When Everything is Yellow

I was gushing about the April Fool’s Blog Swap to my schoolfriend. She was not very impressed and instead she drove the conversation in another direction:

So you meet these people on the Internet and they become your friends?
Um, yeah. Well, some of them even become very good friends…
How do you know if the woman isn’t really a neurotic man or a psychotic killer? And when you do meet him, he stabs you in the back!

Gulp! I sent a very sharp knife to Anita recently and was angling to be adopted. What was I thinking?

So my post began when I started writing it almost two weeks ago…

Life has served a few surprises since then and I have been at a total loss - numbed into inaction and unable to digest the news. It’s the big C. One of my closest friends has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and unfortunately the prognosis is rather bleak. While she snapped into action, writing list after list of things that needed to done; I switched off and slept. As did this post - until we met to celebrate her and her life. We laughed, we hugged, we cried and we laughed some more – each of us hoping for a miracle. The mood switched from very sombre to reflective and appreciative of what we do have at this very moment - and fortunately for all of us, that is the mood that persists.

So, pour yourself a cup of tea as I dedicate this post to my friend Francie and do my best to hand this blog back to its soul. Tea is an important ingredient for a party on this mad blog, right?

Out with the Old, In with the New

I mean really. Aren’t you tired of brown? And pictures of desks? It’s time for a makeover. It’s time for fun. It’s high time for the real Mad Tea Party to begin. I asked Anita to please take a walk so that I can set things right around here. Once I get done with this post, I am going to change the template to something far more cheery than brown. Let’s bring in the color!

And we will also free ourselves of this persistent British anarchy over the English language and lose the ‘u’ between ‘o’ and ‘r’. Forever. We will do the needful, and at the same time we will also arrest the overt usage of the present continuous tense so that American English can continue to prevail as the language of Indian food blogs.

We will have pictures! Lots and lots of pictures. Fields do get boring after a while. But it is spring, after all; time for a new lease on life…for this blog.

So let’s do it!

Um, get it? Let’s Rock & Roll?

A Mad Tea Party is where I will be blogging from now on. If you’re looking for her, she’s over there now. This is the last time I will clarify and re-clarify things. You really are going to need to be sharp from here on. And with that…

Let the Party Begin.

Buried under…

This month I have been mostly…

…buried deep in work. I want so much to surface, get a breath of fresh air, and share my notes with you. But work takes priority; it does, after all, help pay the bills.

I have been eating healthy…mostly. Fresh cooked breakfasts had been sacrificed for the convenience of industrial bread…till the guilt caught up with me, and I decided yesterday that enough (of white bread) was enough. And how much work is idli, right?! Wrong. If you want sambar and chutney with it. Still, in about an hour this morning, much of which overlapped with my morning tea-and-newspaper-time, I had fluffy healthful ragi idlies! And there are leftovers for breakfast tomorrow as well!

Sarson ka Saag aur Makki ki Roti

Spring is upon us! Temperatures are climbing steadily – we are already at 27 degrees C. But a nip still lingers at night and in the mornings. Therefore, the mustard family gets to reign for a few more weeks. I have mentioned mustard fields and I have talked about Punjab…but I haven’t yet talked about their favorite winter greens preparation.

About Saag – sarson da saag (Punjabi) or mustard greens. When I first started reading food blogs a couple of years back, I was impressed by the familiarity of the Western world (the US-based blogs, in any case) with ‘saag’ which is the Punjabi word for greens in general. Just like Kashmiris refer to one specific kind of green when we say haak, saag too refers to sarson or mustard greens, unless specified otherwise – palak ka saag (spinach greens), bathuey ka saag, so on and so forth. Punjab has never heard of saag-paneer. The saag-paneer combination intrigued me till I discovered it was the American avatar of good old palak-paneer, which, I am told (by none other than our own desikudi, Musical) is not that traditional in rural Punjab.

Moongre ki Subzi (Radish Pods)

I seem to gravitate towards strong tasting vegetables - the pungent and very-brassica smells and tastes my husband likes to categorise as oogra. Nothing brings out the link between all the diverse members of the brassica family (such as broccoli, kohlrabi, haak, cabbage, cauliflower, radish, mustard, kale, and collard) like their flowers and seeds. All of them have the characteristic four-petal blooms (thus the name crusiferae - from ‘cross’ - for this group of plants, also collectively called the mustard family) and the brown-to-black oval-spherical seeds borne in tapering bean-like seedpods (a silique). Maybe now Nabeela will see why I first identified the mustard pods in her quiz as radish pods. The flowers vary in colour from white or cream to lavender or yellow, and are all edible!

Dad’s Drink

I am exploring my new camera… and it’s taking frustratingly long to re-learn the ropes. I really wish I could just use my ancient NikonF4 and have the film change into a chip somehow… Someday someone will do something like that I am sure. Till then I have to get used to focusing by half pressing to ‘lock’ the focus… grrr.

On a dear friend’s advice I am trying to carry my camera wherever I go and shoot ‘from the hip’. A couple of days back we were visiting my parents. My dad is very fond of his drink and it is natural for TH to sit down with him for one. Or two. The spread of Sunday papers and magazines seemed to be the perfect backdrop and I suddenly felt inspired. So I took a few shots, reviewed them, moved a few things around (the almond dabba), and also managed to get one in focus (amidst all the impatient folk wishing to get to their drinks)!

Without much further ado, it is going to the Click event: Liquid Comfort! And by the next Click deadline, I should have really figured out my camera!

Camera: Panasonic DMC-FZ18
Exposure: 1/4 sec
Aperture: f/2.8

Quinoa Soup with Spinach and Pumpkin

Snap, snap…blink, blink… Okay, I am really trying hard to snap out of it. The blog-lethargy that I have slumped into. Maybe it really is the cold (it was a freezing 2 degrees Celsius here in Delhi yesterday) and my brain has frozen over, in addition to my hands and feet. I have been sipping endless cups of tea everyday, hugging the cup in my hands to warm them briefly.

And it isn’t just cups of tea that I have been downing. Winter makes it hard to control calories. This is the time when peanuts (and all nuts and fruits that make up dry fruits) are consumed in large quantities in North India. The most popular way to consume peanuts is to throw a lot of woolens on and around yourself, huddle in a familial group, shelling and stuffing yourself while watching TV. They are the preferred snack at most Delhi bus stops where the peanut seller sits with his pile of peanuts-in-their-shells. He picks the nuts from just under the small earthen pot that has a gently smoldering piece of cow-chip in it, to weighs out hot peanuts that give sustenance and warmth, and also pass time while you wait for your ride to arrive.

Soups do that too - warm us up from the inside out. Winter is also particularly bountiful where vegetables are concerned. There is an abundance of greens: spinach, mustard greens, dill, methi, bathua, kohl rabi, and of course, haak and soutchal, two wonderful Kashmiri greens. Cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, beetroot, corn, carrots, and tomatoes, add to this bounty, and make this a great season for soup.

101 uses for Mystery Powder

Before Srivalli completely gives up on me, here I am with my experiments with the mystery powder I received through our very own Arusuvai Friendship chain last month. For all my professed past-life claims, the podi Srivalli sent me had me at a complete loss. I have already admitted I am not good at de-constructing spice blends; I totally relied on Manisha’s intuition for kanda-lassun masala.

After staring at the yellow-orange-powder sitting in a packet on my kitchen counter for two days, I gingerly wrote to Srivalli about my predicament… The yellow powder was going to test my self-professed Southie-ness. I could taste turmeric… dhaniya… and… the rest was a mystery. Now, I have made a few South Indian podis: kootu podi, bisibele hulianna podi, milagai podi; this was definitely not one of those. Well, that left only one other podi I knew: sambar masala! So, I prayed and sent an apologetic note to Srivalli asking if that was Sambar podi I had in my possession. It amused her that I was so unsure… but of course, it was! Whew! I heaved a sigh of relief. My reputation (rather, claim) was intact; at least, for now.

Here’s to the old…

I hope it has been a good year for all of you. If it’s been a mixed bag, as most years are, you’ll find yourself looking back at it with much nostalgia soon enough. The past has a way of turning rosy.

There was much that was good with this year for me too. Even though I slowed down in the frequency of my posts, it was always fun to discuss with you, dear reader. I have to admit that you are the best part of blogging! After each post, I eagerly await your response. Since I usually post in the night, checking the comments is the first thing I do next morning, with my morning cuppa by the side. For some of the posts there is as much information in the comments as there is in the post… even if occasionally the discussion gets off topic .

Thanks to some of you I got to taste many new flavours this year - some quite exotic!

Thanks to this blog I have made new friends at an age I never thought it possible; friends with whom I have found much in common, and much to learn from. What did The Learned One say about surrounding yourself with smart people? …some of it will rub off on you. So true.

I am late for Nupur’s event: Best of 2007, but I do want to do the roundup… Come along, grab some hot chocolate (while it is still snowing here) like I did, let’s walk the year again together…

My ten favourite posts (and recipes) from 2007:

Baharat

Just like the Mediterranean, Middle Eastern cuisine also shares similarities with North Indian cuisine. Common to both is the love of beans and lentils, and an abundance of spice that gives them life. Gastronomically, Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon are the three countries that have had the most influence on this cuisine. Closely linked to these is also the food of North Africa.

I had been meaning to write about this wonderfully fragrant spice-blend from the Middle East-North Africa, ever since I made it as a house warming present last year. It is as much at home in my kitchen as is the garam masala. And just like for garam masala, there are hundreds of recipes for baharat too, likely changing from home to home.