If Only My Thesis Were on Food

G'evening folks! Or, shall I say good night? Once again, I'm up during the wee hours of the night (well, wee-ish given my tendency to stay awake until 3/4am. It's only 1am right now), but this time without a paper deadline in sight - and no, my thesis proposal does not count. In fact, I've spent the past 2 hours procrastinating about my readings on Indira Gandhi and the Emergency by surfing through the wonderfulness that is Amazon. I'm still in the process of designing and decorating my new room, and have a couple walls and wall features that I'd love to accentuate. I've always had this fantasy of drawing on my walls, and I found a wonderful dry-erase decal that would fit perfectly on one.

Anyway. This post is not about my new-found-love-for-decorating. Rather, it is about food. Now that my kitchen is set-up and I have access to my pots and pans and spices and pantry and multiple beautiful knives and can actually eat (I went through a month-long phase during which I could barely eat anything), I've been trying to cook wholesome meals for myself. What, you may ask? Multiple types of frittatas, pasta with fresh tomato and red wine sauce (so yummy!), vegetarian fried rice, multiple types of salads and sandwiches (I found the most delicious za'atar the other day and can't stop using it) and so on. Today was supposed to be potato-vegetable patties with wilted greens and some yoghurt/dijon sauce, but two of my friends decided they wanted to go for dinner so I joined them.

Dinner was fun. The two are great people. But the food was ok. The tomatoes in my salad were pretty bad and the pasta was mediocre. I ordered the white mushroom pappardelle with truffle oil. I figured it would be good. It's a pasta that's hard to get wrong. The pappardelle has to be cooked until al dente, and the mushrooms need to be cut and sauteed. That part was fine, but the truffle oil. Sigh. When will chefs learn that truffle oil is heavy and a little goes a long way as far as taste is concerned? You only need a couple drops of that stuff - not a long drizzle. Anyway, I was pretty full after the salad and only ate a small part of my pasta. Which means that I can mend it tomorrow. The mushrooms and the pasta will stay. Excess oil will get washed down the drain. I'll throw some olive oil into my pan, add the pasta and mushrooms with some salt, maybe get some parsley, and enjoy mushroom pappardelle my way. The potato-veggie patties will just have to wait for Thursday...

Right - perhaps back to my readings, but probably to bed...

Night for now.