ஐநூறு - A Celebration of Adequacy

I'm not one to draw unnecessary attention to this blog (follow us on Facebook!) or reflect back on any of our past posts (follow us with Google!) but I think it's worth mentioning that this is our 500th post.

That's right, this is the 500th post since we started blogging our dinners over three years ago. That's a pretty big accomplishment. Even though 400 or so of these meals probably weren't even worth mentioning and the other 100 were only moderately interesting. If nothing else I have to admire my own compulsive, misplaced discipline.

So I only really realized last night (when I noted it was the 499th entry) that tonight would be the 500th. I got home around 7:30 PM and Jen was working quite late so I wasn't really sure what to do with this 500th entry. Should I write an entry to reflect back on the last 499 entries and bore you all to tears? Should I create an elaborate multi-course meal and bore you all to tears? There really were an unlimited number of options.

What I decided was to do exactly what I was going to do for dinner tonight anyway. Given that I didn't really have any interesting ingredients around it's barely worth blogging about, however, it does pad my numbers nicely.



I slowly cooked some onion and potato in what I like to call "the lazy man's ghee." Basically that's just melted butter that I haven't clarified because I don't feel like it.

In the freezer I had the leftover lamb leg meat from Easter. I cut that into chunks, tossed it together with the vegetables, then poured in some ready made Tikka Masala sauce and simmered everything for about an hour. After the potatoes were tender I added some remaining frozen okra and green peas then served a few minutes later over some cooked white rice.



I wouldn't have really had a beer with this meal but I figured it was the 500th entry so I owed it to myself (and my fans fan mom) to have one. What better than another Belgian ale from For beer Brouwerij Van Steenberge that my parents had brought over for Easter? It would be a perfect accompaniment go the lamb (also from Easter).

Traditionally one would pair a lager with Indian food. The theory is that foods like Indian are so flavorful that you want a really neutral beer to accompany them. My theory is that that's all well and good but wouldn't it be much more fun to have a beer that was actually good on its own. It turns out I was right!

I think I'm at a point in my life now where I don't really ever need to have another lager again. Then again, who knows. My tastes and preferences are always changing. Maybe in the distant future I'll be tempted to have a lager again.

So the 500th entry on this blog is nothing special but it is touches on a lot of the themes we've developed over the past years: eating dinner at 10:30 PM, Belgian beer, using up a bunch of stuff from the freezer even if it's not really what we want to eat.

For that reason this entry is probably the most average representation of everything that's lead up to this point.

Maybe by the 1,000th post we'll have finally cleaned out our freezer while enjoying a lager.