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Roast chicken and beet pickle tacos

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I’m very close to declaring May as “no-blog-month”. But if you know me like I know myself, I probably won’t do no a no-blog-month because I don’t know how to relax. HELP me. I was supposed to come back from Seattle today (I also went yesterday. It’s a 50 min bus ride from my house), sit on the bed and scroll my phone endlessly. Instead I planted onions and now I’m writing this. I walked at least 20 km in 2 days. I don’t know what that means in steps but it was uphill, downhill, through a park, every floor of the library, into a Salumi line, past privileged Seattle, into a P-Patch and under the ropes at Rancho Bravo Tacos in no specific order….

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Braised leek and herb quiche

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A woman was shopping with a girl in a cotton candy pink dress, the kind I would kill to have to wear to church as a kid. It flared and on her feet were white ballet flats. My church clothes were mostly embarrassing to myself. Hand-me-downs from my cousins, they looked fine but once I started noticing how awkward it was to be me, the clothes might as well have been a clown suit. “Mom,” she said from the cart where she sat, stretching out the one syllable, defining her main relationship, “can I have a gummy bear?”

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Roasted carrots + green harissa and yogurt

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Happy International Women’s Day (belated, I was tired yesterday. ). Lots to read about gender equality all over the world right here.

The place I work at is a food blogger’s dream. Their merchandising department is so good at their job that almost any ingredient you see in a top-hit type recipe has a place on our shelves. Even so, there is always something that we won’t sell simply because it’s not trendy enough. Kasuri methi (dried fenugreek leaves) and chaat masala is nowhere to be seem but the haldi (turmeric) and jeera (cumin) jars always seem to empty quicker than they are filled. Whatever I can’t buy after work on Sunday forces me a little out of my comfort zone. During the store’s annual end-of-year spice cupboard restock sale (a name I just made up) last year, I took home some sumac, smoked paprika, ground ancho and chipotle pepper, red pepper flakes and powdered harissa blend, which little did I know, is like buying powdered recheado masala. It’s not the same….

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Work lunch: Cabbage foogath

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If you want to know what I miss most about living in Goa let me tell you right now that cabbage is not on top of the list. I don’t know what it is about cabbage but I went through a phase where I decided I did not like it at all and that was that. I would force myself to eat it, swallowing it with water not because I had to finish what was on my plate but because I had declared myself the household’s biggest lover of vegetables. Hence my not liking cabbage was downright embarrassing to that title. So I ate it all or asked for help from Grandma, who came from a family of many where wasting food was simply not an option (Gayle had a daily problem with this and would whine off everything she wouldn’t eat to grampsi. Funny how she’s now the chef)….

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Beet and orange salad with a quick cabbage pickle

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We had company over last week in the form of two lovely in-laws (mine) and even though there was no blog post while they were here, there was a lot of cooking for them. I enjoyed every moment of the free time and I know you might be laughing at me calling cooking “free time”, but this is what I enjoy doing. When I write that I’m lazy and would prefer just sitting on the couch and watching TV, that is also true. The common thread running through both of my favourite pastimes is that I love having a purpose. I embrace both with vigour and a bag of cheese puffs. …

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Salmon noodle salad w/ chilli lime dressing

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Before you go on to thinking that I’m on some political bandwagon meant to despise President Trump, I assure you I have had the same disdain for how Muslims and Sikhs have been racially profiled when Obama was President. You have never heard of people being detained at airport for having a certain suspicious-sounding name because your media has little interest in covering such stories. I get it. It’s irrelevant to you if a citizen of India is held in a room for hours with no explanation and no legal representation. It has happened to many Indians and while we’ve heard of the famous ones including actors and the former President of India (no joke), there are many, many people who will never get to complain about it to a reporter since it’s just not newsworthy. India treats citizens of Pakistan the same way at airports and vice-versa. It is a political stunt and these methods violate every human right….

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So this is what parsley is for.

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This recipe wrote itself last week when after making the clam-salmon stew, I had a baby plate of parsley sitting on the kitchen counter all night. I should have put it away but even with the heat whirring on much too often, last week was a cold, cold one. The parsley was okay. It was so okay that I chopped up a tablespoon of garlic and plopped it over my eggs which I fried in olive oil and a rosemary stem the next morning. I proceeded to sprinkle it with seeds, lots of lemon and whatever powdered, flaked pepper I felt like that day. Eating from that plate reminded me of  the days we would eat bhaji for breakfast. Bhaji simply means vegetable and in Goa it’s a common breakfast or tea-time snack. The baby plate of whatever bhaji you chose would come with a side of chopped onions, a chilli, lime and bread. You would sprinkle some onions over the bhaji and squeeze lime over it before scooping it into your mouth with the help of a spoon and bread. If you wanted a puri (deep-fried flat bread), you could have that instead. If you’re ever in Goa, skip the beach shacks and go get mixed bhaji and chao (tea) first….

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Steamed clams and salmon in a tomato and white wine broth

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I’m not one to believe in the healing powers of changing over the calendar. Now that I have that out of the way (and for the sake of consistency in using the Gregorian calendar) I have to say that when it turned to January 1 over here – for the first time ever – something felt new. I spent most of last year immersed in writing blog posts almost every week and I guess through all of that sharing, I forgot to tell you that I felt like shit. It was a much better kind of shit (aka when shit is so bad you give it levels of shittiness). I didn’t feel like the floor was collapsing underneath. Instead I was grappling with the idea of “self” and this person I was becoming. I should have been proud for what I accomplished and I am but time seemed to be slipping through my fingers. All that did was make me question what now, why me, etc etc. Don’t ask me how many times I thought about leaving everything and starting over, just me….

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Work lunch: Broccoli and chard stir-fry

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We are a hop, skip and a jump away from 2017. How did this happen? I have no plans for anything (cool). I made no lists to check off and did no shopping until a few minutes ago when I panic bought two or three things and then took the dogs for a walk to take the edge off (also cool). It’s like the good old days of last minute everything my family is known for and the reason my dad has gray hair….

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