sri lankan'd!!!

babu was something else. we roll up, and the place is bumpin' they basically do a very brisk catering/take-out business. everything except for the hoppers, tandoor items (including naan) is ready to go, in gleaming, immaculate steam tables. you line up, and then one of the servers personally attends to your order, guiding you through the vegetables, curries, biryanis and pilau's, desserts, and fried items - assembling your order and making sure everything is together. everything was really clean (with flat-screen tvs advertising prices and specials) and there were a lot of people there waiting to pick up but it was very orderly and they were super-nice and gave you tastes of everything you might have considered. we ordered A LOT of food.

- fish patties (like fish-filled deep-fried samosas)
- veggie samosas
- white rice
- biryani rice
- ginger chicken
- butter chicken
- curried goat
- some other curried chicken
- mutton
- muttar paneer
- potatoes and cabbage
- collard greens
- dhal with pumpkin
- mushroom curry
- naan

and it all came out to $90. for so much food for 6 people. like, we probably ordered 1/3 more than we should have.

it went down easy.

here's the bad part. by the next day, the reports started coming in that 5 of the 6 people got sick from it. like, bad sick. the kind of sick that requires medication so that you're stomach isn't clenching in agony and you're not chained to the bathroom. so bad!!! i felt so guilty. there were a few reasons: a) because i had pushed strongly for it; b) because it's such a bad stereotype that indian food makes you sick (even though this was sri lankan...you know what i mean); c) because it really put a damper on the weekend.

ugh. we got babu'd...or, as s-dawg called it: "SRI LANKAN'D!!!"

luckily little ze and miss ramona didn't have any. that would have been THE WORST. so i don't think we're going to be going back any time soon. we're really gun shy now. the worst part about food poisoning is that it really makes you fear your own farts. it's amazing what sort of every day freedoms get taken away from you. lol!

saturday we rolled around and napped and watched "remember the titans" which is a pretty awesome sports movie that s-dawg claims i had seen before (apparently i had completely forgotten the experience.) (this makes sense when you take into account that the time that i saw it was in a florida hotel room the day we got back from our family vacation cruise and i was bushed from a week of family vacation time AND s-dawg also made me watch "serendipity" the same night.)

coming so fresh after the 1 month a year following the super bowl when i show a passing interest in foot ball, i was particularly susceptible to its sports-movie clichés. it's also got an all-star cast. kate bosworth! ryan gosling! denzel washington! a young avon barksdale! an ever younger hayden panettiere!

having to face dream menu with a case of the rumble in the bronx belly was a bit of a nightmare. the most important thing was that my grandpa had a good time and the food was really, really delicious.

top row (left to right): baked stuffed crab shells with fresh crab meat and breadcrumbs; pig's stomach soup; pig's stomach soup fixings

second row: steamed 3 egg dish (chicken egg, thousand year old egg, salty egg); peking duck; pan-fried glutinous rice dumplings filled with coconut and black sesame

third row: deep fried pork with spicy salt; little chinese sweets; fried rice with egg white; sweet'n'sour pork; red bean dessert soup with dumplings; ginger dungeness crab with yi mein; dried oyster, fat choy and veggies; lemon chicken

(it's all out of order because the stupid collage does that). i think i'm missing a dish or two, but suffice to say that we were not up to the task. especially not with TWO peking ducks and an out of whack digestive system and doubled orders on a bunch of things.

because it was late and we had been babu'd - we weren't up for the task of driving back downtown for a jungle party at the basement. we just couldn't do it. i'm glad too...the reviews today have been mixed...asc played a pretty minimal, no-breaks, glitchy set and that wasn't what i was in the mood for. also, photos from the event show that it was the same old, same old.

sunday we had dimsum with C and K and their adorable family of ankle biters. look at those cheeks!!!

the only photos i have of M are blurry and she's clearly giving me the wary eyes. it was such a nice time...hopefully we'll see those cats again soon.

and that brings us to today. i was zonked last night. passed out at 8:30 and slept clear on through to this morning. i could have kept sleeping, in fact. feeling a little headachey and still tired today...i'm going to go down and bake some cookies and see if that doesn't set me right. baking cookies is my first line of defense when faced with an unprecedented amount of snow.

fin.