Lucinda Williams was in fine form last night at The Vogue. She looked great sporting dark hair and sounded absolutely impeccable. If you're Googling this in another city wondering if she's worth seeing live, she absolutely is. There wasn't a lot of in between songs chit-chat, mostly she just told us the name of the song and sung it beautifully. Buick 6 did a great job backing her up and really got the place rocking, especially near the end with fantastic renditions of Come On, Honey Bee, and Joy. She finished the encore with It's A Long Way to the Top (if you want to rock and roll). We don't know if other people consider her at the top but we do and last night she certainly proved that she can rock and roll.

While we love the facade of The Vogue, and we love that it is still there, we can't say it is our favorite place to see a concert. The combination of general admission and limited seating isn't for us but, for Lucinda, we were glad that we went.

We love it when a birthday celebration turns into a month-long event. Mrs. WYA!'s b-day isn't until late this month but the presents are already rolling in- yippee! Did you know that Schweppes (the folks who make, among other things, a great ginger ale) makes lip balm? We didn't either but Mrs. WYA! received this too cute glamorous gold tote with 3 Schweppes lip balms inside; tonic water, grape, and ginger ale lip balm. She would no doubt be carrying that in her purse as she shopped the oh-so-chic stores in the Shop America book she also received. The book is filled with photos of real mid-century stores and gorgeous renderings of what could have been- swoon.

Summer Recipes... Chicken Curry Wraps

This is one of our big favorites when the weather turns warm. As usual with our recipes, it's easy as well as tasty.

2 cooked chicken breasts (bake your own use grocery rotisserie chicken)

1 and 1/2 cup fat free yogurt

3 tsp curry powder

1 tsp fennel seed

1 tsp Dijon or grainy mustard

1 handful coarsely chopped almonds

Just cut up or shred the chicken to bite size pieces and combine all of the ingredients. Then spoon some into a tortilla wrap and enjoy.

Sunday morning combo...

...listening to Adele and reading a Pearls Before Swine book. (the Pearls link is to creator Stephan Pastis' blog which has a funny video on it- we love this guy and his work!)

This was posted at Anyetsang's restaurant that we went to in Bloomington and we just loved it.

The Paradox of Our Age

by The Dalai Lama

We have bigger houses but smaller families;
More conveniences, but less time;
We have more degrees, but less sense;
More knowledge, but less judgment;
More experts, but more problems;
More medicines, but less healthiness;
We've been all the way to the moon and back,
but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor.
We build more computers to hold more information to
produce more copies than ever but have less communication.
We have become long on quantity,
but short on quality.
These are times of fast foods but slow digestion;
Tall man but short character;
Steep profits but shallow relationships.
It's a time when there is much in the window,
but nothing in the room.

We naturally have strong cases of wanderlust but, when we hear foodie authors Jane and Michael Stern (the folks behind the great website Roadfood.com) talk about their new book, 500 Things to Eat Before It's Too Late: and the Best Places To Eat Them, we really want to toss obligations aside and rent an RV for a few months to take an eating tour of America.

Anyetsang's Little Tibet Restaurant- Bloomington, In

When we were in Bloomington several years ago, we ate at the Snow Lion restaurant because we had never tried Tibetan food. On this trip, we decided to give the other Tibetan restaurant, Anyetsang's, a try. We ordered the Cho-Cho with tofu and the Sha Sha Mo Mo. The Cho-Cho was a dish of noodles with vegetables and small pieces of tofu. Maybe it was because we ordered it mild (#1 on a heat scale of 1-5) but there just didn't seem to be a lot of flavor.

The Sha Sha Mo Mo were six plump dumplings stuffed with chicken, onion and spices and served with two dipping sauces. One sauce was the standard soy, the other was a red sauce that was fairly hot. The first dip into the hot sauce was the hottest so don't shy away after the first bite; you do warm up to it, so to speak. The dumplings were just the right size for an energizing lunch without feeling stuffed.

The lunch entrees come with a lentil soup or salad. Since the AC wasn't on, we opted for the salad which had a refreshing ginger dressing.

All and all, it was nice enough but we weren't overwhelmed by the place. It's was hard to not have diners' regret when we walked along 4th Street and saw so many other interesting restaurants (especially when we spotted a sign for a place that had a Vietnamese buffet!).