a little seedy

A couple of days ago I visited Hicksville. 43 miles (69 km) towards the city on the Long Island Express Way. I was on a shopping mission, but not for a cowboy hat, as the locality might suggest. My mission was to obtain spices. In order to expand our regular diet away from pasta with red sauce, an eastern Long Island staple, I had to travel. Over the last decade or so Hicksville has established itself as a centre of Indian culture on Long Island. If you want to buy a sari, colourful Indian sweets or coriander seed, Hicksville is the place (the only place?). My exploration of the main road included shopping at three different stores, and I am sure there are more. One of them, Patel Plaza, is a fully fledged supermarket, with an entire aisle of lentils and related things, and another of rice. All in massive bags of course. My newly aquired spice collection suddenly expanded from the previously aquired pepper, salt, crushed chilli and bay leaves to include coriander, fennel, fenugreek, nutmeg, black pepper, cloves, mustard and cumin seeds, ground cinnamon, tumeric, paprika and amchoor, and cinnamon sticks. Anyone for curry?