Notes In The Margin

We spent most of yesterday afternoon making dinner - tandoori chicken, chapatis, and aloo gobi. Although we usually make tandoori chicken with a mix, yesterday we made it from scratch, which is always better, and a lot more fun.

There are lots of recipes online for tandoori chicken, but none of them are quite what I remember from a cookbook I used to have, but seem to have misplaced in some dark corner.

So we took several of the recipes as inspiration, and came up with something all our own. Like all good recipes, I'm not entirely sure what I put in it. Yoghurt, fresh-pressed garlic, grated fresh ginger, cumin, cardamon, coriander, black pepper, cloves, cayenne, garam masala that we already had, and lots of chopped cilantro. As to the quantities of each, I really couldn't say. Which is a shame, because it was some of the best I've ever made.

We'll have to try that again some day. Maybe that time I'll write down the amounts. But, realistically, I doubt that I will.

The aloo gobi recipe is the one that's at the end of the "Bend it like Beckham" DVD.

The chapatis are my own interpretation of the technique that my brother taught me.

Maybe we'll make it for you next time you visit.

This weekend, someone I never met passed away quietly in his sleep. Bob was a frequent poster on a mailing list that I've been on since the very beginning - the FoodWine mailing list - where he offered sage advice, clever insight, and good food suggestions.

It's hard to know what to say about someone that one has only known via email messages. We'll certainly miss him on the list.

This evening I discovered that the electrical outlets in my garage are wired in series. I discovered this because one of them is a GFI outlet, and something tripped it. I discovered it via the simple expedient of having a freezer full of meat turn rancid. I am not happy about this discovery. Fortunately there wasn't much in the freezer, but it was still a lot of wasted food, and I *REALLY* hate throwing away food.

Grr.

Another Pumpkin Day has come and gone, and it was a huge amount of fun, as usual. It was very well attended, and there seemed to be dozens and dozens of kids, all of whom were yelling at any given time. The photos are here. I think that this year I got photos of most of the pumpkins that got completed, but I'm not certain of that.

While in Orlando, we had dinner at Texas de Brazil, which was an excellent (if somewhat pricey) Churrascaria. Highly recommended. Sim, por favor!