It all seems to be about blood this week.

So instead of telling yet another blood story, I'll tell a fun food story.

It's fairly obvious that, even if you live in a big town, there are a limited number of places that will deliver food after about ten pip emma. (Unless you're in, like, New York or Sydney or Tokyo or Montreal, which are laws unto themselves.) It's also obvious to anybody who's seen the neighborhood that there are an even smaller number of places that will deliver to Sunnydale after dark. Seriously: You Do Not Want To Walk Across The Street To McDonald's Once The Sun's Gone Down.

So, when a coworker and I got the munchies the other night, we were temporarily at a loss. He said, after some discussion of what we might want to have brought in, "Just let me handle this, okay? You like Thai food, right?"

Saying I like Thai is like saying the ocean is moist. I don't know what half of it is, I can't pronounce the other half, but I like it and I like it hot enough to bring tears to my eyes and make my nose run. So Coworker got on the phone and, after a short discussion in Thai with somebody on the other end, hung up with a satisfied look on his face.

Turns out he lived in Thailand as a kid. Turns out he has a buddy that runs a little takeout joint that nobody's ever heard of. It also turned out, once the food arrived, that nothing he'd ordered would ever be found on the menu of your average Thai takeout place.

There was roti (which is a weird kind of stretchy, speckled, unleavened, absolutely addictive pancakey bread) with curry sauce. There were broad, flat noodles with green curry and little shreds of meat and enough spice to make me cough. There was a...I don't know, a *something* with rice and coconut, in a sauce I'd never tasted before with basil leaves in it, that combined subtle perfume with homicidal heat. And for sweets, there was rice with coconut and...something, and canteloupe with basil and coconut and...something else.

Apparently this was Mom's home cookin', Thai-buddy style. With a little Malaysian influence and maybe something else thrown in.

I ate all of it. I have no clue what most of it was. I even hoarded some of the leftover rice in order to pour leftover sauce on it for a snack at three o'clock. It was some of the best food I have ever had, delivered in boxes by a very small, rather worried-looking man who spoke not. one. word. of English save "Thank you!"

It's a damned shame for my tastebuds that I don't work with that particular nurse more often, but it's a very good thing for my waistline.