Menu for Hope Winners Announced!

This year, Menu for Hope raised $91,188.00. It's a 50% increase from the total of last year. That's just mind-blowing, isn't it?

Our campaign couldn't exist at all without the help of my food blogging friends from around the world. This community has what made the campaign what it is today. Thank you so much everyone, you deserve a big round of applause!

says Pim

A Big Huge Round of Applause, please! Thanks to all of you who donated, contributed in kind, spread the word and cheered the effort. None of this would have been possible without any of you. Thank you!



And, deep bow of recognition to all the regional hosts, especially Kalyn, who was the regional host for the US Central region.

UC12 - Grains, Greens, and Grated Coconuts, Recipes and Remembrances of a Vegetarian Legacy by Ammini Ramachandran from Indian Food Rocks

And the winner is...CL Boileau! Congratulations!

UC13 - Handmade bead necklace and matching earrings from Indian Food Rocks

And the winner is...Gayathri Venkitachalam! Congratulations!

The winners will receive an e-mail from Pim shortly to confirm this.

Please write to me at polarmate at gmail dot com with your mailing address so that I can make arrangements to mail your prizes to you at the earliest.

Winners of prizes offered by bloggers from the US Central region are available at Kalyn's Kitchen.

A complete list of winners is available at Chez Pim.




I was thrilled when Meeta invited me to write for The Daily Tiffin a couple of months ago. I will be writing a monthly column on a topic close to my heart, Parenting. My articles will focus on parenting an immigrant child, resources for gifted children, resources for parents of gifted children, girl cliques and a bunch of other stuff that is based on on my experience as an immigrant parent in the US.

I posted my first column for the month of January today: Girls Are Mean. So drop by and let me know what you think!

Tunisian Lamb Stew

I have raved about my sister's refrigerator before. She's a maniac in the kitchen. Otherwise, too. Just like my other sister. Our husbands seem to think that it's a trait that runs in the family. It's amazing how corny and tired that conversation is but they never fail to rewind and replay every time they talk. Each has a story that they are sure will win them the award of having married the craziest of the lot - like it's some sort of competition or something! - and that tells me who is totally off his rocker. But after I tell you this story, you might agree that it is my eldest sister who is truly nuts.

She got a call from her podiatrist insisting that she come in to show them the toenail she hurt while playing tennis. They said they would squeeze her in. She shuffled her own patients and went for her appointment. While she waited, she says she started salivating as she read a recipe for a spicy stew, a Tunisian lamb stew. She read and re-read the recipe. 15 minutes passed. She went back to it and read it again. More time went by. She closed her eyes and started testing herself on the ingredient list and method. Soon, she could recite the recipe backwards. After 45 minutes, she couldn't wait any longer as she had patients of her own to see; so she left without seeing the podiatrist, but with a recipe imprinted on her brain. To this day, she insists that she was called to the podiatrist's office just for that recipe.

If you are like me, you might be thinking: why didn't she ask for a pen and paper and copy it down? But she's not like me or you, so she memorized it. It's a skill that works well for her patients, too, because she remembers obscure information that helps her make a pre-diagnosis that the specialists only confirm.

She also left the podiatrist's office in a very calm frame of mind. Again, not like me or you.

The last time we visited her, she had made this Tunisian lamb stew specially for me. I recreated it over six months later and it's vying with marag for the spot of the ultimate comfort food. It's that good!

Tunisia is in North Africa with a coast along the Mediterranean Sea. Tunisia has a rich cultural heritage as well as history, having been conquered by the Romans, the Arabs, the French, and the Turks until the country finally won its independence from the Ottoman Empire. Its people are known for their hospitality and they also have a deep regard and love for spice. Tabil is a popular Tunisian spice mix of onions and garlic dried in the sun. I am still looking for the original recipe as a project for the summer of 2008.

Tunisian Lamb Stew

• 2lbs lamb meat, trimmed and cut into 1-inch chunks
• Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 tbsp grated fresh ginger
• 2 tsp cumin powder
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp dried red chilli flakes
• 3 tbsp tomato paste
• 6-8 cups chicken broth
• 1 bunch spinach, chopped
• 1 cup bulghur (cracked wheat)

1. In a large bowl, season the lamb with salt and very liberally with fresh coarsely ground black pepper. The more black pepper you add at this stage, the better it tastes. But don't add more than you can handle, of course!
2. Dust the lamb with flour so that it is well-coated.
   
3. Heat olive oil in a large kadhai at medium-high heat.
4. Add the lamb, shaking off excess flour.
5. Cook the lamb, turning occasionally, until the meat is brown on all sides. This takes between 10-15 minutes depending on how tender your lamb is.
6. Transfer the lamb to a large platter or bowl. What you will be left with in the kadhai is a thick dark brown roux.
7. Reduce the heat to medium-low and add chopped onion, minced garlic, grated ginger, cumin powder, coriander powder, and red chilli flakes.
8. Cook for 5-10 minutes to toast the spices and soften the onions.
9. Add the tomato paste and 2 cups of the chicken broth and stir well.
10. Return the lamb to the pot, increase the heat to medium, cover, and cook until the lamb is fork-tender. It took about half hour for me.
11. While the lamb is cooking, cook 1 cup of bulghur in 2 cups of chicken broth. Adding more broth, if required.
12. Also, clean, chop and steam the spinach and set aside.
    
13. Add the remaining 2 cups broth (4 cups, if you want a real stew, one that is not dry) and bring to a boil.
    
14. Turn off the heat, add the spinach and bulghur and stir well.
    
15. Cover and let stand for 15 minutes.
16. Taste and adjust the seasoning.
    
17. Serve with warm whole wheat pita bread.

Notes:

• It helps to do your prep work in advance and have everything ready for use. Mise en place, if you want to get all French and fancy.
• I used low sodium organic chicken broth, sold in tetrapaks. Usually there are about 4 cups in each tetrapak. Using 6 cups of broth would have left me with 2 cups of chicken broth languishing in the refrigerator, so I decided to use it. It was a great move because the stew thickens and the bulghur also absorbs a lot of the liquid as it expands further after adding it to the stew.
• I roasted 1 tsp of whole coriander seeds and 1 dried red chilli (byadgi), allowed it to cool and then pounded it coarsely in my mortar-pestle. Don't do this if you prefer coriander powder to coarsely ground coriander.
• I added 1 tsp of red chilli powder in addition to the red chilli flakes.
• I followed Anita's recipe for whole wheat pita, except that I did not use any all-purpose flour (maida). I used 2 cups of King Arthur's whole wheat flour and 2 cups of King Arthur's bread flour. That bread flour is so smooth and silky, it's unbelievable! I needed more than 2 cups of water to knead the dough. I used my convection oven at 475F and the pitas puffed up every time like a charm! These are the best whole wheat pitas I have ever had! I am going to be making them over and over again! Not only are they easy to make, the clean up is a snap. Nothing compared to the mess that goes with making rotis, even though the pitas have to be rolled out.
• I wondered whether we really needed the whole wheat pita when there was bulghur in the stew. I tried eating it without pita and you have to believe me when I tell you that there is something very wholesome to dipping a piece of warm pita in that stew, and carrying it to your mouth. It makes the dish complete on some levels that I cannot describe or explain.

I found the original recipe and I am not surprised at what a great job my sister did at memorizing it. After all, you have to be a muggoo to get into med school in the first place. More so in India...

Happy New Year!

It's 2008!

I like to light a diya for the New Year but this year, I thought I'd bring it in with a splash and raise a toast to all of you, my readers!

A tsunami in a martini glass - caption by Nupur

May this New Year be filled with journeys that take you to new levels of excitement and fulfillment.


And I hope you enjoy the abundant sunshine along the way.

Happy New Year!

I would like to send in one of these images to the Click: Liquid event. But I am not sure which one to send in. My personal favorite is the third one which heavily post-processed but I am not sure it will fly with the audience for Click. And with at least one of the judges, for sure! So...what to do? What to do? Let me know what you think!

Update: Pic #1 is going to Click: Liquid. Thank you all so much for your response! I am really overwhelmed!

IFR Flashback 2007

I didn't know until just now whether I would do a review of my own blog for Nupur's Best of 2007 event. For several reasons:

• I did a lot of contemplating - review and rewind - when I hit a major milestone in my life;
• 100 posts in 2007 looked like a perfect number to be at whereas this post will increment it by 1. I am no fan of 101 mainly because it is so overused and beaten to death.
  
• I am rather lazy and I generally don't like my time to be governed by the calendar of events that abound in the blogosphere.
• I also have a thing against conforming. If everyone is doing it, I generally will not - unless something I do happens to fit into the broad scope of the event. Or it is something I truly enjoy. The event is usually an after-thought.
  

Yet, 2007 saw me participating in many events out of my own free will. The first one being the March Against Plagiarism. That may have been a one day event but I have continued my efforts in my own way through the year, doing my best to create awareness of proper etiquette and best practices when it comes to using previously penned material as a basis for one's own post.

The other two significant events have been NaBloWriMo and NaBloPoMo. The former in October and the latter in November. I started NaBloWriMo 11 days late but I made up all 31 posts by including the daily posts I wrote in November. There was no way I would have been able to write 31 posts in 21 days. While they qualify as posts, I didn't do any one-liners or posts with a single image and no words. At least I don't think I did! It was tough to write every single day and while there were the hecklers in the last row to be pandered to, I did it more for myself than for anyone else. And write I did - every single day - from Oct 11 through to November 30. Some posts were better than others; other posts were pretty pathetic. All in the day's work!

2007 also saw me venture out of my comfort zone into cuisines that I knew nothing about. My series on Native American cuisine was an eye opener and a rather satisfying journey on all fronts! I hope to continue exploring Persian cuisine through the coming year.

I wish I could say that my blog is structured. That I have a definite posting plan or that I have a focused theme. I write about life in general, with food and conversations that happen along the way. Sometimes those conversations are downright hilarious, and other times, they are heart-wrenching and sometimes thought-provoking. And they are sprinkled all over my blog. My blog is unstructured because it is my playground. Where I can be unfettered and free. Very like Medha's weekends. I strongly believe that it is not just children who thrive on a good dose of unstructured time every now and then.

So here's looking back at my posts in each month of the year 2007. Last-row hecklers, you may please stop sniggering as I am well aware that in some months there may not be many posts to write about!

January brought us Nutty Green Beans. It was an exhausting month, with snowstorms dropping at least 6 inches of snow on us every week. While my husband enjoyed the mild winter in Bombay, I was out shoveling what seemed like endless fields of snow. The Nutty Green Beans recipe is one of our all-time favorites and it also brings back memories of those lonely cold nights when the winds howled through the bare trees. We have lots of snow this winter, too, but - and this is a very important 'but' - I am warm during the day and at night!

February was an eventful month! Indira launched Dining Hall and invited me to be an Administrator for the blog. My husband returned from India to an earthy dinner of Cluster Beans with Puy Lentils as a substitute for kale vatane or black peas.

March is synonymous with Ammini Ramachandran on IFR. Ammini's cookbook Greens, Grains and Grated Coconuts, Recipes and Remembrances of a Vegetarian Legacy was released by iUniverse to rave reviews everywhere. This book is 'The Joy of Cooking' for vegetarian Kerala cuisine and Indian Food Rocks was honored to be the first food blog to review Ammini's cookbook. Paal paayasam kicked up quite a storm on more fronts than one! Yes, my favorite hecklers, you know what I am talking about!

April marked the 4th anniversary of the first real post I made on Indian Food Rocks.

May saw me take a vacation without my family, a first for me! My sister and I reveled in some alone time in San Francisco. Before I went, I treated the family to a Very Berry Shrikhand, a fruity version of the shrikhand with blackberries.

June saw me reminiscing further on my trip to San Francisco, especially our jaunt to Chinatown. And I lived up to my promise and reminded everyone that it was time to pickle those lemons and limes. My friend Lee lugged kale vatane all the way from Texas so that I could make the real chitkyachi bhaji! And we went off on one of my dream vacations: we drove through Maine to Halifax, Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton and back. On our way there, we saw the most spectacular sunrise, a picture of which I uploaded - unedited - to my blog.

July was hot, busy and leisurely at the same time! Quick meals on the grill were the norm.

August had us hiking into the Rockies and enjoying local flavor.

September was the month for the neighborhood camping trip in Moraine Park to hear the elk bugle. We practiced in our backyard and enjoyed some patal bhaji.

October rocked! I turned 40, went on to win some really cool Click badges for my picture of a high-key egg and was also bitten by the NaBloWriMo bug.

November was equally busy, if not busier than October! I jumped on the NaBloPoMo bandwagon and blogged like one possessed, dug into my archives - both food and photo - and churned out 30 posts! My picture of the wagon with red wheels from this post was Schmapped, much to my delight! The biggest high of that month was when I found my Mom's recipe for nankatai.

December saw me ease back from blogging and revert to an unstructured schedule. I was very touched when Medha wrote her note to Santa Claus and I felt really blessed and honored to be a part of her life. I thought I would take a break from Click but some things fell into place and I was able to avoid being a no-show.

I hope you enjoyed reading my blog as much as I enjoyed writing it. It's been a very fulfilling journey for me. I have loved reading all your comments and feedback, and I have felt immensely important when you based your posts on mine. I have loved it when you made fun of me and let me have the same honor in return. I have made some very special friends along the way, some of whom I met, others whom I have talked to and many more that I have exchanged emails with or chatted with.

2008? Expect more of the same from me. Where life takes me, what thoughts cross my mind, what Medha comes up with...I will share it with you!

Thank you, Nupur, for inspiring me to look back on 2007 and what it meant for Indian Food Rocks and for me.

IFR Nutology: Coconuts and Betel Nuts

Ever wondered why the coconut plays such a significant role in most Hindu traditions? In rituals? In offerings to God?

Someone had once told me the three eyes of the coconut represent the three eyes of Shiva, one of the three most revered Gods in Hinduism. Apparently, there is more to it, according to this FAQ.

The coconut is broken, symbolising the breaking of the ego. The juice within, representing the inner tendencies (vaasanas) is offered along with the white kernel - the mind, to the Lord. A mind thus purified by the touch of the Lord is used as prasaada (a holy gift).

Most rituals usually have a sound basis in either logic or economics. I think this holds true when it comes to the coconut, too. Kalpa vriksha is the Sanskrit word for the wishing tree or the tree of life. I have seen this meaning extended to the coconut tree because nearly every part of the palm tree can be used and the tree has a high annual yield of the sustaining fruit.

We grew up on and with coconuts; literally, every part of the fruit. Water from young coconuts was a thirst quencher during hot and humid summers. The tender flesh within, a treat to slurp once the water had been downed. The water from the mature coconut was also popular but not as much as that from the young tender coconut. The husk and shell was used in outdoor stoves as fuel. The white flesh was grated, ground and 'milked' and converted into the base for our curries. After all, what is fish curry without coconut?

Fresh grated coconut is the most common garnish where I come from and definitely more popular than just cilantro. Dried coconut was also used in curries but more so in dry chutney powders like Lasnichi chutney. Steel wool and scouring pads were preceded by the more environment-friendly coconut husk to scrub utensils. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

It's not much of a surprise that the coconut is a revered and considered an auspicious fruit.

But betel nut? Betel nut or supari is known for being a mouth-cleanser. According to the Ayurveda, it is supposed to have medicinal properties as well. The leaves of the betel plant are used to make tambulam on special occasions and are also presented as a parting gift to visitors.

Betel nuts can be chewed for their effects as a mildly euphoric stimulant, attributed to the presence of relatively high levels of psychoactive alkaloids. Chewing it increases the capacity to work, also causes a hot sensation in the body, heightened alertness and sweating.

The betel leaf is also used to make paan.

In Hindu tradition, betel nuts represent the deities. The worshipper provides seats of rice grains to these deities and installs them on the seats. The following should be the arrangement made on a raised wooden seat. Betel nuts representing deities are kept on betel leaves.

From eSamskriti

This is the most I have been able to find when it comes to tradition and religious ceremonies. If you can shed more light on why betel nut is considered auspicious, please do let me know!


Coconuts, betel nuts, a diya and an agarbatti in the snow?! More than a little incongruous. Slightly crazy, too, especially on a particularly windy day! But it all makes sense as this is is my entry for CLICK, a theme-based monthly food photography event. The current theme is nuts. The deadline is December 30, 2007 so if you haven't clicked yet, hurry up and send in your entry. The rules are here.