Busy Weekend

We spent over four hours travelling to and from the Queen of Suburbs - Bandra. That's really something, considering we were invited to lunch at Taj Lands End, Vista Restaurant. It's a 24-hour restaurant, serving you a buffet breakfast/lunch/dinner. The last time I'd been there with my best friend, I'd had a wonderful cheesecake and tiramisu, the two desserts I remembered well over the one year that followed my visit. Everything else paled into the background. This time, however, with the change of chef also came a change of the dessert buffet, leaving most things unchanged on the main buffet - especially the biryanis, curries and fried or baked fish. The change in the dessert buffet heavily leaned towards chocolate, which I love, with a really big gap - no tiramisu, no cheesecake.

Despite that minor disappointment, there was a really wonderful dish called The French Pudding. Bright yellow sauce covering generous slices of bread with the crust on. The first spoonful hooked me in and I wish I'd had more space in my stomach for this one beautifully simple yet incredibly tasty dessert. It's more of comfort food than dessert though, something you must have after dinner when watching Sex and the City in your pajamas. However, I'd had too much to eat at lunch and was struggling with the hot chocolate pudding and other not-as-heavenly tidbits on my plate. The mousse-chocolate pudding combo was good, a sweet-bitter combination.

A saffroned chicken biryani, scrumptious and perfectly spiced mutton curry, subtly fried fish atop a neat slice of beetroot and citrus fruit, yummy and perfectly tender yet crunchable asparagus and prawn salad, good bread and a nice shorba were the other highlights of the buffet. All accompanied with a glass or two of Sula Champagne.

That was my wonderfully relaxed in the interim with crazy to-and-fro commuting from one end of Bombay to its outermost regions. I dont think this travel should be done by road, a train would've been much faster.

I also had fun on the Sunday that followed, coz the Saturday pretty much ended by sprawling on the bed watching TV endlessly until we slept - too bone tired to move except for a glass of milk as dinner. You just could not work up an appetite after what you ate at lunch, which should be more aptly called a Banquet.

I cooked with my husband on Sunday. We got chicken, some vegetables and this wonderful Thai curry (Red) sauce packet that we added a lot of coconut milk to and created a curry in less than half an hour. The chicken and veggies simmered beautifully together and we created other masterpieces of our own; I created masoor usal (made with whole lentils and lots of pav bhaji masala, chilli powder and onions) while my husband created his signature dish of sliced sausages sauteed with thinly julliened capsicum and long slices of onions well-browned on a non-stick pan. My mother-in-law made rice and my father-in-law came in to check we were getting on with finishing the lunch thanks to the aromatic smells that escaped into the living room.

After a long siesta, we got up to go shopping for my mother-in-law's belated birthday present. A few scary steps up this really good two-storied shop was a humungous selection of under 600 rs and over 1000 rs sarees. The sarees were really unique and beautiful. My MIL chose two and we went downstairs to pay for them, happily getting a discount.

We shared a chicken burger, fries, coke and had a Softy ice-cream each before we took the bus back home. We spent the rest of our Sunday night battling Monday-morning blues and stuck on to the telly.
:)