Food , food and more food

I am not a foodie in that sense, usually I don't pay attention to food and make eating part of some multitasking act where I watch TV and eat without experiencing the 'food'.   But after starting to try cooking by myself I realized how difficult it is to create something good or at least palatable . There must be some magic behind this !  and so far I figured out only one of those magic tricks - to have your meal with the people you like.  Still trying to learn the other tricks.


However, being shameless, annoying and shamelessly annoying, I keep taking pictures of foods, (and sometimes make others to take them for me, )specially whenever I have something new, I mean different from the ones I tasted before or from different countries.  Restaurants serving dishes from different countries not only have different food and cooking style, they also vary in decoration, serving style and cutlery.  I feel that we Bangladeshis are not so careful about decorating our cuisine or how we serve them, may be because it tastes and smells sooo good and is served with sooo much love, 'looks' don't matter at all :)  But I was impressed by the design and decoration of the the Japanese sushi restaurant near to my school.  I forgot to take the Thai restaurant in China town with nice decoration but they also had nice interior.

The jumbo shrimp and stuffed chilli at the in Mexican restaurant Mango's Grill were delicious and the Pho [noodle soup, the one I had had beef on it] I had this week in that Vietnamese place was nice too. I am trying to keep track of these different food experiences and their names, wish I could write a book like Hemingway :) but for the time being I am happy with blogging.   

Arlington's Bangladeshi restaurant was a treat to my soul , they even serve Brain Curry ! But being raised in a family where every women is a great great cook , I think my expectation raised so high that I cannot actually love any Bangladeshi food if it is not cooked by my mom, or aunts or grandma.  I wish I had taken pictures of the 'Kheer' my grandma used to cook.  How could  I not realize then that all good things come to an end !

Wait..it was supposed to be about food and taste, ... focus Shopa, focus ... Ok, I am back, so speaking of food, I tried to make Jilapi at home 3 days ago , spent 3 hours on that, burnt my fingers, made a mess out of my kitchen and finally the 'thing' that came out was something that looks like earth-worm, the taste was not that bad, but nothing like Jilapi, so may be I can claim that I invented some new dish and give it a new name. Next mission: making Halim, but this time I won't take any risk by starting from the scratch, I would rather buy some halim mix and then try to make something human-edible.