The Bhojan

I am cooking here almost every day. So far done with aloo matar, gobi aloo, bhindi, dal chawal and hakka noodles 🙂

However, yesterday night felt like having some Indian food not cooked by me! So went to ‘ Cuisine of India’.

Neat place this. Started off with Tandoori (yum!) Paneer and then to make life easy, I just ordered for the ‘vegetarian bhojan’ (the first picture above).  It comprised of spinach tomato soap (not in picture), nan, rice, gobi aloo, palak paneer, dal makhni and dahi wada! Everything tasted awesome and of course, they were playing Bollywood music in the restaurant 😉

The ‘bhojan’ had big portions and so the next time, wise thing would be to share it. I got the palak paneer boxed! For lunch today 🙂

Misty Love

Finally I am free from Cola! Well, sort of at least 😛

I totally love this Pepsico product – Seirra Mist. It has a nice refreshing flavour and a sort of sweetness which feels good. I had this first at Culver’s on a day I was feeling sick and this felt good to drink and since then I’ve become a fan! 

Also, just for your knowledge, the restaurants here serve unlimited drinks. Meaning you pay like $2.99 or something close for a soda and you can have as much of it as you like! Not really a good practice or is it?! 

 

Coffee Crisis!

Being a heavy coffee drinker, I am having a tough time with I-dont-which-coffee they have here! 😦 I have tried the two in the picture above and they are far from coffee we know. The Pampa one in fact has big granules, almost like our Bournvita and it tastes like it too. Told you far from being a coffee!

Got the Maxwell House one yesterday and made a cup this morning. So disappointed again! I don’t know what to do with these now!

I was warned about coffee-not-being-coffee here and so I am carrying the biggest Nescafe packet but I left that at Bloomington last week and I have almost a month to go before I can get hold of it again. Damn! I tried but tea isn’t working out for me

Last night I got this Frappuccino. Not too bad. At least if not a fresh cuppa hot coffee, I can have some bottled cold coffee! It is the coffee as we know it!

Cheers!

I love Pancakes!

I love pancakes! 

Sunday breakfast was buttermilk pancakes with blueberries and cappuccino at a local breakfast place ‘Biscuits’. They serve  4 pancakes in a plate and that is a alot of food! I could eat only half and the other two will have for lunch today 😛 

Oh yeah, and ‘parcelling’ the food is called ‘boxing’ it. So you ask the waiter to get you a box and you then pack it yourself! 

Queen of the West!

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‘Queen of the West” – one of the many nicknames given to the city of Chicago!

Yesterday’s agenda was the famous Chicago deep dish pizza and for that we headed downtown. 

To begin with it was a hot day and so we couldn’t really enjoy watching the beautiful skyline but still managed a few pictures of it. Chicago boasts of the the three tallest buildings in US – the Willis Tower (formerly known as the Sears Tower), the Trump and the Aon Tower. Lake Michigan was pristine blue spotted with white yachts and speeding boats. There were people swimming while some just sitting around with a book or having family picnic. Overall, the place had a happy vibe 🙂 

From there, we moved for our lunch-dinner at about 6pm to Lou Malnati’s for the deep dish. It was bloody awesome! The tomatoes in particular were so juicy and tasty – Roma tomatoes! Also, wasn’t carrying my passport with me and so couldn’t have my Corona. When I decided to share it with my friend, the bartender there snapped at me! Jeez, that was embarrassing with people at bar turning to look at me.. arrrgghhh!! And then when I just  HOLDING the bottle while my friend got me a Cola, a woman told me I couldn’t even do that! That was it – I did not even look at the bottle after that! 

But the pizza was good!

And that is the Trump Tower at night. Pretty, isn’t it?

PRETTY! PRETTY! PRETTY!

Bloomington, Indiana

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Last week Saturday drove down to my home for the next two years – Bloomington, Indiana. I will be starting my graduate studies in the Department of Telecommunication at Indiana University (IU) this fall. 

Bloomington seemed to me like a small happy city! It has a population of about only 80,000 (source: wikipedia) and I could roughly divide it into three main sectors – the university campus, the college mall area and the residential colony. The shifting was a bit tedious but a visit to IU soon after was rejuvenating! Extremely beautiful campus and I even saw the classrooms of my department. Cannot wait to start!

Thrilled! Excited! Happy! Anxious! 

 And again, my mobile battery died as soon as I reached the campus so not a lot of images from there. Oh and the campus arboretum is very close to my department building! You can imagine now 🙂

My favourite part of the campus is this red clock 🙂 

More updates from IU once I shift there next month! 

Downtown Naperville

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Yesterday evening, after an early dinner at 6.30pm, we left for Riverwalk in downtown Naperville. On my way saw some of the finest and biggest houses with perfectly mowed lawns and pretty flowers. They made for such a lovely scene! I should have clicked some of the them!

Riverwalk is this sort of a community space, where people come for evening walks and just to chill out. Most of them carrying ‘Red Mango’ cups. However, I didn’t feel like anything cold yesterday so skipped it. Sometime later maybe.

In the slideshow above, there is a picture of a sculpture of a girl reading a book and a boy upside down on his hands. That is outside the Naperville library. It looked real neat from the outside, stacked with rows of books and brightly lit. Will visit sometime soon. Possibly, can try a Red Mango then.

And there is this sort of make-a-wish fountain, where you make a wish and put in a penny. I made one too!

We walked around the town till about 9.30 pm and it was absolutely gorgeous with colourful, pretty restaurants lacing the roads. It felt real good simply just be there! Also, my first Starbucks happened yesterday and I cannot possibly describe how good it felt to be sip that strong, hot coffee. My first coffee here!

I guess there are going to be a lot ‘my first’ happening for at least sometime here!

Night and Day

Just to explain the previous point I made about late sunsets. The first picture was taken at about 7:00 pm and the second one at about 9:00pm.

So now you know what I mean?!

Oh and by the way, the first one is of outside the house and the second one is at downtown Naperville. 

First typical American meal

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My first typical American dinner happened at Culvers – a veggie burger (awesomely tasty!), seirra mist and ice -cream again! But I messed up with the experience because I was feeling sick. Probably it was the gas.

The thing is sun sets here only by about 8.30 pm and I have been conditioned to understand the dinner time by the absent sunglight! So I keep waiting for the sun to set to have my dinner but then 9pm gets a bit late for me given that my day starts early by 6am, lunch happens at 12 and so dinner should be done by 7pm. Its taking some time getting used to the idea of not looking outside your window but at the clock to know if it dinner time yet!

The good thing about late sunsets is you get a feeling of a longer evening (sort of, in terms of the sunlight) to do whatever you want to — I have been supermarket crawling for the past three days!! Phhheewww..

We all scream for Ice cream!

Tuesday night we went for an ice-cream to Oberweis, a local outlet here. We reached there at about 9.30 pm and the place was buzzing with people and we had to wait for almost 15 minutes before we could get our table.  This is the first place here I have seen so many people together! Most of them Indians 🙂

I had a chocolate fudge and the whipped cream in particular was lip-smacking! Oberweis have their own dairy and so all their products are fresh and made in-house. Going on my favourite list soon!

Oh  and they have chess boards too, to enjoy your ice-cream intelligently I guess!