I guess I’ve never done a food review on this blog (judging by the fact that I just had to add a “Food” category). But my coworker this morning pointed out that maybe I was born on the wrong continent when we were discussing where to go for lunch.

“I was thinking India Direct. Or maybe Lentil Garden,” I said. That’s when he made his comment. I responded that no, maybe I just chose the wrong continent to be vegetarian on. But luckily the Indians came and saved me from baked potatoes and salad bars.

I work in the “Silicon Forest”, the western suburbs of Portland, Ore., home to major Intel and IBM plants and offices. There is a pretty good-sized South Asian population here, and a handful of Indian restaurants. Some great, some okay, some, eh, not so great. India Direct is my default lunch destination, for reasons I will describe below. If you’re ever in Beaverton, be sure to stop by and check it out. India Direct is actually a grocery store with a lunch counter in the back.

I describe it as a lunch counter, but it specializes in vegetarian “chaat”, or snack foods. Don’t be put off by that, though; these are some serious snack plates, different from what most Americans think of when they think of Indian food.

My favorite is aloo tikki cholle, potato patties fried on a griddle, smothered in cholle (garbonzo bean curry), two kinds of chutney and topped with shredded daikon radish and cilantro. An alternate version of this is available, samosa cholle, which has two samosas (deep fried pastries filled with potatoes and peas), smashed and smothered in the same manner.

Another favorite of mine is the Masala Dosa, a crepe-like roll-up of spicy potatoes and onions served with chutney and a bowl of sanbar (soup). They also do a special “crazy chaat”, a cold dish with chips, potatoes and garbonzos smothered with yogurt and chutneys.

Hungry yet? I’ll keep going. A favorite quick meal after playing lunch-hour hockey is the cholle batura, which is basically fry-bread served up with cholle and Indian pickle.

If you’re really hungry (and you’d have to be to not be satisfied by the samosa cholle), you can get one of three thali plates. The all-India thali includes cholle, dal, the vegetable of the day, roti (bread), rice, raita (yogurt) pickle and desert. The regular thali has dal, veg of the day, raita and pickle. The sadhu thali is just dal, rice and yogurt.

Sounds good, eh? But the real treat is the price. All of the “chaat” items are under $4.00. Add a cup of chai (tea), and you’re well-fed for under $5.00. That’s unheard of these days, unless you’re talking fast food. And this is some quality stuff, cooked up before your eyes by Lisa, a very talented and friendly Mexican woman.

She doesn’t speak much English (or Hindi, from what I’ve heard), but she speaks Indian food just fine. Some days she makes an extra spicy sauce, and will add it to your dish. Be careful of this. I love spicy food, but she’s got a hidden sadistic streak. “Spicy?” she asks, smiling innocently. Spicy is an understatement. (We’ve had some awkward conversations in Spanglish about Mexico and the fact that her special red “chutney” is really a Mexican style red sauce.)

The proprietor knows me by name, and is always friendly and welcoming, which just adds to the list of reasons India Direct is my workplace cafeteria. Wacky Mommy gets jealous of me always eating this yummy food, so I bring it home for dinner quite a bit. The only thing I don’t like about India Direct is that they’re closed on Monday. Monday’s are tough.

Appetizer
What do you consider to be the ultimate snack food?

I’ve really been getting into the fried Indian salty snacks lately, but man are they bad for you. So I guess you can’t call them the ultimate snack food. Instead, how about carrot sticks? Low calorie, high in soluble fiber, and sweet and tasty.

Soup
On a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 as highest), about how popular is your last name?

According to namestatistics.com, it’s on the low end, probably a one or two.

Salad
Who is your all-time favorite sitcom character, and why?

Considering I hate sitcoms, er… well… Barney Fife. Don Knotts was a comic genius.

Main Course
Do you shop online? If so, name some sites you like to browse for goodies.

Yeah, sure, especially for hockey gear, since there are only a few shops in Portland that sell it (for ridiculous prices). I’ve got a list of about a dozen hockey shops where I compare prices, but it most often comes down to HockeyGiant.com. It’s that or drive up to B.C., which isn’t exactly a day trip from Portland.

And, of course, I shop at Left Coast Hockey to test the goods I’m selling to support this site.

Dessert
Fill in the blank: I think ___________ should be ___________.

I think coffee should be strong and black. I also think George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should be frog-marched out of the White House. Skate blades should be sharp. Ice should be hard and smooth. Education, housing, employment and access to health care should be considered a basic human rights. Lord Stanley’s Cup should be in Canada, not in Anaheim where nobody gives a rip. Marijuana should be free and legal. Dogs should be leashed. Children should be loved. Gardens should be nurtured. Public education should be fully funded. Food should be spicy, fresh and healthy. Art should be passionate. Life should be lived as a work of art. That is, life should be lived passionately.

Have a great weekend.

I was raised by two English majors, so you’ll have to cut me some slack here. I’ve always been a stickler for proper speech. There’s a time and a place for colloquialism, and lord knows I use it in my speech and writing.

But there are some verbal ticks that just really bug me. I’ll see if I can come up with 13.

1. “Yeah, no…” I’m not sure where this came in, but it’s a meaninglessly self-contradictory interjection used to start sentences in conversation. I hear it all the freakin’ time at work, and it drives me nuts. I worry I’ll start using it. Maybe I already have.

2. “The thing is, is…” I’ve even heard the variant “The thing was, is…”

3. “I mean…” This one I hear all the damn time on NPR when a news anchor is talking to a reporter. It’s the new “you know,” I guess. The irony is, is, I mean, it has no damn meaning. Okay, fine, use it in everyday speech. But if you’re on National Public Radio? I mean, Come on!

4. Upspeak. This is when topic sentences? or clauses? are inflected as questions. It’s residue of valley girl talk, and as the valley girl generation has grown up, it’s become common in adult speech. I think of it as a solicitous tick, as in “Are you listening? I think I have something to say?” Our local NPR affiliate’s morning anchor does this, and it drives me crazy.

5.”Uh.” Practically everyone says “uh” in everyday speech. No big deal. But when the Secretary of State of the United States of America can’t speak a single extemporaneous sentence without uttering it, I cringe.

6. “…for Jack and I.” Or the equally jarring “…for Jack and myself.” For whatever reason, nobody wants to say “Jack and me”. Me is a proper object, people, I can’t emphasize this enough.

7. This one’s common among stewardesses for some reason: “If you do need to leave your seat, we do ask that you do buckle your seat belt when you return.” We ask that you do omit needless words.

Okay, I guess that’s all I can come up with off the top of my head. Apologies to the Thursday Thirteen crowd for punking out early.

I watched the last 18 minutes of the Stanley Cup Final last night, and watched Ottawa sputter to a 6-2 game 5 defeat. All told, I watched probably six total periods of the series. Am I a bad hockey fan? Maybe. But I just couldn’t get behind either of these teams. As in the past two Stanley Finals, I defaulted to rooting for the Canadian team. (Yes, this year was déjà vu all over again, with a southern US team beating a Canadian team.) But unlike years past, the US victors didn’t win me over with veterans like Carolina’s Rod Brind’Amour or Tampa Bay’s Dave Andreychuk, or with hot (relative) youngsters like Cam Ward or Brad Richards.

Sure, Anaheim has the Niedermayer brothers, and Teemu Selanne finally gets his name on the cup. But they’ve also got serial head-hunter Chris Pronger.

For me, the whole series comes down to what happened in game four. I was already having a hard time liking Senator’s captain Daniel Alfredsson, when at the end of the second period he whipped a slap shot directly at Ducks’ captain Scott Niedermayer. It was clearly intentional, and completely absurd.

Sadly, the highlight of the series came just after this ugly affair, when intermission report anchor Bill Clement hosted Don Cherry of “Hockey Night in Canada” fame. Cherry took the opportunity to go on an extended rant about how the NHL is making a “big mistake” by reducing fighting in the game, and if they want to save the game they need to bring back the rough stuff. Cement-head co-host Brett Hull piped in with his own troglodyte idea that visors should be eliminated from the game, and that fighting is the most “honorable” part of the game. He said this a few times before changing it to “honest”. Somehow or another, the avuncular Clement managed to keep a reasonably straight face through all of this.

Of course, this all goes back to a discussion on this blog a while back. There’s an assumption (not shared by our neighbors to the north) that the game is in trouble, and something must be done to save it. There’s the “old time hockey” school, led by Don Cherry and his ilk, who maintain that we need more blood to sell the game. Then there’s the Gary Bettman approach of expanding into the southern US, where the ponds don’t freeze and most kids don’t have the opportunity to play the game.

Both approaches are way off the mark, and both are based on the faulty assumption that hockey should have the kind of broad appeal all across the US that basketball and NASCAR have. It never has, and it never will. It will always be a niche sports market, and I don’t see a problem with that. Hockey is best watched live, and it thrives on home-town tradition and local rivalries. Hockey will never be in crisis in Canada or in the Midwest and northeast United States. If it’s in crisis in Nashville or Dallas or St. Louis or Washington D.C., I don’t give a shit.

But I digress. Let’s put a wrap on ’06-’07 by saying anybody who was on the fence about the game of hockey and tuned in to see Alfredsson’s antics at the end of game four’s second period, followed by Cherry’s and Hull’s rants, would find it hard to take the game seriously. Maybe it’s just sour grapes with me, since my favorite, the Sabres, were eliminated in the conference finals. But I think this is a particularly ho-hum year for Lord Stanley’s Cup.

How many months till hockey season starts?

Appetizer
Name something you think is “the best.”

This world, of course, is “this best of all possible worlds” (“ce meilleur des mondes possibles” cf. Voltaire’s Candide).

Soup
On a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 highest), how stressed are you today?

Considering the dental work that started my day, I think I’m down in the <5 range right now.

Salad
What kind of cleanser do you use to wash your face?

I use Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint all up and down.

Main Course
Tonight is a blue moon! What is something that you believe only happens “once in a blue moon.”

I win at ping pong.

Dessert
When was the last time it rained where you live?

Last week some time.