Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

this is how my day goes:
7am: Alarm goes off. Snooze.
7:10am: Alarm goes off. Snooze. (repeat)
8:30am: Finally drag myself out of bed.
8:35am: Shower, brush teeth, general toiletries stuff.
10:30am: Leave for uni.
12pm: Start full day of classes.
5pm: Oh shit it's the end of the day and I haven't eaten OR checked my email.
5:05pm: Check email, start hunt for vending machine/caffeteria on campus.
5:30pm: Drive home.

Of course, if it's a Friday or a weekend when i don't have uni, but so have work it's more like:
4am: Alarm goes off. Get out of bed.
4:05am: Shower, brush teeth etc.
4:45am: leave for work.
10:30am: oh shit I've finished work and I haven't eaten OR checked my email.
10:35am: Drive home.
10:45am: Check email, start hunt for food in cupboards....

Am I the only person who does this? Does this make me a bad SE-er???

Lord help me if the day ever comes when I feel the need to check email before I do anything else. I'd say that's like the first thing I do when I start my work day, but working comes after all important things like snoozing, stretching, urination, hydration, coffee brewing/drinking, breakfast eating, lunch making and packing, outfit picking out and putting on, makeup applying, teeth brushing and driving to work.

fantastic! raced to the kitchen, found most ingredients on hand, no tomatoes or cilantro, this time, substitued prepared sweet curry, garam marsala and muchi curry for time available...added a tablespoon of butter with the canola, as little as possible.. Yummy dish...

serve with basmati rice with golden raisins and toasted almond.

I couldn't get garam masala, and I don't have time to make it from scratch, so I am going to use a Madras curry powder. I'll have to see how it goes.

Indian food can be time-consuming, but I recently began doing the following which has saved me loads of time, allowing me to prepare an Indian dish for a weeknight meal very quickly. I buy garlic in bulk, peel it, food processor it, flash freeze it and store it in a zip lock bag in the freezer. I do the same thing for ginger. Then, to make most Indian dishes, I just have to chop and brown onions and I can just break off a small piece of frozen ginger and frozen garlic. My mother freezes already browned onions as well, which would save even more time.

Mahanandi is a brilliant site and an incredible resource. Thanks for reminding me about it.

Leaving for Safeway(only store in town)where would garam masala be?and what is it, not familar with Indian food but this recipe sounds so good. Not even sure what Channa masala means!!Anyone out there that can help...Thankyou, coco

There are two ways to thicken chana masala -- add a little heavy cream (yum), or, as sloppydelicious suggests, crush some of the chickpeas. We often remove a portion and whiz it up with a stick blender.

And yeah -- more tomatoes! Those should also be crushed or blended at some point.

If you crush a few of the chickpeas with the back of your spoon, it releases their starch and thickens the dish.
I tried this last night (plus a few more tomatoes and a cilantro garnish) and it was fantastic.

just to be clear, fay da is inside lunch box buffet, not the other way around.

this is ed's site...the real hoi polloi hang out on the national serious eats site...for a snack you guys should go over to manganeros hero boy a few blocks away..

Fay Da is one of the finest (if not the finest) of the Chinese bakeries. I'm not surprised that they even turn out a 5-for-$5 buffet well. However, I'm astounded that readers of this gourmet site will eat steamtable food, no matter how eye-appealing. Maybe it's just me, but between concerns about others (esp. teeming 34th St. area) sneezing on the food and the fact that it quickly becomes dried out the idea sends shivers of terror down my spine.