The Gulf Freeway to Morocco

We went downtown to the Moroccan restaurant last night...... we met K & B and we celebrated my birthday. Thankfully, celebrating twice in one week doesn't make me another year older. We had all gone to this restaurant back in early December, and it was just delicious-- which was why it was my choice for second visit.

We ordered a family-style dinner for four, and for each course, they brought out four plates of four different menu selections. Four soups, four appetizers, four salads, four main courses, four desserts. So many different flavors.... raisins and onions cooked with the meat, onions and peas cooked with the fish, prunes and carrots cooked with the lamb, chick-peas and acorn squash sauted with couscous...... and small plates filled with fresh fruits, grilled eggplant wedges, tender salmon slices. We had enough left-overs to fill up three to-go boxes, and once again, K & B insisted that we take them home. (I didn't taste any of the meat dishes, but there was more than enough there with the shrimp and and the fish.)

K & B brought me a beautiful Pashmina shawl from their recent trip to Egypt, which was my birthday gift. So soft and warm, and such wonderful colors-- purple and gold with touches of brownish-black. I put it over my shoulders when I opened the package and then didn't take it off the entire night.

During dinner, we talked about the two books on the Middle Ages by Ken Follett--- K & B and I decided that Follett needs to write one more book, and fill in the years between the first volume and the second one. For right now, the three of us are have had enough of the heart-stopping stress of the knights and priors and bishops, and we're on to other books. I'm reading "The Care and Feeding of Books Old and New." I just started it this morning, but it promises to be an interesting book.

The sun is out today and it has warmed up-- really warmed up to where it should be at this time of the year... more like summer than spring. (There is a weather god after all.) The house, however, is still a bit on the chilled side. Which shouldn't surprise me, since it has been soaking up all that cold air for the last three weeks. The cats are out on the screen-porch, sleeping in the patches of sunlight, and I'm in here with two sweaters on. Maybe I should be sitting in a patch of sunlight myself.