Season for Change

Well, well...how is the weather where you are? Is it spring yet? The changing weather is the least news-worthy of things tonight. What do you say - would you like to see some changes on IFR? I know I would. I like change. Don't they say it is the only constant?

This is where I, Anita, will be blogging from now on. Manisha? A soon-to-be distant figure in the history of this blog. You can find her over there even though I think you should stick around here, which is where things will be happening!

Since I am very tech-challenged, I am going to leave the template well alone for now...First things first. So, first let me try to put 'food' back into Indian Food Rocks. That's what I am good at: simple recipes you can use everyday. No posts without recipes!

Next, I will fix the 'Indian' part. Authentic, traditional, genuine Indian. No fusion, no blasphemous stuff, no short cuts...The change from tradition will be restricted to lower fat cooking, so we can continue to eat healthier. So, no swimming-in-oil recipes. [I do have to work with Blogger though; oh! how I miss the emoticons!]



Let's get the conversation going; put on some tea! And get your aprons out - there's going to be lots of cooking here!

Conversations: The Real Meaning

So every once in a while, my husband likes to surf youtube for snippets from the ultimate Bollywood hit of the 70s, Sholay. He does have it on DVD but youtube must be more convenient since the DVD only seems to be gathering dust. Hmmph! Anyway, he knows the dialogs backwards and can recite them in his sleep, if he has to.

A few days ago, he felt the need to go down memory lane and watch Helen shake her stuff to the most famous song of all times:



Medha watched in stunned silence. Once the song was over and she had regained her composure, she asked her father: Daddy, now tell me the real meaning of Mehbooba.

The Last Bastion

Yeow.

That stinks.

What's that green stuff? It's disgusting.

What's cauliflower? Why is it yellow? That's just gross.

That has been the general response in the Finer Diner, the lunch cafeteria at school, when Medha opens her lunch box.

The disgusting green stuff is usually cilantro chutney or baby spinach. The result? She stopped taking chutney-cheese sandwiches – which she simply adores – for lunch. The stinky stuff? It could be cheese ravioli in delicious organic pasta sauce. Or it might be spicy red lentils. Yeow? For macaroni and cheese with a good dose of ketchup. And, yes, some kids don't know what cauliflower is. Being ostracized in the cafeteria, or having your peers tell you that your food is disgusting, is not the best place to be for a 3rd and 4th grader. Especially for one to whom retorts come much after the fact.

Soon, all she would take for lunch was a PBJ sandwich or a bologna sandwich or sandwiches with deli meats like smoked turkey, chicken or honey ham. The high sodium content in the meats bothers me as well as the fact that they are highly processed. PBJ, after a while, does get boring. Lunch boxes like these won't do either as we need the food to slide down the throat after having gone through minimal chewing action. Several times a month, I try to sneak in some Indian or spicy food in her thermos and the conversation later that evening is always the same diplomatic exchange: It was really good, Mumma! But it is more suited for dinner, don't you think?

The only Indian food that she will take willingly in her thermos is sans asafetida, turmeric, ginger or garlic. Yup, potatoes. Yup, Til Aloo. I call it the last bastion of Indian food in her hot lunch menu. It's very easy to make, does not stink, is not green or yellow in color and is not cauliflower. She takes a plain butter sandwich along with it.

Til Aloo

• 5-6 large red potatoes, boiled and cooled well
• 3 tbsp oil
• 1 tsp mustard seeds
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 tbsp sesame seeds
• 2-4 dried red chillies, broken into two pieces each
• Salt to taste
• Juice of half a lemon, more if you like it tangy

1. Dice the potatoes as evenly as possible into 1 inch pieces.
2. Heat the oil and add mustard seeds, cumin seeds, sesame seeds and red chillies.
3. When the seeds pop and crackle, add the potatoes and salt.
4. Mix well so that every cube of potato is coated with the tempered oil.
5. Cook over medium heat till the potatoes are crispy and have browned slightly. Mix in a folding action occasionally so that the potatoes don’t get scorched or burn.
6. Pour the lemon juice, mix well and serve immediately.

Notes:

• Til Aloo goes really well with Malaysian parathas which can be found in the freezer section of most ethnic grocery stores.
• The original recipe, from Jyotsna, requires the potatoes to be ¾ cooked. Sometimes the potatoes are just too new and once they have been partly cooked, they don't cook completely thereafter. It works better for me if I boil the potatoes the day before or several hours earlier. When cooled, they are easier to handle and dice into a uniform size.
• When I make this for a dinner party, I prefer to reheat the potatoes in a skillet to revive the crispiness and I add the lemon juice just before serving. Reheating in the microwave or oven is easier but you lose the pleasure of biting into those crispy bits of potato.
• The til aloo in the picture looks yellow because the potatoes were that color. No turmeric powder was harmed in the making of these potatoes.

We were discussing ethnic foods in lunch boxes with a friend earlier this week. Her daughter has it much easier this year than in previous years as there is a more international mix of children in her grade. Apparently, her Russian friend has had worse problems than she did. Now these girls make an announcement before they open their lunch boxes: I have Indian or Russian or Korean food in my lunch box. I think it is delicious and I like it. I am hoping that Medha will be able to muster the courage to do something similar. Until then, it's sandwiches that slide down the throat...

Other versions of Til Aloo that use the unmentionable ingredients that I cannot, but which make the potatoes very delicious, can be found here:
Ashwini's Ancient Spice - Til Aloo (and it looks like there are several copycats who have not credited Ashwini as the source for their recipe!)
Aloo and Til Subzi on Bawarchi

Stay a While, Won't You?

I know I've been gone a while and you want to know what I have been up to. Life has been brimming with excitement, as always. But, hang on. Let me put the kettle on, first. There! So much better!


But, what's the hurry...

A good cup of tea must be shared between friends, no? Let me get the teapot ready because I hear the tea kettle whistling.

Steaming - my entry as a judge for Click - Metal.

Get on with it, you say? In a minute! Let me pour the hot water into the teapot first.



Ah! Much better. Now sit back and enjoy that cup of tea and tell me which of the three pictures you like best. As usual, I can't make up my mind about which picture to send to Click. Not that it matters because I am a judge for the March event. But it's always nice to get your opinion. Me? I like them all but I do lean most towards the third one for many reasons. I love the little swirl of steam escaping from the spout, right under the whistle, and I also like to think that the picture represents me: ready to come back! So put your thinking caps on and let me know.

Update: The people has spake! #2 is it!

Swept Away

That's how I have been feeling ever since the year began. Swept away and spun around.
But before I get to the unnecessary details that I sometimes share through my posts on Indian Food Rocks, only to have those esteemed hecklers show up and say "where's the recipe", I do want to say a huge Thank You to all the wonderful feedback and terrific support for my entry for Click: Liquids in January. And, to Nupur, for letting me use a phrase from her comment as the title for the image: A tsunami in a martini glass. And, to Jai and Bee, for all the excitement they bring with each post, especially the event Click.

I raise a toast to you all! In Martini glasses, of course!


The winning image was this photo of a lemon splashing into a martini glass:


It won the following awards:




Yay! Yay! Yay! And one more Yay!

Many of you wanted to know how I managed this. It can be rocket science but I managed it with a worse-than-amateur setup. A detailed post is on my Inner Lens for your perusal.

I apologize for the delay in writing that post as I simply did not have the energy to do so. You see, I was hit with - no! not writer's block - but some really nasty looking numbers in my blood work. Together with my BMI, and my age, there was only one thing to do: get serious about becoming active. I had a session with a lovely personal trainer way back in October but no matter what I did, I just couldn't get excited about working on those machines three times a week. Come November, my resolve dissipated like a fast vanishing point in a clever photo. My sister - remember her? the one who memorizes recipes? - suggested that I try a new fitness rage that has been sweeping the nation. One that she herself was hooked onto. She's never one for fads and I am so glad I took her word for it and found drop-in classes in my 'hood. I now go to Zumba fitness classes twice a week and have a blast moving to throbbing Latino beats and working out all the muscles in my body. It's not just Shakira's hips that don't lie anymore...

The good news is that I will probably live a little bit longer as my numbers are normal again. And, no, it wasn't my cholesterol - that is like out of a text-book or whatever those medical tomes are called. Maybe it was a lab error. Maybe it was taking becoming active more seriously. Maybe it was eating smaller portions and drinking lots more water. Maybe it was all of the above. I don't know. At this point, I really don't care either as what matters is that this was a huge wake-up call for me and thanks to my good fortune, I found a fitness activity that I enjoy so much that I am ready to drop everything and rush off for the class. Excuses are a thing of the past.

The lesson to take away from this: don't wait for a wake up call. Find something you enjoy first, the motivation will follow. But become active as soon as possible. It only gets worse as the years roll by. Zumba, to me, takes aerobics and jazzercize to a new level. I get to shake my body with abandon and it's perfectly fine to have my hands go up when everyone else's are going down. Or to do a swirl when everyone is just doing a half turn. The instructor can make or break the class. I am lucky. I found Helene.

My other woes included a leaky roof. Luckily it didn't leak inside the house but over the front door. Every roofer we called told us the same thing; that the roof should have been replaced about 5 years ago. And this, for a roof, that was given flying colors - "excellent condition," I have it in writing - during the home inspection a little over 2 years ago. The drip edges probably vaporized, the tarp must have shrunk and the shingles magically nailed in since that fabulous report. All the roofs in our neighborhood had been replaced after a huge hailstorm hit Louisville 4 years ago. All but ours. It's hard to believe that our house, which was not ours then, escaped unscathed. We had no clue.

Replacing a roof is not a small job. We had contractors streaming through our house and then there were decisions: 30, 40 or 50 year shingles? What type of shingle? What color? What about ice and water shields? What about the ventilation? How much more for covered valleys? What about heat tape in specific areas? It was endless. Once this hammering on the head stopped, the real hammering began. But the good news is that we now have a new roof, with new ridge-vents instead of the old box vents. We also have soffit vents, which we didn't earlier.

The roof was installed but the gutters couldn't be because of high winds that were harbingers of a major storm that was headed our way. We were all very stressed and we have no idea how the winds let up, how the contractor - the gutter-walas as I called them - managed to be here that early in the morning and installed them within that short time frame. I literally had no nails left and I would have started pulling out my hair if all this had not fallen into place, just like that!

The lesson to take away from this is, of course, don't fret about what you cannot control and deal with the consequences, if any. The larger lesson being: get up on that roof with the inspector during the home inspection. We couldn't as we were over a 1000 miles away. Also look up past weather reports in the area to see if any major emergencies had been declared for your city, area, neighborhood: a severe hailstorm, a tornado, flash floods, anything. And find out the effect it had on your new home to-be.

In a way, it's all ended well for us. We now have a roof of our choice. One that is well ventilated and has quality shingles that meet code. I can sleep well at night. Especially tonight, when we have a high wind warning and wind gusts of up to 80 mph.

Through all of this, food took a back-seat to the extent that we were eating healthy meals but they were put together quickly and were nothing to rave about on this blog. Well, at least I didn't think so till I saw khichadi and kadhi doing the rounds. I'm sorry that I have no recipe yet again. Life is still a roller-coaster ride and there are new situations every day. But for every situation, there is a solution and then dawns a new day.

And with this, I am going to announce another NaBlo event, close on the heels of NaBloWriMo and NaBloPoMo. It really blows! It's called NaBloSiMo and I made it up! National Blog Silence Month.

It's totally rad! The rules are like no other event ever. Here's the low-down:

1. This event can begin whenever you want it to begin and it can end whenever you want it to end. It says month but it could be a week, two weeks, a month, a year...you get the picture!
2. You don't have to link back to this post. OMG. Imagine that! No need for linky-love.
   
3. You don't have to use the logo.
4. When you join this event, you stop posting for a specified or unspecified length of time.
5. Going on vacation? Sign up for NaBloSiMo.
6. Feeling burned out? Sign up for NaBloSiMo.
7. Bored of blogging? Sign up for NaBloSiMo
8. Got a writer's block? Sign up for NaBloSiMo.

It's a great event and it's one I am signing up for right now!

So, my friends, Indian Food Rocks is going NaBloSiMo. See you all next month! And don't forget to enjoy that extra day in February.