What We’re Eating and Drinking: Take-out Indian and Gewürztraminer
It’s been a busy week here at the riverside so we’re ordering dinner tonight from an Indian restaurant and I DON’T HAVE TO COOK. Yay! As you know from living in the Hudson Valley, our take-out options are limited–unlike in NYC where you can call out for any kind of (decent quality) cuisine for a relatively decent price. Here the possibilities are mostly limited to pizza and, well, pizza. So, we’re taking the occasion of Noah’s ‘away’ baseball game to visit an Indian place about twenty-five minutes north of Cold Spring (and conveniently located very close to the baseball field) to get food from Tanjore. Did you ever go to that place? I think we ordered from here a couple of times with you guys, no? Each of us has our favorite dishes: for me, Saag Paneer (pictured above) which is spicy dish made with spinach and cubes of paneer cheese, for Noah Chicken Tikka Masala and for Ray, Lamb Vindaloo, but we always put the take-out containers in the middle of the table and share. We’ll get some naan to sop up the sauces and sip on a little bit of Gewürztraminer, a white german varietal that Ray learned to love when he lived in Switzerland and one that I like okay with food, but find a bit sweet on its own. The two or three sips of wine will be enough for me for this Friday night, though, seeing we have to be up at back at that same ‘away’ field for a 9am game on Saturday morning. Have I mentioned that I don’t care for baseball?
[How does take out food work in Italy? Does it happen? Is it good?]
Gina: I have had Tanjore with you! As you might imagine, there’s not much of an Indian food scene here, despite the fact that there is significant Indian immigrant population. There’s a quarter of an aisle in the supermarket labeled “ethnic” which I think includes a few Indian things as well exotic American cuisine like Uncle Ben’s. (Did you realize Uncle Ben is representing us abroad?!) And I have seen a handful of non-Italian restaurants – Japanese, Greek, Brazilian, but for the most part, Italians appear to like to eat Italian food. And I can’t really blame them, but I do miss these different flavors! There aren’t many places that deliver, but many pizza and sandwich shops that do take away. Now, do they deliver to the field here? Nope, not a one.
What We’re Talking About: The Maze
We’re in the midst of a rainy few days here in the Hudson Valley which, along with my continual sleeping (or, rather, not sleeping) issues has me feeling tired and blue–similar to the way Luca looks in the photo above. No, I’m not going to let a little bit of rain bring me down–I made a vow not to complain about the weather once the snow melted and spring came to town and the truth is, the rain is making the leaves greener and the flowers pink-er and river cleaner so it’s good. I’m also happy to have a few days inside to catch up on laundry and The Mindy Project. I guess I’m just feeling stuck. These past months I’ve been applying for jobs and sending poems out to journals in hopes of publication and waiting for something to give with work or with writing and nothing is happening (or happening fast enough) and I’m ready for a change and just frustrated. You know? I guess this is one of the big differences in our two situations: in the Staying Here and Going There. I imagine that for you, every day something new happens. You understand a new Italian phrase, the kids go on some new adventure at school, you try to mail a pre-paid envelope to Brooklyn. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate my life and, god knows, there are a trillion “bad” changes going on to people around me that I am grateful not to have in my life right now, but how does one keep on pushing and striving when it feels like you’ve tried every pathway in the maze and every single one of them dead ends?
Gina: More than one bottle of wine could be finished over your and my posts today…I’ve written this next sentence about 5 times, because there doesn’t appear to be a non-cheesy way to write…It’s gonna work out. Eventually one or all of the things you’re working on will come through. Has your search for teaching work expanded to other towns? How far are you willing to travel? Are you more interested in going North and South than East and West? I just remembered that a mutual friend of ours worked across the river for a year or two and then moved closer to home.
On the There side of the world, new things happening every day means that you’re always juggling new stuff, adding them to whatever is already going on. I don’t think I would change this. I’m very excited to experience it all, but the constant change creates stress. (See next door.) It would be a pretty amazing balance for me if I could find ways to create more calm, mostly of the mental variety, in the midst of the adventures.
I love this by the way: “Probably a big part of the problem is that we feel the need to read articles about the importance of relaxation (and take classes and write blog posts trying to figure out how to find it) because we’ve lost the adeptness of how to do it. My guess is if we listen close to what we know and what we need (a different algorithm for each of us) things will become clear.”
Cool. Let’s just do that! Problems fixed. Gripe session over. It’s so good to have Friday Night Dinner’s to share!