd pay more for someone else's high rent, then get food that was less inviting. And the other places are dark. And dank.

Joe. Always smiling, the kindest guy ever, Joe. He knows my table & he knows how far I drive. This is my place, and my food.

I'm a big fan of the Idea of Energy and how it carries through, and I sincerely feel it's a tangible force here. It's a happy place full of comforting Curry.

It makes me joyful; and it makes me sad that I'm not going today. Instead, I'll be pouring a bowl of Koala Krispies dreaming of my Go To lunch spot. :P

Four cow carcasses. Gutted, damn mess.
I'd been sitting across the farmer, the stoic farmers wife, and their son, a thirteen year old with a white boy fro who could play bass like he'd come out of the womb with it and a mad obsession with the Beatles catalog. For awhile, the kid and mine shared a guitar teacher, and when my daughter, eleven at the time, decided she wanted to learn Stairway to Heaven, the teacher figured it would be good to teach it to that kid too.
We switched teachers, and I heard all about it when my angel would lament, "I have to go in the band room in the morning and there he is! Playing my song!"
She hasn't gotten it yet, but seriously, she's twelve, and that kid practices daily for hours. My child maybe practices two of three times a week. Practice makes perfect?
But I'm off the subject. The subject was cow carcasses? So we were sitting across at a Cross Country gathering held at Ryan's with parents of Cross Country kids, which of course was awkward for me because 1. I am not a fan of Ryans, and 2. I'm not so much a fan of being crammed elbow to elbow with people you don't know while eating at an all-you-can-eat country buffet. I'm just not that good with people. Craziness.
So the farmer is talking about the thunderstorms that weekend, and how lightning struck an old oak, killed the oak, and spewed four cows that stood seeking shelter beneath it. And I marveled, as that was a revelation and perhaps the most enlightening thing I'd heard that day.
And this was months and months ago. But this morning while driving I passed thousands of cow filled acres, and as that question I often asked prior to the meal I shared with the farmer popped into my head-
Why don't they plants some trees in the fields and give the cows some shade?
I remembered the four cow carcasses. Gutted, damn mess.

have a really cool day :)

Brandi Carlile - The Story

So I've wanted to blog for some time, but the formatting is off, and when I write, then publish, it all runs together, and that aggravates me, and I save it for later. (Notice my tiny bird poem turned into a cruddy paragraph). Ack.
Last week a woman in my town, only a few months older than me, died from a brain anneurysm. She was home with her kids on spring break. One of our employees went to her church. I really had to glance back at the past three years and all the chaos there's been.
The symptoms that led to my brain surgery were unrelated to me having the brain anneurysm, but yet I found it and, well, cut it out. ("I cut it out my head, man!")
Yep, that's the dork in me reemerging...
My doctor was inexperienced, but friendly and empathetic, and nobody knew any better at the time; so it was one of those things. If you're coming to this thing this far into it, you may need to float back to may or june 2009.
And maybe there was just this divine tapping on my shoulder that made me ill so I would find something that could've killed me. Divine tapping.
Ah, yes. The divine tapping of my Bitch-Ass Thyroid later we find. And I still don't feel too good. Ill. But I'm on some thyroid stuff and I go back in a couple months for monitoring my levels and I'll try to keep chipper about it all. Happy and Carefree.
Not easy when you feel like your mind's been slurped out threw a straw. A monster with a big badass bendy straw. A Republican monster, perhaps. (HeeHee!)
Also, I now postponed my morning coffee by an hour because thyroid stuff makes it so, so I become a slightly crankier me. My stomach aches. And my soul is off somewhere doing something fun. It left me behind.
What is new, what is new...
We went to the Lauryn Hill concert. On a school night. With the kids. Probably not the best idea. But it was Lauryn Hill, and my mind said,"In thirty years, the kids will being able to say they saw this phenomenal legendary singer as their very first concert!" and I followed that thought. There was the moment when I said, "Guess what? I got us Lauryn Hill tickets!!!" where I maybe should've taken the response of "Who's that?" as a signal- but I didn't.
She had not one opening band, but two...and didn't hit the stage until after 11. At one point I looked around me and there was this surreal realization of it all. All around me, these incredible attractive, well dressed black men and women. The style and energy were palpable. The base was vibrating the room. She starting singing Peace of Mind (one of my all time favorites- though she didn't do the acoustic version) so I'm amazed that she's playing and I'm there, and I look over and the other three members of my family are sound asleep. Third row center, amidst the dancing, I'm sitting in the middle of three sleeping white folk.
'How did I get here?' I thought. And then the realization came over me. I'm not one of those cool stylish black women. I'm actually a geeky mom, so far from style that I have a little Arby sauce on my green jacket, and I was only a wee self conscious of that before, but moreso now. And the beautiful people looked liked they all dressed from the Anthropologie catalog. When you go to Walmart and you're surrounded by idiots and you think, Where are all the cool people? The answer would be that they are at some Lauryn Hill concert somewhere. But don't take your children on a school night. We slept in and had a sick day the following day. And we got some cool tee shirts.
My plants are about to burst. I'd better go, but I'll be back. :) much love!

Who are you, odd bird, that you flit and, um, flap into my bloggie window? And can't you see That the ornery squirrel has done shook the seeds out the box? dumb bird, dumb bird... Thank you.