Tomato Mint Salad

Well, I'm getting ready to run into The Big City to meet a friend for lunch, and as I polish off the last of the Tomato Mint Salad (which sometimes has cucumbers in it) I find I must add the following: don't let it marinate for more than six hours. It gets too soupy and the mint loses its flavor. The fact that I'm eating it now--at 9 in the morning on a Saturday--is not a testament to my thriftiness or its good taste but rather as example of how, when you don't have a garbage disposal and your toilet is temperamental, you will occasionally eat something rather than toss it in order to avoid lugging a big wet garbage sack full of drowning vegetables down three flights of stairs. Plus, as my mother points out, it's practically calorie-free, and I now have carte blanche to eat anything I can afford for lunch. Yippee.

I'm going to Inner Mongolia later in the week: with luck, I will have some good recipes to share. I'm working on some from Northern India and Western China--notably the naan I ate after a cab driver almost killed us because he insisted on showing me pictures of his Chihuahua on his cell phone while barreling down a highway at full speed, the men in the backseat (British, Australian, and Yank) screaming in terror--but they must wait. I am determined to get my false eyelashes glued in place and perhaps a foot massage before the sun goes over the yardarm. Or whatever.