Monday, September 25, 2006

Revisiting Old Favorites

While the restaurants in Cleveland are quite good, we miss some of our usual haunts in Dayton. This past week, I had the opportunity to dine at two of them. On Thursday, I had a little spare time & planned to go have pad Thai or Massaman curry at Ban Thai in Beavercreek. Their food is wonderful & they are really friendly. Sadly, when I reached the parking lot, it was completely full! I figured that there probably wouldn't be any tables, so I drove on into Kettering for lunch at Ajanta India, my favorite Indian restaurant. Their parking lot was also full, but I finally found a spot. After I got parked, I happened to notice that the license plate of the car in front of me was Evvi's mom's. Evvi & I have enjoyed many Ajanta lunches together & I ate there with them when Garnet was one week old. We spent much of that meal just staring at her darling little face as she slept. I went in & surely enough, Evvi was there, having borrowed the car for a lunch with her friend Laura. I have met Laura before & really know her best as Queen Elizabeth, who she has played at the Renaissance Faire. I had some wonderful chicken tikka masala & an even better time listening to Evvi talk about spinning & Laura about her toddler & watching Garnet daintily tip ice out of my glass with a spoon. She is cuter than ever before, just a lovely girl at 2 years old.

On Saturday, we got to have dinner at Los Mariachis in Xenia, one of my favorite Mexican places. Boot just loves it there & has had his birthday dinner there more than once. He invariably orders chicken quesadillas, while Pie usually gets a cheeseburger. A travesty! Oh, well, we went there so often for a while that he got burned out on soft tacos. We took my grands out for dinner. My grandmama had a tamale, my granddad chose an enchilada & burrito combo, my Beloved had enchiladas with a beef tip sauce on top of them. I always have a hard time choosing there because they have so much that is good. This time, I got the chile verde, pork chunks with a delicious green sauce. This is served with rice & beans. I always think I'm going to have room for flan or sopaipillas, but that rarely happens.

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