LENTIL SOUP BLISS and other stories...

It's been a couple weeks since my last post.  Since I'm still alive you can probably assume I've been eating in that span of time.

Since Gina and I are both posting, I guess it's a good idea now to start saying who's talking to you at the beginning of each blog.

Hi!  It's Jason.

Anyway, I'll get to the good stuff now:

A couple weeks ago my awesome cousin and his amazing girlfriend came over to our house and made us a delicious feast of...

LENTIL SOUP

Okay - Ive mentioned before how much I love soup.  It's true.  In fact, I eat it for breakfast sometimes (okay, maybe more often than sometimes...)

I really didn't do too much to help except drink lots of wine and offer moral support.  Here's some prep work:

Like I said, my cuz did most of the cooking.  He started with, I believe, the sauteing onions, garlic, celery and carrots:

It smelled delicious.  Stir it, cuz.  Give it goooood stir.

I'll lower the creepy meter for a bit, sorry.

After a whole bunch of other ingredients were added including spinach, and (as a really neat surprise) kalamata olives, he added the lentils:

Go on, hear that lentil shower sound in your head.

Ahhhh...

Like rain on a cold night when you're wrapped in a blanket on the hearthstones beside the enormous crackling fireplace (that you secretly don't have except in your head) with a cat curled on your lap, purring, and you realize that somehow you are in Poland and from the kitchen emerges the kindliest, most elderly woman you have ever seen and she has made you Lentil Soup.

Something like that.

 This is what a bowl of it looked like in all of it's steaming, heartwarming glory:

And here's the money shot:

It was amazing.

We invited them to come back and cook for us anytime.

Seriously, guys.  ANY. TIME.

Other than that, we didnt really take too many pics of meals we have made ourselves.  It's been a very cray couple of weeks - thus the drought in posting.  We did go out a couple times.

I had been meaning to take some pics of a meal at The Pine in Kennedy.  Its seriously right up the street from us.  We could walk there if we ever had time anymore to do something like walk up the street.

From the menu, I usually get the Create Your Own Pasta meal.  I was boring this time and only got penne with broccoli.

It looks like this:

Their sauce isn't bad, and the pasta was decent.  They give you a pretty enormous portion so you usually have enough left over to take home, put in the fridge, intend to bring for lunch the next day but instead forget all about it and end up buying a Sheetz MTO instead.

Gina got the Veggie Grilled cheese which looked like this:

I like that they put it on that swirly rye bread - you don't see that too often.

We also treated our selves to something I have been desperately craving recently:  Indian Food.

Gina was working out in the North Side for a bit and I picked her up from work and we went to our favorite Indian Restaurant in Pittsburgh - Taste of India in Bloomfield.

Kennedy has no Indian Restaurants (I think, though, if there was a Pizza specific to India, Kennedy would open an Indian Restaurant stat.), Robinson has no Indian Restaurants.  Moon had an Indian Restaurant but it closed.  I've been huddled, shaking in an alley going through the throes of Indian Food withdrawal. 

Our dinner looked like the below picture, but the picture doesn't do justice to the explosion of bliss each bite brought us:

I got the one closest to the foreground:  Aloo Ghobi, which is potatoes, cauliflower, tomatoes in a wonderful sauce full of Indian spices.  Gina got the one in the background - Malai Kofta.  It is fried vegetable patties in a creamy curried, coconut based sauce.

The baskets of flatbread are Naan and Praratha.  I got Aloo Praratha, which is a potato filled bread, and Gina of Onion Naan.

And that is all I've got.  Hope you're all well!