To myself, on my 73rd birthday... *

* Eric wished me a happy 73rd birthday this morning... and while I'm inclined to believe his assessment of my age was an exaggeration, there is the remote possibility that I'm too old to remember my exact age...

It's been a quiet birthday here in Chicago... I was HOPING to maybe head out and see the new Harry Potter movie tonight, but my fellow Chicago-based Potter fans had other plans tonight (they probably didn't want to hang out with a 73-year-old anyway). Ah well, on to plan b -- Rick and I had been wanting to try a restaurant not too far from here called Vermilion, which is billed as an "Indian-Latin fusion" establishment. And I'm a sucker for anything Indian, so I figured my birthday was a great excuse to give the place a try. (Side note: Never walk a half mile in heels you've never worn before, no matter how "surprisingly comfortable" they feel when you first put them on...)

So I did my best to make myself look presentable, and we headed out in the 98-degree heat to walk to the restaurant. Seriously, you'd think those of us who lived in Texas for years would think nothing of 98-degree heat, but it is BRUTAL out there this week. And by the time we got to the restaurant, I'm fairly certain all my work to look decent was tossed by the wayside... I probably needed another shower... (such is the price of a July birthday... :))

The restaurant was really good -- I'd say it was about 85 percent Indian with about 15 percent "Latin" thrown in. We started with some artichoke pakoras, which were like battered, fried, slightly spicy artichoke hearts with some kind of dipping sauce. My horrible phone picture probably doesn't do it justice:

For dinner, I perused the menu and decided to go with something from the "dhaba fare" section. (I guess a dhaba is an Indian truck stop -- because when I think about good food, I inevitably think about truck stops in India. Or really, truck stops ANYwhere.) I got the pindi butter chicken, which was REALLY good (another bad camera phone picture):

The only thing that would've made it better was if it had been all white meat, since I'm not big on dark meat chicken, but it tasted great... I may have considered bringing home the leftover sauce just so I could pour it over rice or something, but I refrained from asking... Rick had the lamb shank gassi, which I tried and can honestly say was the BEST lamb I've ever tasted. Lamb isn't usually my favorite meat, but this stuff is apparently cooked for six hours until it just falls apart like short ribs. It was, however, more spicy than anything on the face of the planet. At least that's the idea I got from the way Rick was reacting to it... our server even brought over some kind of cucumber-yogurt sauce to help cut down on the heat, but by the end of dinner, Rick's stomach had eroded away... and then he said he'd probably order it again if we ever came back. (So either it was really good, or Rick is really reckless...) We also tried their chocolate cake for dessert, and even the DESSERT was spicy -- it came with a little scoop of blueberry sorbet on the side, which was useful for tempering the heat of the chili-chocolate sauce on the cake... yuuuuuum.

So all-in-all, a very good birthday dinner... although I just realized that even though I had that chocolate cake for dessert, I didn't get a big birthday cake that will last me the rest of the week... I should've made one for myself. But it's probably best that I didn't... we 73-year-olds needs to watch what we eat... :)

Not TOO bad for a septuagenarian, right??