Well, Michael Jackson the beer critic is dead.

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I've been on an Indian cook-at-home thing the last few days since I got my new pots & pans (and miscellaneous other kitchen stuff). Saturday night I made some chana dal and also a veggie curry. The dal is simple stuff: cook the dal, set aside. Cook some onion and whole spices in oil. Add tomato, hot peppers, garlic, ginger and various powdered spices and let it cook down a bit. Add the lentils in and let that cook down for a while.

The veggie curry was just various tasty veggies cooked in with standard indian gravy stuff -- onions & whole spices cooked down, add tomatoes and dry spices (and ginger/garlic), and the potatoes. Let that cook a while. Add other veggies (in my case, bell peppers, mushrooms and a little carrot). Let that cook a little. Add some yogurt and let it simmer down. Yummers. I won't list the spice ratios, but for these two dishes, I used recipes from Hooked on Heat as the base.

Those two dishes left me with two days of food (even with somewhat unplanned visits from fellow local husites who partook of a bowl). I also baked cookies last night. Not greatly successful ones from a texture / shape standpoint (they were kind of thin and fell apart easily). But they still tasted good.

Tonight I had to use up some veggies and eggs and so rolled my own egg curry. Approximate ingredients:

• 2 jalapeno peppers diced up pretty much whole (with some largish chunks as well). I include seeds because I'm lazy, but you don't have to.
• 1 red onion (usually I use yellow) sliced thin (so you get narrow little strips).
• 1 red bell pepper chunked largish
• 1 medium to large tomato (I used a yellow heirloom) diced roughly
• Half a potato diced in centimeter-ish cubes (leftover)
• Few tablespoons of yogurt.
• Couple eggs, hardboiled and sliced in half.
• Tablespoon each or so of minced garlic and ginger.
• Teaspoon of cumin seeds.
• Mixture of powered spices: 1 teaspoon garam masala, little less than teaspoon of coriander powder, 1 teaspoon of turmeric powder, splash of chili powder. Some black pepper & salt.

Steps:

• Heat oil to crackling stage and add cumin seeds. Cook those a bit.
• Add jalapeno. A little bit later add onion.
• Let the onion cook down a bit. Add some of the garlic. Let onion cook down a bunch.
• Add potatoes with dry spices on top. You'll get this paste / dry thing going. Let that cook a bit.
• Add the tomatoes and rest of ginger/garlic and let that cook down (it will wet the spices and mix it up).
• Add the yogurt and a little water (maybe third of a cup?). Let that cook down some more.
• Add the bell pepper and let that cook down.
• Nestle the hard-boiled eggs in and let it simmer for a while.

You're probably supposed to serve this over rice or something, but I'm lame and don't care and so just ate it out of a bowl with cilantro diced on top. Yummers. Here are a couple pictures:

Bonus picture of the cat Isis:

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In other news, dating blah blah blah. Bike rides yay! Dates with bike rides. Etc. Well this morning I had a friendly bike ride with someone. Not sure if it is was a date per se, but it was fun and we chatted a bunch. Minimally I may have a new friend I think.

Friday night I went to a San Francisco Mefite Meetup. Met some random people I don't really know, but hey it was entertaining. Maybe the guy who brought a ipod and microphone will put up our "This American Life" like segments (one of the guys there is in radio so we did some faux interviews).

Saturday I finally put my hitch on the bike, so I could go buy pots with the trailer. That was fun. Works pretty well. So far the pots are quite nice.

Today, I went rollerblading. I've had some from college I hadn't touched in years, so I rotated the wheels (definitely needed it) and went for a  ... ten minute skate. My ankles were screaming after just that. Also there is a muscle in my upper thigh that apparently doesn't get worked that much.

I'm kind of liking living on my own a bit. I can do what I want, cook the way I want, keep clean the way I want, etc and so forth. We'll see. Lots of stuff still to worry about, but ... eh. It's the way it is.