Monday, February 02, 2009

Four Meals, Three Movies, Two Books, One Pedicure

This was a weekend of serious indulgence.

Winterlicious is on and The Boy decided he would like to be more familiar with Indian food. Friday night, we hooked up with Sis and had dinner at Jaaadu, an Indian restaurant midtown. This was an upscale restaurant. I should have known. That meant they catered to a more gentle palate. When they tone down the hot spices, the food was bland, which proves my point there is nothing subtle or complex about Indian cuisine. It's hot, or not, like veg or non-veg, without mind to name the kind of non-veg you might be consuming. It didn't help that we all ordered chicken in different sauces.

The next morning, I met my friends for brunch at the Gladstone Hotel. The Gladstone is a comfortable, refurbished grand place. You feel a sense of old, drunken Toronto cleaned up. I loved being there with some of my best buds. I liked the restaurant's no-nonsense food more or less on the healthy side, likes tofu scramble, frittatta with salmon and goat cheese, eggs benedict, all with a heaping side of delicious homefries and brown toast.

But that night, I had to turn down an invitation to go out for dinner with my neighbours. Two big meals in a row was too much for me, especially because I was anticipating another brunch in the morning with Sis.

Sunday brunch was at Lai Toh Heen, an upscale Chinese restaurant on Mt. Pleasant. Very good dim sum. But the mains were a bit disappointing. You pay twice the price of the being downtown to sit among the affluent Chinese uptown. After brunch, Sis, Kid2, and I went for a pedicure. Finally, sloughing the scaley, white detritus of winter.

Through some crosswires and re-engineering on The Boy's part, we hooked with Sis again for dinner. This time, we crossed town to Little India and had dosa, potatoes, and rice. Dosas are large crepes served with a smattering of vegetables inside. We chose potatoes. We had three deep fried or baked things stuffed with potatoes. And lemon rice. Very carby. To make up for the meatiness of brunch I guess. Bleh.

Between meals, I watched movies. It's that downloading trick The Boy showed me. I watched Frost/Nixon, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and Match Point. All excellent. The latter two gave me my Woody Allen fix for the moment.

Between movies, I read. I finished Stumbling On Happiness, a book about how the brain works (it makes best guesses and fills in missing info to complete a picture) and how we plan or assess the future (always based on inaccurate memories of the past and how we are feeling now). Then I launched into One Good Turn, my next book club book. One incident on the street and how it affects bystanders whether they got involved or not. So far so good. A book club friend read it, loved it, bought all the books written by the same author - Kate Atkinson, read them, and loved them all.

Thank god it's Monday. Now I need to recoup.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sweet living

Sparky said...

I want your life!

Anonymous said...

I too crave your life. Merely a fantasy for me!