About me

I've been writing stories for years. I think I'm a good writer and I'm willing to bet you'll feel the same way. So here they are. Enjoy them, comment on them, tell your friends about'em, reblog them, retweet them, reread them. I have four stories in my archive so far:
"One day on the Mountain", a story of Lycanthropy, a father, and a son.
"The Boy", a story of a very ambitious and sociopathic fifth grade boy.
"The Easy Girl, A story of infidelity and unpaid sexual debts. This story is very dark.
"Brick The Mighty", a story of an aging superhero.
Although this is primarily a blog of horror, I also write about things that are important to me. I have more stories tucked away; they just need editing. There's even a few novels. There will be more to come.
PS. Feel free to leave a comment. I love comments.

Thursday 2 February 2012

Indian food and some silly pictures

The in-laws are here this weekend. They’re lovely people, but they’re old. Any one of my generation should have boomers as parents, which means our parents slept with other people, did drugs, travelled, found themselves, and generally accumulated some faults and mistakes. My mother and father in-law are just a hair older than the oldest baby boomer. 

What does that mean? It means they got married right out of college, mommy immediately quit work to look after the kids, sacrificed everything, and deferred to daddy in every decision. Before the kids were born, they’d bought the house they were going to die in and daddy took his one and only job from which he's now retired.They’re unlike my parents, and the parents of many in my generation, who are mobile, and had many jobs, took some risks. They’re lovely people, but they’re old and I don’t have a lot in common with them. They’ve never made mistakes. 

They arrived yesterday, and while they were out on their daily walk (they’re the sort who take twice-weekly showers and daily walks), I shopped in the big Indian store near where I live. I made my favorite: Saag Paneer, which I’ll describe in a moment. I also made Eggplant Bartha and threw together a dahl. 

Saag Paneer means spinach and farmer’s cheese. You throw three or four bunches of spinach into a mess of onion, garlic, turmeric, cumin, green chilis, and most importantly fenugreek, and then let simmer for an hour until the spinach has cooked down into an aromatic slime. It may sound awful but it’s my favorite dish. Purree partly, add a dash of cream, and put in salt and the blocks of cheese, and you have an pot of steaming emerald goodness. 

A dahl is simply lentils and spices. There are thousands of different recipes in every province of Indian. India has always been highly populated and very Hindu, and those two factors have come together and made good vegetarian cooking a necessity. 

The third dish was the kicker: eggplant bartha, a curry made from eggplants and a typical blend of spices, garam masala and coriander being the dominant flavours. You have to roast the eggplants first. I don’t have a barbecue, so I had to do it in my oven. Indian eggplants are long and purplish, and in the oven the skin gets black and tight. By the end, I thought there were three severed and blackened arms in my oven.

They’re scary when you first take them out. You have to cut the skin lengthwise, and peel it back. For a moment I thought I had dead and rotting squid on my stove. I’ve attached a picture for your edification.

Above the eggplants is the completed saag.


I made some Naan bread later on, and had a three dish meal with fudge brownies for desert. I’d attack a picture of my apron but I don’t do that shit. 

Some other silly pics:

Yoda makes everything better

A boxer on a trampoline

7 comments:

  1. I was waiting for you to tell me how much your traditional in-laws hated it. My wife once took Greek food (which she is quite good at preparing) to her relatives to add in the mix with the other offerings, and you'd think she'd shat on the table.

    Okay, not that bad, but there was definitely hesitation and trepidation about eating anything that wasn't turkey and gravy.

    LOVE Indian food. Hate that I don't live near a good Indian restaurant.

    Hope the rest of the visit goes well.

    Paul D. Dail
    www.pauldail.com- A horror writer's not necessarily horrific blog

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  2. Oh, obviously I meant to include the fact that it was Thanksgiving when my wife showed up with the Greek food.

    Paul D. Dail
    www.pauldail.com- A horror writer's not necessarily horrific blog

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mac, do you get along well with your in-laws and do your kids enjoy seeing them?

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  4. Paul - Greek food at an American thanksgiving! That must have gone over like a fart in an elevator. My in-laws are too polite to ever say anything; they're rich wasps.

    Terri - my kids love my in-laws, as all kids do their grandparents. I get along reasonably well with them, but there's always a bit of distance.

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  5. Glad your kids enjoy seeing them and no, all kids don't love their grandparents.

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