I'm going to say straight out of the box that the korma we had with dinner last night was from a jar. Let's face it, I am not an Indian housewife. I started dinner at six, the day was too glorious to go inside much before that, so I was not all day at the burners, stirring and tasting, but the Trader Joe's sauce tastes pretty authentic, especially after I added some cream. And let's face it, I didn't do number five either. That was from a box too. My friend Jon thinks I'm crazy to want to make paneer at all when there's perfectly good paneer to be purchased, and he has a point. At least last night he did. Still, I do want to make paneer. I'm interested in the process, one which sounds suspiciously like magic, but last night I just wanted paneer.

And, it turns out, I didn't want saag. To eat or to make. I wanted palak. There are some subtle distinctions between the two, and what I wanted was palak. To make and to eat. Sometime I'll tell you the story of the day we had saag (or was it palak?) at our Indian friends house because this dinner was really the night that started me on my quest to make Indian food. Maybe I'll save that for when I make paneer.

So I did make palak, and it was pretty good. For a first go, at any rate. Definite tweaking is in order, but the essentials were certainly there. You could say I was satisfied.

Neel's genes got all fired up, and he made tamarind sauce for us. Again, a near hit. More like chutney in consistency, and a bit tart for my taste. Part of that is Neel and his lack of sweet tooth, but at dinner he said, "The woman at the store said to mix with water and add four tablespoons of sugar, and it was still tart. I started to get nervous at the 6th tablespoon of sugar!"

I didn't sleep well last night, and at one point I woke up thinking, "Heck, these are Indians we're talking about, she probably mean four handsful of sugar!"

One down, eight to go.