good eats

Yesterday, after a morning leaving voicemails and firing off petulant electronic pleas for response, and an afternoon vainly attempting to learn all the countries on the African continent, I went to dinner.

The best dinner. At a restaurant owned by the sweetest Sikh couple. (They wear bracelets and don't cut their hair.) Amrik told us, "It's all real Indian food," and predicted April's order.

We ate:

Sizzling, vivid red tandoor chicken with tangy onions.

Plain, garlic, and peshwari naan flatbread.

Hot flavored basmati rice accompanied my fav--the chicken coconut korma: this rich flavorful almost sweet sauce with tender chicken pieces. I thought I might cry.

A sweet, strawberry, and mango lassi. The sweet had rosewater in it. After you swallow you can smell roses.

And then proceeded to roll out the door. Outside, waiting to cross the busy downtown street, I asked my roommate, calorically impassioned, "Why do we eat anything else?! How does other food still even exist?!"

But every culture has its comfort food, its dishes made with love, that mother and grandmothers for centuries have stewed, simmered, and baked in warm kitchens the world over and made you eat a little more of. It's gnocchi and naan and potstickers, empadas and Dutch oven cobbler. Bread pudding and Muslim noodles, Cream of Wheat and calzone. We all have this ancient primordial yearning for it, and recognize it even when its origins are unfamiliar. Because, for so many of us, food is love.

Can you tell it's Fast Sunday?