Samosa

[KB.]

**Some of these stories will have people mentioned that will make little to no sense to people here, and even though that takes a little away from the story, i is the same story regardless.**



Samosa

I wonder if it is scientifically possible for a man to disappear. I don't mean disappear like some of us want to do, that kind of disappearing means you are still there, just not anywhere anyone knows about. I mean go poof, fade away, implode. Vanish into thin air. I seem to be the control subject for the test cause I'm making an attempt to do just that. Sucks I ain't really trying to. It has to slow down eventually, has to. If it doesn't there won't be anything left. It has me worried; I don't worry a whole lot, at least not about myself. I feel fine most of the time. Wonder where all of me went? I had a Philly steak and cheese hot pocket, five home made tacos, two bags of peanuts (spicy), a big ass chicken sammich with a ton of chips, and a bag of hot popcorn tonite, and I bet you a damn dollar I weigh less tomorrow than I did today. Enough of doom, black clouds and possible huge tape worms. Maybe a story about killer armadillos or about this old haunted house I used to drive by. Maybe both, I'm finding myself unable to sleep and I've got an hour or more till my clothes are done in the wash and dryer. Probably won't be about either, I'm a little weird like that.

I guess I could tell Crissy about that Krispy Kreme story. Here goes. I have zero use for a donut, I can't eat them regardless; my pancreas don't work worth a damn and all of that. It doesn’t work at all actually. Funny enough donuts played a big part for me in Houston, two different situations though. I'll talk about the crazy one first, crazy because of who was involved in it, that Peruvian chick, the Krispy Kreme delivery guy, and me. All three certifiable. I met this woman at Bar Houston on a Friday and she had moved herself in by Sunday. I didn't argue. I've told plenty of stories about her, and it ain't my fault if you haven't read them.

This story is going to be about a dozen donuts. This woman ate like no woman I had ever known, but she managed to keep a figure people have fought wars over. It was probably the multitude of prescription drugs she was on, either that or being crazy burns more calories than running a marathon. Might have been that plus something else we wound up doing three or four times a day. I'll not go into detail there. Good times. Somewhere along the second or third month we were together she wakes me up at four in the morning and says to me, "the Krispy Kreme guy will be at Kroger soon", I thought to myself what the hell is this woman talking about. I tried to roll over and go back to sleep, but she shook me hard, and said, (forget the damn quotation marks they are messing up my timing), she said, I told you the Krispy Kreme guy will be at Kroger soon. I looked at her and asked if that meant I had to get up and go to Kroger. She made it clear that was the case, and she told me she would go with me. I got dressed, she put some shorts and a shirt on, and we drove to Kroger; it was close, less than two miles away.

We met the Krispy Kreme guy as he wheeled the first load of gooey, holey, temptation inside to the bakery. She told him to stop, he looked at me, and I shrugged. She walked to the cart and looked the boxes over, finally picked one out and headed to the checkout. I just followed behind like a little boy lost.

We got home, and she proceeded to demolish four of the tasty treats, looked at me, burped, then ate another, and walked back upstairs. That left seven donuts. Plain, but glazed. I shook my head, ate a carrot, and went back to bed. When I got up for work I told my roommate, Greg, one of my oldest friends who I haven't spoken to now in over a year, that he could help himself. She didn't want anymore, they weren't fresh. Greg was a big guy, had a heart and I am sure still has a heart to match. He made it clear he didn't give a rat's ass how fresh they weren't and popped four in the microwave and ate them like it was his last meal. That left three, I left those there, I was sure one of Greg's pot head friends would enjoy it later.



Now this may not sound so crazy, yet, but this ritual was repeated every morning she was there, which was most mornings. Every single morning she would poke, prod, shake, or nibble me awake. I'd grunt, roll over and try to feign death, but it never worked and I always found myself shrugging at the Donut guy, his name was Tim, he had three kids, two boys and a girl, ages 3 to 12, he had been married for 16 years, and he was 41. His wife's name was Amy, and she was 36. He hated donuts. Around about the fifth week of doing this we got our timing down good enough that we met him outside and we would give him cash for the dozen donuts, saved us a couple bucks, and made him a few extra. By the second month we didn't even stop, we just drove by and he handed me the box without missing a beat. Smiled, waved, and shook his head. Tim was a good guy.

I'd catch him some mornings as he finished his rounds and we would talk a bit over some coffee. I wasn't supposed to be driving, had no license, but it wasn't far away. He asked me one day what in the world was going on with my woman and the donuts, and I told him I had no clue, I never asked a question about it. He told me I was probably better off not knowing. I left Houston late one night, packed my U-haul and headed out, no radio, long quiet drive. I left a dozen donuts by the door, told Greg to leave them be. I had a fourteen hour drive ahead of me; I boycotted Arkansas years before just because of the smell of the place, so I always went through Louisiana and Mississippi instead. I had a blow out in Breaux Bridge, home of Ali Landry (Google it), she of course was no where to be found, so I spent the night in a Day's Inn and managed to be just of course enough to hit Memphis right at rush hour, I called my folks as I got close to Milan, and asked dad to run to Chow Wagon for me and grab me some food. I wonder what Tim thought as the days and weeks went by and I didn't show up for my dozen. I went back to Houston to visit a few years ago, and I drove by that Kroger at four in the morning, saw a Krispy Kreme guy, but it wasn't Tim, and he didn't know a Tim. Glad he got away from those donuts. There you go Crissy, that’s the Krispy Kreme story.

Now for the other donut story, which had more of an impact on me, funny as it is. When I lived in Houston I worked at Circuit City, this was in 2000 and 2001. Circuit was still a commissioned based sales store then, and if you have ever seen the movie Forty year Old Virgin that is exactly how it was. Who ever wrote that movie worked at Circuit at some point in time. We would argue over customers, call each other the foulest names, and then make sure the other was still going to work our Friday if we worked their Sunday. I made some of the best friends in my life at that store in Willowbrook. There was Deb, she was from Memphis and even though she had lived in Houston for almost twenty years she still sounded like home. No one in Houston has a Southern accent, six million people in the city and they were from every where. Houston took over New York City as the most diverse city in the nation the year I was there. I loved the diversity, so many flavors. I saw Deb the last time I went to visit, and she hugged me then cussed me because I hadn't brought her any sweet potato pie from back home.

There was Amer, early 50's from Pakistan, and yes he always accused me of doing nasty things with goats. He was an awesome man, we would always greet each other in the traditional Muslim way, and he taught me that. We would shake hands and he would say "As sala'amu alaikum" (peace be upon you), I would reply to him with "walaikum as sala'am" (and unto you also, peace), forgive the spelling if it is wrong. He would make me go get his coffee at McDonald's next door, but would always buy my diet coke for me. We would go to the Chinese buffet and he would make me taste the egg rolls to be sure there was no pork involved. I'm digressing from the donut story, but I swear I will get to it eventually.

Amer, threatened to kill a man because of me once. There was a woman, probably about twenty three that was in the store one day, very attractive, Indian, yes from India. We were talking, laughing, I was asking about her and religion and how it affected her as a young woman in the states. We talked about her favorite traditional foods. She was vegetarian like most of northern India, and her favorite food was samosa, which was fried bread filled with boiled, mashed and fried potatoes along with a ton of other things. She admitted she ate fish, but no red meat, loved Chili's tuna steak. I used to eat those and think about that day.

Her name was Abhati, and we had been talking for two hours, you could do that back in those days at Circuit, no one was paying you an hourly wage, you made your own money. What we didn't know was that her Father had been observing us for some time, and he was not pleased. She touched my arm at one point in the conversation and that was his cue, he had seen enough. He rushed in, grabbed me by my collar, now I weighed a good two twenty then, but he was a big man, and had a few inches on me. When I looked at him that look that has kept me out of so much trouble must have been strong, because Abhati begged me to forgive her Father for being so rash, that was the word she used, rash. He looked at her and spat, once at her and then at me. Only thing was he spat at her feet, but hit me square in the eye. I was just about to make him pis(s) blood, but Amer beat me to it. He was shorter than me, maybe 5'6", so her father had a foot on him, and probably a hundred pounds. Amer though had been in the Pakistani army, and regardless of how many packs of cigarettes he smoked a day he was in good shape. He grabbed that mans arm tore it from my shirt, and had it wrapped around his back like a pretzel before I could blink.

He told the man some things in Pakistani, the man tried to argue and Amer leaned in and said in an almost whisper right into the man's face something that sounded terrible. The man's eyes got big, and he nodded his head. He looked at me apologized, and left, Abhati followed soon after, but not before she told me what Amer had said. I was curious, always am, and I asked her for a translation. She said the first was a lot of curses, and statements about my worth. She said that her father told Amer that I was a dirty American that would never understand, and that was when Amer told him that I understood far more than her Father did. That he trusted me with his life, and with his daughter's life (his daughter was a constant source of me aggravating him). Then he told him that if he didn't apologize he would see his blood on the floor, all of it. I never saw her again, and eventually the Chili's back home stopped serving those tuna steaks. Amer died from the best I could gather, throat cancer. I never saw him after I left Houston, talked to him on the phone a couple times is all.

Deb and Amer are the two I think about the most, two totally different folks, but wonderful in all the same ways. The person I think about after those two is Penny; this is where the donuts come in. Penny was in her late 50's ran customer service with an iron fist, but was everybody's Mom. She brought donuts for us every morning, and after a week or two of me not eating any she asked me why I didn't have a couple. I told her the reason why, and the next day she brought two extra donuts, plain, brown, just fried bread basically, but it had a nice texture, tasted great, and had little if any sugar in them beyond what was required just to cook them. That was one of the first times, hell it was the last time, someone I hardly knew took my health and well being into consideration when bringing breakfast to work. Penny and Amer both lost their jobs when Circuit dropped commission. They made too much money, and corporate big business had made the decision that it was just fine to get rid of good people for the sake of the bottom dollar. Circuit has hit the sh!@ hole since they made that decision, and I love it. They deserve it.

Just for the sake of it I'll tell a short version of the armadillo story. I think I've told it before so I will keep it real brief. One time at a rest stop in Shreveport; I chased an armadillo around for a good ten minutes. That armadillo finally grew tired of the games, stopped, and I swear let out an audible sigh. He then looked at my road trip partner and myself, and proceeded to issue forth from his skinny little maw one of the most terrible sounds I have ever heard and jumped ten feet towards me, teeth bared, and claws ready. I fell backwards amazed that this little beast was trying its best to rip my throat out. I looked at my friend and he chucked a rock at the armadillo, which turned towards him with those little ratty eyes gleaming. We ran like the devil himself was after us, jumped in the car and never looked back. I'm telling you folks, don't test the armadillos. It is five in the morning, the Krispy Kreme guy has came and went next door, and I guess I will go to bed now. I've got another crispy chicken sammich to eat sometime around eleven. Got to go see Mona, and the Muse let them know I'm fine.

KB

"The middle of the road is for yellow lines and dead armadillos"

~Jim Hightower

Samosa recipe:

For Cover:

1 cup all purpose flour (Maida)

Water to Knead dough

2tbsp oil

Little salt

1/4th tsp. Ajwain (optional)

For Stuffing:

3-4 Potatoes (boiled, peeled & mashed)

1/2 cup Green Peas (boiled)

1-2 Green Chilies (finely chopped)

1/2tsp Ginger (crushed)

1tbsp coriander finely chopped

Few chopped Cashews (optional)

Few Raisins (optional)

1/2tsp Garam masala

Salt to taste

Red chili powder to taste

1/2 tsp. Dry Mango powder( Amchur) (optional)

How to make samosa:

For Cover:

• Mix all the ingredients (salt, oil, ajwain) except water.

• Add a little water at a time.

• Pat and knead well for several times into a soft pliable dough.

• Cover it with moist Muslin cloth and keep aside for 15 minutes.

For Stuffing :

• In a bowl add mashed potatoes and all dry masalas (salt, chili powder, mango powder, garam masala) and green chilles, ginger and Mix well.

• Add green peas, cashews and raisins and mix well.

• Add coriander and keep aside.

To Proceed :

• Make small rolls of dough and roll it into a 4"-5" diameter circle.

• Cut it into two parts like semi-circle.

• Now take one semi circle and fold it like a cone. Use water while doing so.

• Place a spoon of filling in the cone and seal the third side using a drop of water.

• Heat oil in a kadhai and deep fry till golden brown (fry on a medium flame).

• Serve samosa hot with hari chutney, tamarind chutney.