No Soup for Me...Yet

So, Tuesday night I was eager to get to my ingredients to cook Dr. Fuhrman's famous soup.

But like children with shiny objects I was quickly distracted with the prospect of "going out." Going out in NYC can mean doing something I always do, in rut-like fashion, such as P.J. Clarke's, Pig 'n Whistle, rinse, repeat. Or, the deadly trifecta, back when the famed Old Stand bar sat on the NW corner of 55th and 3rd (now, sadly, a mobile phone store) and slung pints between giant posters of Eamon de Valera and Eamon Coughlan it formed the perfect right triangle with the hypotenuse between the Pig and Clarke's. But really, it was the Burmuda Triangle for me, and I have a lost decade to prove it!

Or going out could mean traveling no more than 20 blocks away (1 mi.) and be in an entirely different world.

And so it was Tuesday night when then the Encouraging Nurse not only educated me about a part of the city (very hard to do) that I passed often, but did not realize existed, "Curry Hill," but was kind enough to treat me to some terrific Indian food. In the area of Lexington Avenue in the 20's sits a dozen Indian restaurants and is nicknamed "Curry Hill" (proper geographic name, Murray Hill). A perfect meal suggestion on a warm evening we went to Pongal Vegetarian Indian Restaurant.

We started with Iddly - steamed rice cakes with chutney and sambar sauces, and Medu Vada - lentil donuts (hardly something you would find at Dunkin Donuts), also with chutney and sambar.

For dinner we shared Chana Sag chick peas in cream of spinach cooked with spices, and Shahi Paneer - cottage cheese cubes (part of my 5% non-vegan diet) in an creamy and mild onion tomato sauce. Both were excellent! It was tasty, and the spices cooled me off on a hot summer night.

At the end of the evening, we were too close to a good friend, and dry-witted Irishman and his "local" not to give a ring in case he was out and about. I will now pause and let all the ladies reading this roll their eyes, re-read, and incredulously say, "He paused a date, a date in which she paid, to call his drinking pal?" Shameful, I know, but I had an ulterior motive which proved marvelously successful - better than anything Bord Failte could do. And yes, I kept a ledger for the weekly drink allotment, 3 down and 4 to go, all with the weekend looming.

One thing I have studiously avoided on this blog, save for one or two postings, is any discussion of the ethical issues of veganism. And after this story I am sure to keep it that way:

In a scene reminiscent of  the film Annie Hall, the Nurse asked if I would perform a "job for a man" because there was a moth in her bathroom. This is a job I could handle and, unlike Wood Allen fumbling with his rolled up copy of National Review, I marched in grabbing some tissue paper in order to slay the moth and flush it down the commode. A job performed by heroes, daily, around the globe. After a couple of spastic swipes at this insect Red Barron my noble intentions suddenly became clear to her, and this humanitarian of humanitarians shrieked that she didn't want me to kill it! Rather my orders were to capture it and let it fly out her window!That's like telling a Roman Gladiator that he was only supposed to pet the lion. Then, when I heard the moth had been in her bathroom since the morning and she had placed some spinach on the sink so it would not go hungry I knew I would never, nor could I ever comment on ethical issues again. I was out of my league...universe really, since not once did I ever say the rosary after squashing a cockroach on a subway stairwell.