a trip to india

i am going to attempt to make indian food this weekend. i think i'll start tomorrow and see how far i get, having the next three days to finish it up. scott has turned me on to indian food and i now have a achari murgh monkey on my back. but it's too expensive to eat out all the time, so i thought i'd try my hand at it.

the hardest part about ethnic cooking is finding all of the spices. this particular recipe calls for the following:

mustard oil
tumeric powder
funugreek seeds
fennel seeds
cumin seeds
whole cayenne peppers
onion seeds
mustard seeds

the first place i thought i'd try was cost plus. they had my tumeric, cayenne and fennel seeds. no problem. then i tried to find a few more places i found online, but to no avail. so i had to venture on over to devon avenue. for those of you infamiliar with devon avenue, it is like going to another country. going to several other countries, actually. it houses shopping and businesses from india, pakistan, israel, random middle eastern countries. it's amazing. and intimidating for those of white non-heritage.

but i braved it and found almost the rest of my spices. the most ironic part was searching through shelves of bagged spices while led zepplin was playing over the sound system. but i got a ton of stuff at a fraction of the cost i would have paid at a chain grocery store, if they were to carry fenugreek. the one spice i am without is onion seed. i hope it's not a pivotal spice.

anyway, i'll be working on the ventilation of the kitchen and i'll get back to you about my latest project. now if you'll excuse me, i need to empty my purse of tumeric before my iPod starts smelling like curry. mmmmm....