Hump Day

Does anyone know why Wednesday is alled hump day? I supposed I could google it but I'm too lazy. And it's my break. And I quit smoking (again) so I'm ugly as hell. Yeah day one on not smoking. This is seriously like the 100th time I quit. I just love smoking. Seriously. And since grad. school, I start smoking again in the Fall semester and then quit in December. I promised H I wouldn't do this again, and I really just need to not have to quit again. It sucks ass. But day one is down, and no one is dead.

I made some cashew burgers. Normally these are H's speciality but I needed to cook tonight.

I think they came out fairly decent. Of course these ones have bread crumbs. The first two were really crumbly, and I said to H "Are they normally this crumbly?" And he looked over "Did you put bread crumbs in them?" Ummm...ooops. Luckily, I had only started with two so these four came out nice and firm. I love the cashew taste in these, and the little bit of curry. It's nice.

As I stirring the curry into the onions, the smell hit me. It made me think of Indian food which makes me think of Boston. Boston was the first place that I had Indian food. When I was twenty, I think, I meet this guy at a Pagan festival. He was older than me, I think 35 at the time but we hit it off. We were sort of friends with benefits but the benfits didn't seem to be a big part of our friendship. Mostly I think it was that W was comfortable with me, and he wasn't comfortable with most people. I used to go visit him in Cambridge. He had this cute little condo tucked away off Mass Ave. I would come, and hang out, walk around while he worked. Then we go out and eat, etc. He brought me to Oh Calcutta. I was so excited. I had never had a chance to eat food from other places (in Central Maine we had only Chinese resturants although there was a Mexican resturant by the time we left). I remember the smell hitting me right before we walked through the door. I tried so hard to act cool but I was nervous. Wonder if I hated it? How uncool would that be? And then the first bites...god it was like sex! The spices on the tongue were so different, so spicy, so powerful. And I kept going up to try new things. I was so excited. W asked one of the waiters if they'd make some coconut soup for us, and the owners came out. They were so excited that this was my first experience with Indian food. They went into the kitchen and came back with all kinds of delicacies for me to try. And my love of Indian food remains.

One thing that stands out for me is that this was around the time when I was first giving vegetarinism a try. It was exciting to experience new flavors and try vegetables in a new way. I had never been much of a vegetable eater, and to be honest I was a Cheeto vegetarian. But this was one of the many experinces that lead to new thinking about food.

This memory came at an intersting time. I have been flirting with the idea of going vegan for a while now. We still eat eggs (organic) and we eat some diary (H and kids eat cheese, and I eat yougurt). We do make sure this stuff is organic but...I don't know. I haven't made a firm decision on this one but my experiences with vegan food and cooking is akin to what happned to me at Oh Calcutta.