always outnumbered, never outgunned

I went to work today, was astonishingly productive, and then came home to make dinner for my friends. Before making dinner, I went back to the tapas place that I went to last night; I discovered that they have a small grocery store attached to the restaurant, open only during the day, which sells chorizos, various Spanish ingredients, cheeses, wines, etc. This was perfect, since I needed chorizo for one of the soups that I was making. I was also able to buy one of my favorite tapas (spinach and garbanzo bean spread) in bulk, and apparently got carried away since my friends ate approximately half of the pint-sized container. I will have to go back there--they also have tapas cooking classes occasionally, which would be a lot of fun.

After procuring my chorizo, I came home and slaved away over a hot stove for a long time. Actually, there wasn't a lot of slaving, but there was a lot of stirring. I made ceci bean and chorizo soup (ceci bean = garbanzo bean = chickpea) for the non-veg crew, and potato/leek soup for the veg crew. The only problem with the ceci/chorizo soup is that if you use dry beans (recommended), they have to soak overnight, and then they take ~2.5 hours to cook, which makes it hard to make after work (and is why I left work early). However, it turned out absolutely delicious, and gave me fond memories of that epic wine tour of Sonoma that I engaged in with Ritu and Maneesh oh so many years ago--I got the recipe from one of the wineries that we stopped at (and at which my friends proceeded to 'accidentally forget to return' their tasting glasses, sigh). I'm guessing the potato soup was also good since I heard no complaints and it was almost gone, but I focused my efforts on the ceci/chorizo since it's been 2.5 years since the last time I made it. Also, as a double bonus, I got to use my fancy immersion blender with *both* soups, so I was in heaven.

I was basically done cooking by the time the first people arrived, and we quite enjoyed family time--Oniel, Adit, Zach, Sri, Peder, and Claude all came, as well as Sri and Adit's friend Katrina, who Adit claimed was one of our 'cousins' in order to make her fit in with family time. We watched some ridiculous show about a crocodile finder named Rom--he was looking for the world's longest crocodile, and he was measuring them in 'Rom units'. A rom unit is six feet, because Rom is six feet tall. That mean's I'm 5/6 Rom, which sounds much better than 5'. Also, after everyone else left, Claude, Adit and I played Worms on my Nintendo DS, which is about as old-school and family-time as it gets for us. It's been seven years since we used to sit around my computer playing Worms (or since I would get home from class only to be told by Adit that I needed to study elsewhere because he was busy playing), and it's nice to know that some things never change.

Now, though, I'm desperately in need of sleep, and I have tons to do at the office tomorrow. Sigh. I am also beyond needing to do laundry; even my infamous months-deep underwear supply is running low, so the situation is becoming critical. Hopefully I can fit it in tomorrow night, but we shall see. Goodnight!