Next up was Friday Book Club, and as we were reading a book based in India, Indian food was the theme. I'm the only one in my house who loves spinach, and hoping there would be left-overs, I had offered to bring the creamed spinach and cheese dish I always start with at the Indian buffet -- saag paneer.
So Friday comes and I go to a great Broad Ripple Indian restaurant we love, wondering how to order this dish, which is generally a side. We always eat in when we go there, and I had zero ideas about the actual quantity I needed, let alone whether they had an adequate take-out bowl to put it in.
Here's where not wanting to admit I had difficulty with the waiter's accent came back to bite me. He quite rightly initially assumed I wanted lunch, then thought I wanted to order dinner carryout.
I explained that I only wanted enough spinach to feed a party of eight as part of a pitch-in offering. Oh, and while I was at it, I might have an appetizer, too, also enough for eight.
We were having a great conversation. Everyone was happy. He asked if I also wanted Naan -- the bread they make on premises. I declined, saying another Book Club member was on Naan duty. "It's a pitch-in," I said, again, thinking that explained everything.
"You'll need rice, then," he said, clearly worried about me not having Naan. Shalimar's Naan is amazing and he was aright to wonder why I was skipping it.
I thought, "OK, sure," and pictured our Chinese carry-out which always has at least one white carton of rice.
"Soup?" he asked.
Their lentil soup is also amazing. "Sure," I thought. "I'll skip bringing wine and alert Kate so she can adjust if need be."
He tells me it'll be ready in 25 minutes and off I trot to the other errands on my list. I go back to the restaurant. He greets me with two bags, one medium-sized and one small. I'm thrilled. He says he'll help me carry it out.
I'm sure I looked at him funny. From the Book Club book, I've learned a little about traditional Indian culture, which is heavy on the man being charge. But I can carry two bags. And then I see the rest of my order.
The spinach was in a 9x3 aluminum pan. If my math is correct, that's at least 12 cups of saag paneer. A nutritionist will tell you that a serving of saag paneer is 3/4 of a cup.
That pan of yummy goodness was big enough to roast a Thanksgiving turkey if you're feeding a family of four. And with it was an equally sized pan of rice.
I had apparently indicated that our dinner of eight was vegetarian and that we would be eating only spinach, rice, soup and vegetable samosa. And that "pitch-in" meant I alone (other than the phantom Naan supplier) was feeding this small army of anti-carnivores.
I swallowed hard, smiled brightly and handed over my credit card. The overage was entirely my fault for not just owning up to the language/accent barrier. So, I had saag paneer for lunch. And then I had more at Book Club. I have a couple tubs in my freezer, too.
Later that night, I was in bed shielding my ears from the angry shouting of my intestinal tract and wondering if you could die from spinach poisoning. And if I did die from it, would I be found in a puddle of green ooze? Was there a green-tinged cloud of noxious vapor hovering over me already?
Turns out spinach can, indeed, be toxic. It's the oxalic acid that'll do you in. The interwebs told me, it would take about 25 grams of oxalic acid to cause death in a 145-pound person, which is about 7.3 pounds of spinach.
That's about 14 bags of grocery-story spinach, right? Cooking spinach greatly reduces its size, so what does 7.3 pounds of cooked spinach look like, I wondered. Plus, saag paneer has other ingredients in it, so after much internal anxiety, I decided I'd probably survive the night. Spoiler alert: I did.
But at 2 a.m., I wasn't as confident as I am now. It's possible I prayed not to wake up dead. And that any residual gaseousness wouldn't do in the Captain.
This morning, all I can hear is Popeye's song ringing in my head. If you run into me this week and I say, "Well, blow me down," in response to your news, don't be surprised.
"I'm Popeye the sailor man.
I'm Popeye the sailor man.
I'm strong to the fin-ich
'cause I eats me spin-ach,
I'm Popeye the sailor man!"
In Alison news, we are still in the college exploration stage. She's been accepted at a few schools already so we know she'll be going somewhere. But she has a few more interviews with fancy schools to go and then the wait for whether she'll go farther in their process.
If you happen to get a call from an Ivy League school looking for intel on the redhead, don't tell them about this blog.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment