TWO WOMEN IN TWO NIGHTS

D was out of town this past weekend celebrating his dad's 70th birthday (Happy Birthday Hugh!), and I was a little terrified at the thought of sleeping at the Congo by myself, what with extended families of ferocious and odiferous creatures running around in our backyard. So I decided to have some good old-fashioned sleepovers, and spend some quality time with my girls Alex and Sara. Maybe it's a little unorthodox to have sleepovers when you're almost 35, but that's how I roll, and the ladies were down, their respective husband and boyfriend all atwitter with perverted images of us pillow fighting and running around the house in our skivvies. Men.
Anyway, Friday night Alex and I went to Dosa, the South Indian place on Valencia. This place has been heavily hyped since it opened last year, and it still gets really crowded, so we got there at the senior citizen-friendly hour of 6pm. No wait. No crowds. Nice.
The food here is good, and the service is above par. The "fire broth" soup was a bit disappointing at $4 for a small bowl of what seemed to be *not spicy enough* tomato broth. But what do I know. The dosa made up for any letdowns though. A dosa is similar to a crepe and filled with various mushed up delectables, like creamed spiced potatoes and cashews, which is what we got. You rip off a piece of the dosa and scoop up the filling with your hands, then dip the handheld package into tomato or coconut chutney, or sambal, which is a smoky lentil type sauce, and my personal favorite. It's messy and you better have clean hands, though they do provide forks just in case. We also got a sprouted mung bean salad (sounds weird and healthy, but is delicious and healthy), and some onion pakoras, which are like Indian onion rings! We left pleasantly full, but not in need of unbuttoning our pants, and we were ready to find out what The Secret was, since Alex had a bootleg copy of the Oprah-endorsed self-help fad of the month. We made fun of the horrific cinematography, genies with man boobs, and general cheesiness of the whole production, but agreed that it couldn't hurt us to have more positive thinking in our lives. The attitude of gratitude! Even I'm a sucker for catchy catchphrases.

My hot Saturday night date was with Sara, and we roasted up a free-range chicken, made mashed potatoes and asparagus with some spring garlic that I got at the Farmers' Market. Sara said she could make gravy out of anything, and she was right! Just look at her working those honey and chicken fat drippings!
We nurtured our spiritual sides with some ice cream, a few games of Yahtzee and we were sleeping like babies by 10:45pm. Not quite like the sleepovers I had when I was 13, when we stayed up all night watching MTV and practiced kissing techniques on our own arms, but I'm thankful Alex and Sara stayed over, and I didn't get attacked by the Zodiac Killer, which might've happened if they weren't there!