I've just arrived home after a lovely evening of dinner and DVDs with my Mum. The dinner was fish and chips (or in my case, a vege burger and chips) and the DVD we watched was a couple of episodes of early Poirot, starring David Suchet.

But the excitement that my blog post title refers to was in regards to a new local shop that we discovered this evening while waiting for our chips ...

An Indian grocery store!!!!

To put this high level of enthusiasm in context, you need to know two things:

(1)  Tim and I *love* Indian food! Years ago, when I lived in Canberra, I did a 12-part course on Indian vegetarian cooking. It completely changed the way I viewed Indian food and ingredients. I learnt about spices and how to use them, I learnt about everyday Indian cooking (not just restaurant dishes), and I learnt to make things from scratch that I would have only bought pre-made beforehand (curry paste, paneer, garam masala, etc). Although other food infatuations have popped up along the way since then, we still love Indian cooking, and the basics that I learnt in that course have been invaluable. And Indian banquets are still our favourite fare when we throw a dinner party :)

(2)  We live in a really white bread part of Melbourne. I grew up in the north-east, and that's where we returned when we bought our house. For the most part, we really like it here. Tim wishes it was closer to the water (he has to drive a long way if he wants to take the boat out for a day of fishing). My pet peeve is the lack of cultural variety. It's about a 20-minute drive to the closest shops that specialise in foodstuffs from other cultures. That's like torture for a foodie!

So - a new Indian grocery store is in town, and I think it might be the first *ever* out our way. If my kitchen wasn't already so well-stocked, I would have gone nuts buying dals and spices! As it was, I limited myself to one giant can of gulab jamun (yum!). But I'll definitely be going back there again, and again, and again ... :)