Taj Palace, Tulsa, OK

No wonder I'm back into my "fat clothes." Just got back from a lovely dinner with my friend Chad at the Taj Palace, and nearly three hours after we ate, I'm still absolutely stuffed. Chad, who was raised Methodist, fancies himself some sort of variety of Buddhist these days (mostly to annoy his parents) and has decided to be a lacto-vegetarian, not so much out of religious commitment, but more to be "unique," I think (and he won't eat eggs mostly to annoy me, I think!). Anyway, there are limited places in Oklahoma which can handle vegetarian food, so I chose Taj Palace, since it's owned by a Hindu family and it's one of my favorite Indian places in town. We asked the owner to choose our menu, so she picked a lovely, well-balanced meal that started with vegetable samosas and big steaming mugs of chai. When our main courses arrived, we got kadhai mushrooms, which was button mushrooms spiked with coriander and crushed peppers, yellow daal (the lentil dish), and my favorite, a vegetable malai kofta, consisting of spherical crouquettes of ground mixed vegetables and cheese stuffed with nuts and raisins in a tomato cream sauce, all accompanied by herbed basmati rice and both regular and garlic naan bread. After all that food, we couldn't even think about dessert!