More food

Eric and I have a general rule that we try to eat out at least twice a week but no more than three times. This allows enough freedom for a running-late-so-can't-make-lunch lunch out and a last-minute Qdoba dinner or late-night Taco Bell run, as well as a nice-ish dinner out, without breaking our wallets. Last week, though, we cooked every night, and most of them were either semi-involved or new recipes. I can't remember a couple days, but here are the highlights:

Tuesday: Lasagna. Yum, as always, with Pillsbury crescent rolls to boot.
Wednesday: Jambalaya. I didn't have any celery and we used a Lipton Rice Sides Dirty Rice packet to mix it with instead of making white, but it worked out well (I channeled Sandra Lee's "Semi-Homemade" cooking that night). This week I saw Rachael Ray do "Jambasta" -- jambalaya over pasta instead of rice... interesting concept, may have to try that one sometime.
Friday: Chili -- first batch of the season! Since I was feeling rather meaty from the first part of the week, we made it with ground turkey instead, and added cinnamon, per my friend Paula's recommendation (she won a chili contest by using cinnamon). It was REALLY good, and in a demonstration of how disgusting Eric and I can be with food, the entire pot was gone by midnight.
Saturday: Sausage and corn chowder. Didn't have any potatoes so it wasn't as hearty as it could have been, but it was still really good -- a nice, warm comforting dish on a chilly fall day.

Also on Friday we saw our first Broadway show of the season -- All Shook Up. It was really cute -- basically, an excuse to put a bunch of Elvis songs into a musical. The guy who played Chad, the blue suede shoe-wearing, guitar-playing, jukebox-loving "roustabout," had an iffy voice -- some songs of his were great and others made me clench my fists in the hope he would make his next note -- but he had a really great variety of songs and he played his stereotypical role well. The lead female, who played Natalie, was great, and I thought her best song was her rendition of "A Little Less Conversation" in a deep voice (the plot involves her dressing up as a guy to get closer to Chad -- think "As You Like It," etc). The woman who played Sylvia, Natasha Williams, was absolutely amazing and pretty much stole the show, I thought. The set design was also really fun. Overall, it was a good time, not the greatest musical in the whole wide world, but very enjoyable, and I think it will make a really good high school musical once the copyrights are released -- very "Grease" or "Bye Bye Birdie" -ish.

On Sunday we ventured into the East End and had dim sum at Jade Palace. It was the first time I had been there, although I remember reading reviews by Robin Garr back when I first moved here, but I've had really sub-par experiences with Chinese food in this city, so I had been cautious. You can get pretty much any kind of cuisine you can name in Louisville, completely authentic and delicious, and I thoroughly enjoy having great Vietnamese, Thai, and Mexican places to go to. There are Bosnian restaurants and tons of African restaurants as well, but I haven't tried as many of those yet. But it seems, for the most part, that the only Chinese food is takeout, and even though the people at Wok Express, right across the street from me, are authentically Chinese themselves, they only stock ingredients that allow them to make Chinese-American food (which I can't fault them for at all; even I get a strong hankering for roast pork lo mein, salty wonton soup, and deep-fried egg rolls -- especially during test week!). The other authentic Chinese restaurant, Oriental House, was pretty good for certain dishes, and I was impressed that they had any sort of mien (wheat noodles in soup) at all, but it wasn't the kind I liked best. Plus, they boasted of offering dim sum, but when I ordered it, I could tell it was the pre-frozen kind. If you want Peking duck, though, that's the place to go -- they supply it to every restaurant in town, apparently.

Anyway, I hadn't tried Jade Palace yet, and I took Eric and my friend David for dim sum on Sunday. Results: I can't wait to go back!!! They have the basic dim sum dishes, both pushed around in carts and pictured on a menu for non-speakers (or half-speakers like me) to point at, fresh and delicious and almost as good as most dim sum I've ever had in this country. PLUS, they have congee (rice porridge) and mien -- the kind I like, with shrimp dumplings. We stuffed ourselves silly and brought home leftovers, and I managed to try the congee, but I just didn't have any extra room for noodle soup, so I can't wait until I get to go back and try it. The best thing is, now I have somewhere to bring my mom the next time she visits! Thank goodness for comfort food.

Next week is my next study week -- another big round of tests next Friday, so we get the whole week off to study like mad. Since I need to learn about nematodes -- that's worms to you laypeople -- I thought you might like to read about them as well: Dinosaur fossil spills its guts, out come worms

I was going to post a couple pictures here, one of Eric and me at Cadaver Ball a couple weekends ago (when I got drunk out of my mind and made a very large fool of myself... a good reminder of why I usually don't drink with people from school), and another of my sausage and corn chowder, just for the heck of it -- but I can't find the USB cord for my camera, so I can't download the pictures yet.