What got this started?

I like Indian food. I like to cook, which means I like the process of putting food together--it's essentially curiousity/love combination. I satisfied my curiousity a bit when I purchased a cookbook from the bargain shelves at Barnes and Noble called Indian in 6: 100 Irresistible Recipes That Use Six Ingredients or Less by Monisha Bharadwaj. The book was a bargain of the best kind. I don't usually like shortcuts, but in this book I got a feeling for the kitchen common sense of a woman with many roles banging out some stylish home cooking. Mrs. Bharadwaj lays out very user-friendly recipes while still using authentic ingredients. What was exciting for me, was that I could find these ingredients readily and locally. Turmeric took a little looking, but I found it both in healthfood stores and supermarkets. I found garam masala powder at an international supermarket (It was self-described as such.) in Astoria, Queens, right on 34th Avenue, not far from Steinway Street. I was looking for lentils to make dal and found myself turning to a woman from the Indian sub-continent (There are three major nations within it that are customarily pertinent to this culinary conversation: India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.) to ask advice. I thought to myself, this is pretty cool.

I found that this was the case for many ingredients, and half the battle with cooking is finding the ingredients. It's not just the abundance of fresh, authentic ingredients in Queens that excites me, but the eateries, from the most humble cart to the restaurants that cover cuisines I never thought imaginable. My wife and I rarely get a "date night." We work, go to school and have three wonderful children. My mother in the Bronx still works, and she's not exactly around the corner. My wife's parents and most siblings live outside New York State. However, when we do go out, it's not hard to find good, exotic, inexpensive food. The last place we went that met this criteria was a Burmese restaurant--one of the few in the state, let alone the country. Prior to this, we had gone to a restaurant which offered more than one ethnic type of food on the menu. Among the offerings were some Tibetan dishes! I ordered one, but I cannot remember which--I was too engaged in conversation with the wife, like a good husband. The total bill was a little over twenty bucks! What's even cooler is that there is actually a Tibetan community in the vicinity!

I learned this while eating my lunch in a playground in Jackson Heights--it was the only place with a bench where I could sit down and eat it. As I ate and took in the scenes, I noticed six boys, varying ages, sharing three bikes. The boys on the bikes would pedal around some while the unmounted boys would converse. After a few laps the bikers would swoop in and swap places. It caught my eye first because of the example of rather harmonious sharing, but also because while the boys were speaking another language, they did not look alike. Some looked more East Asian and others looked more Indian, so at one point I had to ask, "Excuse me, but what language are you speaking?" The answer was "Tibetan." These examples of the ethnic diversity of Queens took very little effort to find, and are almost taken for granted when you live here. That doesn't make it any less worthy of note.

P.S. I will update with names and locations later.