I had my first dinner party since coming here almost 9 months ago. Almost like giving birth. Fittingly, my first guests were Amal and Sunali. If it hadn't been for them, I would not have made it past week 2 in this place.
I had decided to do Mexican food as I had two lovely avocados from Veenitha's garden. Then my tuktuk man, Namal dropped off 4 more huge variety avocados from his garden. So Veenitha and I happily made veg chili.
Even that was fun. I used an old recipe from the original Moosewood cookbook. Those of us who have been vegetarian for a long time, know this book as a trail blazing effort. It calls for bulghar which is not available here, so I substituted couscous. Then I got to thinking what I could do to give it more substance, as if it had meat in it. I decided to use banana flower and some locally grown mushrooms. It came out great. The banana flower especially gave it a real meaty texture while leaving the taste quite fresh. The only rub was none of those lovely avocados were ripe, so I had to make a sort of raita/tzatziki instead. At least I managed to find cilantro that gave it a bit of Mexican edge. Chapaptis rounded out the main course subbing for tortillas.
We started with homemade hummus at which I am becoming quite adept with Arabic bread which I managed to find at Keel's. I made hot vichyssoise as the starter that turned out very well using coconut milk instead of cream. Sunali made a flan for desert along with my fruit salad. In the end, quite a fusion meal, but we enjoyed it. Washed it all down with quite a good Chilean reserve merlot and good strong espresso coffee.
We had a great time. They didn't leave until 1AM.
Having thought ahead, I had arranged for Veenitha to come at 4 to clean the house before they came and then to do the serving and cleaning up after dinner. She stayed the night so I even got bed tea in the morning. I gave her a big bonus for doing this, so it cost me a whopping $9.50.
Yesterday night was Perahera. Amal said that it was crazy driving through Kandy town even on Saturday evening. Anyhow, I am going to avoid the town for one more day and not venture out until tomorrow.
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