Five recent tastes.

1. Tonala tequila. My sis got this for me for my birthday. It comes in a neat squarish ceramic container which is painted white with blue sunburst patterns around the top and sides and which will probably turn into a vase after the tequila is just a sweet but distant memory. I've only had one shot so far, but it's very smooth-drinking, much better than the only other tequila I've had, Jose Cuervo (not suprising). This tequila is labeled "anejo," meaning it's pure agave tequilia that's been aged in small oak casks for one to four years. (There are also two other types of pure agave tequilas: respado, which is aged for a few months, and blanco or "white," which is bottled without aging; as well as the cheaper "mixto," which is a combination of fermenting agave juices with other sugars and water.)
2. Abita Purple Haze. I've decided I'm more of a beer fan than a wine fan, mostly because it's a lot cheaper. The Abita website describes Purple Haze as "lager with a subtle purple coloration and haze, a fruity aroma, and a tartly sweet taste," which I'll go along with. The Abita brewery is Louisiana-based, so I was worried that they would be gone with the wind, but they're still around and apparently holding Katrina benefits for their unfortunate compatriots.
3. Butternut Squash with Shallots and Sage. I haven't been cooking very much, as I've been very busy with school and teaching and visiting home, and then this weekend I will be going to New York. Here's a recent favorite side dish, though. Butternut squash is really tasty and pleasingly colorful. I prefer to get the kind that is already cut into 1" cubes as it's miserable hard work cutting a whole butternut squash into small cubes, especially with the crappy $10 knife that I've got. Anyway, if you have any other butternut squash suggestions, I'm all ears.
4. Tamarind Bay. Mr. D and I went to this Harvard Square Indian restaurant for my birthday. For an appetizer, we had lamb liver with some spices; I have no idea which ones, but they were tasty and interesting. It was the first time I'd had liver, and I decided that I wasn't that crazy about the strangely smooth texture of liver and the somewhat off-key taste. Who knows, maybe it's a taste I'll eventually acquire. For our entrees, he had tandoori salmon with yogurt sauce, while I had lamb meatballs with pinenuts in a curry sauce. I'm not sure why he ordered that salmon as he doesn't like yogurt too much. In addition, tandoori stuff, taste-wise, always seems a little boring to me, and this was no exception. I liked my dish okay but it was a little too salty, like many of the other dishes we had. (And I spend too much time thinking about the price of the meal while eating, which detracts from the experience; my entree, for example, cost more than $4 per 1.5" meatball.) For our bread, we had rosemary naan; the rosemary stuck like pine needles in our throats, so we couldn't even finish it. For dessert, which was my favorite part, we shared a condensed milk dessert, which actually turned out to be spongy patties in a sweet yellow broth (possibly a mango/coconut combination??) which I happily slurped down after the patties were gone. I've been reading rave reviews of this place for ages, but we were kinda disappointed. Everything was fresher than at most restaurants, but the tastes were too dry or austere for our palates.
5. Bo Bo Cha Cha. No, not a strange ballroom dance of some sort, but a Malaysian dessert with yams in coconut milk that Mr. D and I like to eat at Penang, along with Pulut Hitam, a rice pudding made with black glutinous rice. It reminds me of che, a favorite dessert that my mom makes at home. Che is basically any sweet Vietnamese soup, often made with various kinds of beans like mung bean or red bean. Here is a fairly typical example.