I ate out at this restaurant on Hertel and Norwood yesterday and let me just say that their basil flavoured chillie sauce with the stir fried vegetables is probably the best I have ever had in my life. Its superlative. When this restaurant says "vegetables" in its menu, it means business. I counted no less than 8 different veggies in the stir-fry - all of them crisp and cooked JUST the right amount.

But let me not wander away from topic of THE SAUCE. The waitress asked me how I wanted it and I gave my usual answer, "EXTREMELY HOT", with enthusiastic and desperate stress placed over the entire span of the phrase. I have been told that my eyes go cranky and my eyebrows knit when I say this but I think it just magnifies the earnestness with which I mean this preference.

I want them to get the impression that I want to BURN UP the minute I eat a mouthful of their dish because I LOVE IT. I yearn for my eyes to water, my nose to run and my cheeks to turn up a shade of bloody red when I am enjoying the deeper flavours within the dish It's like getting a tattoo for your tongue after being dosed with a hallucinogenic agent. You know that the burning sensation is just your tongue paining like crazy but you are able to convince yourself that it is a taste and so mentally enjoy the experience. The trick is to do this without resorting to the wimpy measure of drinking water or diluting the pain by mixing in the rice/bread. That is just cheating.

The waitress patiently heard out my theatrically presented favourite phrase. I think the red tasteful walls of this restaurant perfectly accented the emotion that went into my request.

Ah, but I was talking about the sauce, friends, romans and countrymen (and not so countrymen/women to be politically all correct and not to be perceived as insular). The sauce came in an ellipsoid platter adorned with the representatives from the veggie kingdom. I dug in, and to my surprise didn't encounter the requested heat and the pain. Instead, I was met with a deceptively and might I add, an almost honeyed taste of the sauce complemented by the fresh tones of basil. Just as I was concluding that I might possibly need to scowl ferociously henceforth whilst asking for the dish to be liberally sprinkled with capsaicin, the heat struck, as a pleasant afterthought that strikes you when you realize that you have left your pencil on the desk of that person whom you have a crush on. You were unable to ask them out at the first instance, but the forgotten pencil has quite unexpectedly opened up another vista of opportunity!

I did not really have the eye-watering snot-streaming experience I had been hoping for but I enjoyed this sauce based stir-fry immensely. It was delicious and beautifully woven together in terms of taste and flavour. I admit I am a fussy character when it comes to liking food, but this restaurant finally got this sauce-stir-fry dish right.

Its so good that it has stood the test of being put in the refrigerator as a leftover. It is still incredibly delicious. That is something which is extraordinary to me when it comes to restaurant food. It tells me that they put their heart into this sauce and licked their fingers when they finished. That might strike you as slightly grotesque in a practical sense, but expressed as a sentiment , its a serious compliment. I strongly recommend the stir-fry basil chillie sauce veggie dish at the Taste of Thai. Try it, and take a sworn enemy with you. Chances are you will wipe all your hostilities clean and share mutual admiration for the sauce when you are done eating here.

I think the best form of apples are Granny Smiths. They are superior to every form of apple there is and will be. So imagine my heartfelt disgust when I came home and realized that, in a moment of unpardonable distraction, I had picked up a bag of the traitorous Crispin apples at the grocery. Words cannot describe the gastronomical misery I feel, now that I have a 5 pounder of Crispins to get through! You might think that, as similar as they look, they would taste the same. But NO. They don't.



The difference starts right when you bite into the Granny Smiths. You can hear it resounding in your skull, the crunchety crunch of absolute anticipation. Scarcely has this sound of foreplay died down when the delightful nectar slides down your chin and slithers its way into every little pit of taste sensation on your tongue. The taste is precisely described as EXPLOSIVE. It's sour at first and if you are in the right mood, raises a series of goosebumps up and down your whole body. Then the sugary syrupy potion takes over your senses with undertones of the sour explosion that hit earlier.

Here is when you forget that you are eating a mere apple. It transcends into a higher sensual experience. You can't stop yourself and take another massive bite of this piece of perfection in your hands. The reverberation of the most joyful music you have ever heard livens up your sinuses once more. Then the most narcotic of textures caresses your teeth and your palate. It doesn't stick to your teeth or coat your palate with slime. It's not gritty or cloying or pasty. It feels like you have swallowed a light happy spirit. It lights your thoughts up and spurs energetic brain function as it makes its way across your mouth. Devouring a Granny Smith is like having an apple high.

The Crispins on the other hand are just disappointing to say the least. In fact, I am not sure I can devote any more alphabet real estate to these pathetic loser breed of apples. I just wish I had been a bit more awake during yesterday's zombie walk through the aisles.

Alas. This lamentable crispin week is going to stretch so unbearably long.

I missed blogging on (E:strip)! It has been pretty un-therapeutic and unproductive for me to believe that not blogging and generally not running amok here would help me concentrate on my dissertation. I think I am going to make sure that I refer back to this post when I come to lethally erroneous conclusions such as these.

I met (e:paul) and (e:jon) (Are you the same in-the-flesh Jon that I met today? As you perhaps noticed, I really don't look too different from my profile picture. However, I couldn't say if those are your hands hovering over the keyboard though.) today for lunch and also ran into (e:terry) and (e:jbeatty), apart from nagging (e:imk2) a bit. It was my best day in 3 months and I think it spells out in clear non-blurry neon-lighted alphabets that keeping away from (e:strip) is just a climb down into the unhappiness drain - where I have been rotting and languishing for an unhealthy period of time. There is also one more subtle inferential point here for future reference. If I ever need to have just such an awesome day as today, I need to meet and chat with approximately 5 (e:strip)pers or more (whether they want to or not is immaterial.)

Since there is so much to generally catch up on here, I am just going to pick (e:strip)pers to stalk all week so that I stalk all their posts these past 3 months and embarrass them as thoroughly as possible on my blog and generally exercise my penchant for ill-advised inappropriateness into shape.

But first, a few things I want to shout out loud.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, (e:jim)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hope you had an awesome day and if you did, everyday in this following year gets progressively better till you hit the BIG 30 - when it gets EVEN better. Your NO #1 stalker is back! (But will need to take break to stalk every one else.)

(E:Mike), say hello to your brand-new-and-improved but with some-of-the-old-evil-retained stalker!

(E:paul) and (E:Jon), sorry about all the hideous coughing. I just could not help it and I thought you were slightly freaked out about it. I promise I will be healthier next time and not cough all ominously at lunch. This change in weather brings out the worst in me. :/ Thanks once again for coming out to lunch and listening to me drone on and on. And yes, for not gasping in horror and edging away when you heard the ominous coughing. All the gestures meant a lot to me!

(E:jbeatty), All the best with your project and your exciting new job and all the other new things that you are doing (that I need to update myself on by stalking your blog at some point). I still have your Lebanese cook book and I haven't forgotten that it belongs to you. I do intend to return it at some point and I promise that I am not scheming to make it part of my library and deny that it ever belonged to you (though that might be something to consider, now that I have spelled out the possibility. It does have excellent lentil-soup recipes...) My dull dull totally slow grey cells figured out FINALLY, about 4 hours after I walked out of Caf� 59, that you were talking about the *Sea*bar and not the C-bar or C-barn as I thought earlier - which, btw, was a source of terrible bewilderment to me. I mean, what on earth does sushi have to do with hitting the c-bar or even a barn, right? Since you mentioned that it was kind of an exclusive pricey place, I was actually deeper in the fog about the name than you could possibly have imagined. I briefly considered asking you to spell it but decided against it because it seemed like a tad too obsessive of a move over nitty-gritties at lunch time.

(E:terry), you looked absolutely gorgeous today! Was that a new haircut?? I can't wait to come and check out the floors and all the stuff that you guys have done to the house on April 27. I have a friend who bought a new house recently and I think it might be excellent inspiration for her to check out all the cool homes around (E:strip). How many of you are going on this tour??

Once again, it feels good to be back and I think I am not going to go away at all. Well... till of course someone manually drags me away to the infinity upstairs. Wait, I don't believe in that. Make that, till I am reborn into the rodent kingdom for all the heinous deeds I have committed as a biped. Wait, I am already a rodent. Maybe I should aim lower - the invertebrate world? All the heinousness should amply add up by then...

PS: I wonder why all the accent marks in my posts are not working... They are turning up as &#65533. Is that a mocking message reminder that its really quite ridiculous snobbery to use accent marks in plain English?

I have been kidnapped into colour and design land and I love it! :)



Recently, at a meeting, I was asked to generate icons and schemes for a future webportal. I have no idea whether the controlling powers would end up using my silly little colour palettes and icons, but for the moment, I am completely lost in the delirious world of The Colour Lovers!



I love how the members take ordinary colours from the RGB spectrum and come up with crazy names for single colours such as "Upside Lemon", or for palettes such as "Finals Suck" or "Microwave Brother"
.

I then followed some links and came across Colr.org. It may well be spelled wrong but it is absolutely brilliant in its ability to take any image or website and break it down to its consituent colour swatches.



This lovely little feature captures the myriad ways that colour wheels are found in life and in art.



It led me further to a most exotically creative collection of lamps Happy Hour Lamps!

I think I now know for sure why rainbows have fascinated humans for centuries. Its palette is probably the most perfect one ever created.

It should be renamed the bigfataddictiveden in an appellative description of just how inexplicably addictive it is, for shoppers of all persuasion.

I went in looking for some "organic body mist" - my replacement for the deodorant sticks (all of which I tossed in the garbage earlier this year, because of the cancer inducing antiperspirant aluminium content).

I strayed a bit and I spotted the newest Dove shampoo and conditioners. I tossed them in my shopping basket. With my recent haircut, my hair is even shorter than (e:paul)'s new buzz cut. The shampoo and conditioner will probably last me forever. But what the hell. They were cheap!

I deviated a bit more and saw that the bakeware was on sale. I picked up a couple cake-baking foil pans. And I don't even bake and have never baked in my life. What the hell. They were cheap!

A bit more meandering found me with a pillow. A pillow. I already have one. Why do I need another one?? They were cheap!

I was passing by the cleaning shelf and grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Hello?? I have a HUGE bottle of rubbing alcohol at home. What was I thinking? CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP

I wandered into the food aisle and picked up some nice-looking almond cereal. I have *several* boxes of varied cereal. Why... Why... Why...

I came very very close to getting a cast-iron cooking set, a pack of five fruit-flavoured "body-butters", a torchiere silver-finish floor lamp and some wild accessories for the pillow I had tossed into my shopping basket earlier, but thankfully didn't. This is exactly why I never take the cart at Biglots; the basket overflows or becomes extremely heavy for my stick-like forearms very very quickly.

I just wanted to chronicle this episode of unadulterated greed and lack of shopping self-control, so I can look at this and stop my inexorable decline towards ratpacking.

Who am I kidding. I so wish I had picked up the five-pack of fruit-flavoured "body-butters". Afterall, I do have about 1.8 m^2 of skin...