Why Has The Rasam Gone?

The above reference is for this friend, to whom I owe a thousand apologies because I am currently here, on my blog, instead of visiting her for the weekend.

However, life intervened, as it does. Finals Week at my university was typically insane, what with the grading and the testing and the *frink noise*...

And then, due to unexpected and unfortunate circumstances, my roommate had to move out of the apartment. In two days.

She, unlike me, is the sort of person who "has stuff;" so we spent the past two nights staying up and having conversations like "I need to cut this pile of CDs from 500 down to 200; which ones do you think I should keep?"

We ended up filling a 15-ft. moving truck with her belongings (the two of us, each weighing in at around 115 lbs, lifting and moving and hauling all of her furniture and books and the 200 chosen CDs). Getting the truck was hassle enough, as we went down to the local place at the right time only to learn that the truck we had ordered had never made it, but there was another truck available at the neighboring town an hour's drive away, if we wanted it... and it ended up being a four-hour trip, as we managed to get lost en route.

Anyway. The point of this story is that I haven't yet made rasam. (The truth is, though, that I did try, just a few days after writing this original post, and the result was so disastrous that I told no one but S. It had to do with the fact that tomatoes were expensive and a can of tomato paste cost forty-five cents. The tomato paste ended up spattering the entire kitchen as it boiled, and the "rasam," if it can even be called that, was gooey and salty and inedible. But I ate it anyway.)

But I hope to get another shot soon, as I start my temp job on Monday, and prepare to assume the role of "that strange new girl who always brings the weird lunch in her Tupperware."*

On the other hand, since my community is diverse enough to sustain three (competing) Indian groceries, perhaps one of my officemates will be able to give me cooking tips.

And (*sigh*) if anyone is looking for a place to stay, I am in need of a roommate.



*When I temped in Minneapolis, I was definitely "the strange new girl who always brings the weird lunch in her Tupperware." Particularly because in those days, I couldn't cook. I still remember one of the full-time employees coming into the breakroom and looking concernedly at my baked potato and "soup" combination (the soup being little more than a bouillon cube dissolved into water).

Those were strange days, though. My supervisor at that job once gave me a sweater, under the guise that it did not fit her anymore, though I suspect it had something more to do with my own ill-fitting clothing. My officemate, on the other hand, kept trying to get me to do her teenage son's homework for him, because, as she explained, "I was smarter." Strange days.