On Wednesday, D and I had dinner at Amaya with my friend M at Amaya. Amaya is truly an amazing dining experience. It is really unfortunate that there are no high end Indian restaurants like this in the US, I'd move in permanently. The concept of Amaya is that it's a grill and the food is meant to be shared. This is not your curry place - the three different grills they use are a tandoori, over coals and on a tawa - a large iron griddle. The kitchen is open so you can watch them prepare everything - it's pretty cool to watch. We started with this gigantic Madagascar prawn (they loved it) and then had the goat cheese stuffed mini peppers along with some naan and sides. The naan is the best here - it's perfectly cooked, nice and thin but fluffy in a few spots. I hate naan that is really thick and chewy, it's too filling. The condiments they give you for the naan and dishes are a plum sauce, crushed dry peanuts, crushed dried coriander and tomato. Next we had the quail - now the only meat I eat is red meat - from a cow - chicken, turkey, etc., are revolting to me - but last time I was at Amaya, one of my dining companions had the quail and I tried a bite of it and liked it - so I ordered it for our table. Don't like bird, don't like quail - but this is melt in your mouth, pass out good. I think they way they prepared it was in the tandoori oven - the secret has to be the marinade which was apricot, vanilla...and that's all I could figure out. We then had these finely diced sweet potatoes served with a tangy yogurt and tamarind sauce whisked over the top. Our final dish was an asparagus biryani with some dal..probably the only thing on the menu that you'd find in a typical Indian restaurant. So by the end of the meal, we rolled home.
On Thursday, one of my co-workers had a garden party at his home. All of the people in the London office are just fantastic - I am very lucky to have such a nice bunch to work with but also socialize with at night/weekends, etc. This includes the spouses/significant others. Usually, the last thing one wants to do is go to an after work function, but I had been looking forward to this since I arrived, and I certainly wasn't disappointed. When I think garden party, I think deck of some sort and of course I wore high heels. This was actually in a garden, in the grass so I had keep moving or my heels would sink into the grass. Apparently, this is sort of good for the grass as I was aerating it. 
Being the city girl that I am, I was mesmerized by the bumble bees doing their part for the environment having a good time with some lavender. I have never seen this live before and I know that right now, my mom is up in heaven laughing her ass off at what a complete dork I am. (Mom grew up on a farm and liked to tease me at my lack of experience with nature)
Thank goodness for YouTube, you can see this for yourself.
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