A Most Relaxing Day—Lunch with Friends, Afternoon Shopping for Foodie Buys

Thursday, September 12, 2024

Somerset, New Jersey

A Most Relaxing Day—Lunch with Friends, Afternoon Shopping for Foodie Buys

We took it super easy today. After the hectic itinerary of the past few weeks, it felt so good to do nothing but relax, chat with old friends, worry about excess baggage on our return to India and generally get ourselves into Return to India Mode.

We slept very well in our private basement apartment at our friends, the Masuds place. They are usually very late risers themselves (unlike us), but they seem to have made the effort to wake up early to get breakfast organized for us—super kind of them!

So, after a hearty brekkie with our friends’ (fried eggs with baked beans, buttered & toasted croissants and decaf coffee), Llew and I spent the morning packing our suitcases and taking stock of the amount of weight we still have at our disposal for our last-minute shopping. The things I had mail-ordered and had delivered to Ghazala’s place have also arrived (Ina Garten’s book, “Modern Comfort Food”; Grapefruit Cologne by Jo Malone—this after I purchased a bottle of Anais Anais Perfume by Cacharel from Toronto’s duty-free shop; a pair of Teva sandals in olive green—since I live in sandals in Bombay and love the pair I already own). They needed to be accommodated in our bags—not to mention the vast amount of food shopping we will do at the last-minute for cheese, smoked salmon, meringues, dark chocolate Florentines, etc. from Trader Joe’s. Llew is starting to sweat bullets about excess baggage!

Azra Joins Us for Lunch at the Masuds’:

Our friend, Azra, then came to see us and stayed for lunch. Ghazala and Imraan put on their regular hospitable hats and served us a feast. It was all just delicious Indian home-cooked cuisine: dal, kheema, chicken with spinach, stewed okra, roti, rice. We had a lovely time catching up together as we are all old friends who go back at least 35 years together to our first tentative immigrant steps in the USA when we all lived close together in Queens, New York. For dessert, we enjoyed vanilla ice-cream with lichees.

Shopping for Last-Minute Buys:

After Azra left, Ghazala and I went shopping. We had sensibly decided to leave the bulk of our shopping for our last days in New Jersey. However, we did not strictly adhere to that resolution. As and when we found the things we wanted (no matter where we were—whether in New York, Connecticut or Canada), we had picked them up. This was a good thing as it gave us a great idea pf how much space and weight allowance we had left for more purchases. So we began at Trader Joe’s for the aforementioned foods, then moved on to Shop Rite for smoked salmon cream cheese, then on to CVS for Crest Whitening Strips, Marshall’s for Lazy Susans for my kitchen cabinets and that was it.

A Casual Dinner at Home:

We were home in time for dinner—another wonderful spread of Indian cuisine (a welcome change after all the Continental food we’ve been consuming). We had a long, catch-up chat as we had the pleasure of prolonged time with our friends after absolute ages. Our chat was fun as we talked about really old times, our kids, their lives, their partners, their pursuits—all this over bowls of Deep Dark Chocolate Ice-cream by Turkey Hill with which Llew and I used to cram our basement freezer whenever it went on sale!

What a lovely fun day! It was extraordinarily fulfilling as we can ticking off all the items on our To-Do List as well picking up all the items on our To-Buy List.

Until tomorrow… Cheerio.