It Started with a Journal

( Spoilers for The Hunger Games and first half of Catching Fire )

My mom is coming home with me tonight and will stay for a couple of days before returning to K.'s. My house is a sty. I dread her reaction.

Senor Moose w/ the two of them tonight. I am hoping to talk K. out of Indian food on Sunday. I just don't want to make Indian food that's dairy-less. It just won't be as good. It's SO dairy dependent, imho. I mean, it uses cream, yogurt, ghee (clarified butter), paneer (fresh cheese) ... if you take all that away, you take away the SOUL of the cuisine. Okay, maybe I am being a bit over dramatic, there are obviously plenty of dairy-less Indian dishes out there. But it is true that some of the best dishes are made with dairy, and if you make ALL the dishes without dairy, it ruins the meal. It'll be boring and uninteresting. That's just how I feel. If the meal were ONLY for K. that might be one thing, but the meal is also supposed to be for my mom. Why should all of us who aren't on a dairy restriction suffer?! Sigh. Maybe I'll just have to make 2 versions of things.

Cross posting this from my Dreamwidth journal, which is, by the way, sarea, for the first time. Remember a few days ago, I made a confused entry about missing my earlier entries, and it turned out that it was because I was remembering posting on my first-ever LJ (not this one), except not really remembering that I had it? Well Dreamwidth is now great for at least this reason: I was able to import all my entries from BOTH journals here, so now I have 1 journal with ALL my entries, woot. It even imports all the comments if you want, as well as tags, protection settings, etc. And of course, there's this feature I'm using now, where you can post to both at the same time. It's like having an automatic backup! So even if no one really moves to Dreamwidth from LJ, it'll be worth it just for that.

By the by, I've given out all the invite codes I had, but if I get any more I'll let y'all know, though I imagine most people who are interested have an account by now.

Dinner the other night went well, though there was some panicking before and after. Before, I was panicking because I was still doing some last-minute preparation work and was running 1/2 hour late. I finally left the house and was near the freeway when I suddenly remembered 2 items that I'd forgotten: an English cucumber for the raita (not a big deal, I could stop by a market to get one on the way) and the recipes (a much bigger deal). I called trix, who was on her way to buy food, and related my woes. When she got home she looked up the recipes for me and I tried my best to memorize the steps. Luckily it turned out that I panicked for no reason; I had actually stuffed them into the food bag, which I was bringing along with my purse, camera, cutting board, pizza stone, and slow cooker (requested by my mom and aunt for when they're here, to make congee for my cousin).

After, I was panicking because after lugging everything back into my car trunk (sans food and slow cooker), I slammed the trunk down and realized, with horror, that my keys were in my purse ... which was in the trunk. The thing with my car is, I never actually use the key. It just has to sense the key nearby, and when I put my hand on the handle of the door, it senses the key plus the warmth from my hand, and it unlocks automatically. I love this feature, and am totally used to it by now. I've always wondered, though, how close the key had to be in order for this feature to work. Now I know -- even the trunk is NOT CLOSE ENOUGH. None of my windows were cracked so I couldn't even try to get something in to unlock the doors. I kept putting my hand on the handle in the vain hope that it would unlock (no dice). It was about 9:30pm and my cousin's family was getting ready for bed, and they didn't have a spare key anyway. I could go in and use their phone to call road-side assistance or something, but I really didn't want to have to pay $100 or whatever so someone could jimmy the trunk open, if it even could be done. Finally in desperation I went to the trunk and just started looking around to see if there was anything I could do ... I kept pressing on this thing I thought was a button (but was actually the car's back-up camera, sigh). Finally I pressed this one area, it wasn't a handle, it didn't even look like a button or anything, and the trunk popped open. HALLELUJAH. Of course, after being hugely relieved, I was like, "Hey, that's kind of dangerous ... someone could open my trunk any time they want if they know about that secret button!" However, that might be because my key, being in the trunk, was close enough that it worked. I'll have to test it out. (I know there's a way to lock the trunk so that it can't be popped using the button inside the car, possibly the same goes for the secret button.)

I'm going to be making a real entry about the details of the dinner on my food blog, but since I've been talking your ears off about it, I figured I should link pics of the final results. ( Here they are. )

The biggest bummer is that during dessert, my throat suddenly started to feel sore. It's still sore, so I appear to be getting sick. Ugh. Boy will I be annoyed if it's the swine flu. :P

OK, now to see if this cross-posting thing works...