Sat, Sept 6 - Burmese

8.30am - oatmeal w/ strawberries, walnuts, black sesame, at home10.43am - a so-called 'star' tea named "little guardian angel" that I got as a gift from my lovely little goddaughter. The guardian angel, which I think is supposed to be a sheep, promises right on the package to take care of me... very sweet, thanks so much, Nathalie!

10.46am - and this is why it's called 'star tea': there are little sugar stars in it!

11.04am - This is what I hope will be way of getting Ritesh to take his vitamins....

12.54pm - a keema paratha (beef-filled pastry), at Jasmine Burmese Cafe, with Ritesh

12.57pm - there are not a lot of things that I don't eat, but this unfortunately is one of them. It's a tofu salad w/ side soup that had so much fermented fish sauce in it, I just couldn't get it down. Ahrgh. Ritesh couldn't either. The samosas in the back were great though.

12.57pm - Ritesh's lamb biryani that I kept picking at. Not great either, way too oily, and not one bit of vegetable in it. It may be worth noting that everything we ordered came recommended by Jonathan Gold. Ho hum. We should have just ordered the way more appetizing lunch special, rice w/ a curry and salad, as the other customers did. Ah well. Still at Jasmine Burmese Cafe.

1.24pm - some almond kulfi ("eastern ice cream" - whatever. they must have been trying to avoid the word "oriental"), from Jasmine Burmese Cafe, on the way to Surfas culinary supplies.

2.17pm - at Surfas, we stumbled into a cooking demo of how to make gumbo, and got some lobster hush puppies to munch on - very tasty. Apparently, a hush puppy is a Southern fritter normally made with sausage. Who knew?

2.37pm - and this is some of the gumbo that was prepared by a lovely chef (who incidentally did the catering for Forrest Whittaker's Oscar party this year), with andouille sausage, shrimp, and crab meat, but no okra. Very yummy.

2.47pm - a sample of a fruit "shrub", which is a drink from colonial times in the US, when settlers preserved fruit in vinegar and sugar, and then used it as a kind of syrup in water to make fruit drinks. Not sure what flavor this was, but we liked it, so went and got some to take home.

5.29pm - and here's our cranberry shrub, at home

9.07pm - Ritesh made chutney sandwiches! Thanks, love! I was still so exhausted from traveling and going straight to work this week, I conked out at 8pm - then got up at 9pm to eat these, pretty much with my eyes closed, and then went straight back to bed and slept for another twelve hours.