Siam Terrace

Monday morning Joe and I returned to the dingy coridors of Gregory Hall and visited with some of our favorite journalism professors. After our heads were filled with inspiration and ideas, we headed to Siam Terrace, the best Thai restaurant in town, for Panang Tofu and Java Chicken. This time they had a salad with a very fresh tasting grated diakon dressing. We also ordered fresh spring roll... it didn't have much of interest inside, but the thick dipping sauce more than makes up for it. Also, the tender rice wrapper was just right.
Siam Terrace employs a pepper system in its menu:
1 pepper = beginner
2 peppers = intermediate
3 peppers = expert
4 peppers = Congratulations! You've become Thai

I've only ordered 1 pepper dishes... which compare to Toy's Thai Kitchen's spicer dishes. I've got a long way to go in training my taste buds to speak Thai.

After lunch we swung by Art Mart for gourmet cookies for the road. Unfortunately, we inhaled the chocolate chunk pistachio and chocolate chunk cookies too fast to photograph. Joe has interviewed the owner of the Urbana store, and says they use a special process to chunk the belgian chocolate for their cookies. I'm guessing the ratio of chocolate to dough is close to 50/50.

Pauls

Sanjana Paul is 3 now, and a sweet precocious little girl. Still just as photogenic as she was when I took her portrait for my photojourn class last year. We stayed with Alina, Satnam, Alex, Prema, Sanji and Daniel for one night on our trip.


Alina and Prema made a delicious feast (of course!) and then proceeded not to eat very much of it themselves. The naan and aloo gobi were delish. Joe and I brought papad, chutney and samosas from Basmati, our favorite date night restaurant in Champaign.
Get a glimpse of the elements we encountered on our wintry weekend getaway.

ISR

After the Lord's table meeting, we tromped from the Union along snow-covered sidewalks to ISR. I'm posting my virtuous salad, but got full on turkey, bacon and dressing.
Our end of the table was talking about Chitzenitza and the Mayans... as Alison had just spent a semester researching them, and the Tans had gone to the Yucatan for a family vacation.
The other end of the table was having an animated discussion on picking out good cantaloupe.
"You thump it?"
"No, you shake it to hear if there's juice inside."
"So you don't tap it?"
"Squeeze it to see if it's soft."
"I thought you were supposed to smell it."
"No, look at the circle. If the circle is big, it will be sweet."

Tans

We arrived in Champaign (actually Mount Zion) on Saturday just in time for lunch. Evangeline Tan warmed us with some vegetable soup and pot stickers. She didn't really want to be in the picture though! We had a nice afternoon of fellowship and in the evening, we learned a new game: Sequence. Girls team won!! Woo-hoo!

Looking back

I was hunting for a sweet potato oven fry pic and I came across these photos from our old apartment in Champaign. The top two are from a night during the school year when our "small group" got big.


This is from a summer night when all the leftovers (grad students and families) from various small groups met together. We're all eating Lily's strawberry shortcakes. Good memory.

Most who know me know I'm not much of a people person. That's what I've got Joe for. But I LOVE to have a house full of people. I like feeding them (and letting them feed me.) I like to let them just take over. Hoping that I can have that in my weekly routine again sometime...

Red Herring

I heard from an old classmate that the Red Herring, a vegan cafe in the basement of the Unitarian Universalists on the east side of U of I's campus and maker of the most divine cornbread, might be closing. Is it true? Does anyone know?

A quick walk from Greg Hall, this place sustained me with soups: creamy ginger pumpkin, spicy mint pea, and chunky veggie stews among the most memorable. They also had extra hearty hummus sandwiches. The chickpea spread was dense, made all the more delicious with golden oraganic tomato slices and tender lettuce. It was sad to leave Champaign's only vegan restaurant, but it's an even sadder prospect that I may never enjoy the Red Herring again.

Watching squirrels eat apples just about always cures a bad mood for me.

I took these photos today near the corner of White and Wright, on my walk home.