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Kitchen memories: Jane

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It’s sometimes difficult for me to understand my sister Jane. I purposely forgot how old she is but yes, she is the eldest of us 3. We lived together in Bombay for 3 years, just us, in a two-room flat. (That’s two rooms not two bedrooms). I would be lying if I said it was perfect. We fought a lot and I think it was mostly always my fault (Yes Pain, I’m taking the blame).

As the eldest, I think it has always been her instinct to protect us. As the middle child, it was my instinct to pretend that I didn’t know what that sound was. She cooked for me, forced me to eat, made me taste the vegetable dishes she made for salt, and kept me in line. I know I was a terrible roommate. Most days I’d work 10 or 12 hours, six days a week and when I came home, I just wanted to be asleep or a vegetable. The one day I got off work, I preferred being the same way. I thought that was my free pass to get out of doing stuff. Right now, I can’t believe I was like that.

This is not an apology. Our family has a hidden way of saying sorry and I know she knows what I know. This is about our Sundays in Bombay.

I worked on Sunday, oh yes I did. Almost every one of those Sunday mornings, I woke up to a room filled with people on every surface. They were common friends but closer to her because she was the best host. She’d wake up and the rest of them would follow like sloths after a hard night of foraging. Except foraging means drinking in this case. I like to think that her breakfasts were what they came over for. Complete with chai, toast and eggs, she fed the masses on our limited collection of melamine (and one ceramic) plates and mugs with most of their handles broken. Everything was laid over the previous day’s Hindustan Times, which was spread over the tangled bedsheets that kept everyone warm.

Jane HAD to have something to eat and tea the moment she woke up (here’s proof). So as soon as she rose, she’d put her toothbrush in her mouth and a pan on the stove. She scrambled whatever was “scamble-able” and leftover from last night’s binge-eating. Chicken manchurian from Mama Mia was her bestseller. I never tried it (I did not like Mama Mia’s Chinese food) but I was a big fan of the sorpotel and xacuti version.

I am a big fan of hers. For taking so many risks, for taking care of me and for introducing me to a world of wonderful messy eggs that fit so well in our wonderful and messy lives.

Jane-style eggs and toast

eggs

This is the easiest thing in the world to make. I just scrambled two eggs and at the very end, I added some of the guacamole I made last week, some leftover mince and rajma (red beans). Oh yes, and just a dollop of sour cream on the top for fun.

Jane the pain, this breakfast was for you.

I have the worst brain sometimes.

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I wonder how I’m not a poet or a published writer already because I’m sure I could woo in the folk who pretend to be sad because they think it’s cool.

In case you’re wondering, I am not sad. I am Miss girly face. In my world, no means no, yes means maybe and maybe means HELL YEAH. If I want, I can switch those around. You won’t know until you ask. If you ask, I might not tell you.

Like I said before, I’m not sad. But I’ve been thinking a lot about how I make my choices. The only times I felt like I overanalysed something, it had to do with work-related things. Humbug. Everything else, I just wing. I think about Jane and how far she’s come after making photography a full-time job and I wonder what was the thought process there. Duh Edlyn, you could just ask her.

Double DUH inner voice, what’s to ask if I’ve seen it in action?

Quiet all of you.

An better questions would be: Am I doing anything that’s leading me to a future I want? I have a suspicion this is one of those questions grown-ups ask. Since I asked it, I am apologising to myself. Poor thing, I must have really scared me.

I think (I think) I also have a sort of answer. Even if we’re high off our minds, climbing a mountain or just innocently folding laundry, we do it to get to the best of us. That little space in our heads that lets us believe we’re champions and our destiny is behind that next door.

Me, I just want to make others happy. Through food, cards, stories… anything. Claire told me she got the drawing I made her today. If nothing else, that made my day. So while I sit here and wonder why I can’t decide which one of the two sweaters I need to wear out today, I know what I need to do.

Bake a big fat chocolate cake and share it with the one person I don’t tire of seeing, the smartest decision I unknowingly made. Then I’ll thank myself for writing this because in two or three years, I’ll come back and look at how silly I’ve been.

I’m thinking of something and it begins with a “C”: Part 10

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I’m not lagging behind, don’t worry. Still cat crazy. I just couldn’t get these pictures up two days ago for two or three reasons that had nothing to do with my procrastination.

It’s the truth.

I’m going to try and go a little more off the beaten path now because I feel like I’m thinking too one-dimensionally while drawing. It will be a good brain exercise and great for my creativity, I’m sure.

Back to the drawing board!

When I say: “He’s the one”, I mean chicken salad.

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Just yesterday right after Awesomepants came home from work, I served him the chicken salad he wanted. It had spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes and chicken marinated in lemon/garlic/pepper/cumin. It was the last thing from “special” but I already knew it was a very good day. My boy, he’s very specific with his food cravings. Specific in a way that’s not too picky and it let’s me do my thing. Specific is a good way to describe this here what I’m going to write. Or maybe not at all, knowing the way I usually write (Miss Bounce of the Walls G D’Souza).

Honestly, this is supposed to be a “I’m so lucky. Yay, I’m married and my life is amazing” kind of post. I am not going to do that. Yes, my life is amazing.

Yes.

Oh, the chicken salad. Metaphor maker activated.Image

I always thought I hated to cook. Always. I had no desire to cook anything because I saved all of that desire to stuff my face. Cooking? Hahaha. My mother will do it. I could chop onions and all that and sometimes when I was 10 or 11, our house help Sumita taught me how to cook the basic vegetable fare so she could rollerskate with Gayle in the hall. I couldn’t rollerjam so I was okay with the arrangement.

In 2010, when I came here to be with my future husband, I cooked. Something was wrong with me. I tried the chickens and salmons of the world and I was really good! The boyfriend was also on a healthy-eating kick which made my experiments even more fun because I loved known what we were eating was going to give our insides big hugs. He taught me how to make cheeseburgers (with turkey mince!) and I was captivated. Sounds so lame right now. Captivated by a cheeseburger. Maybe this should be the title of the post. His early lessons were the small wake up calls. When he showed me how to grill salmon, I went online, found other recipes and tried to make it a bit more interesting. His reactions were always encouraging…not like it was important or anything.

I went on with my kitchen fun until I had to go back to India. Then, things slowed down a bit. I didn’t stop cooking completely, but I lost some interest. Gayle was usually the cooking star daughter so I let that be. That and my mother would complain that I use too little or not enough salt. Awesomepants has high BP issues so maybe I did try to spread my less salt theory to the happily less developed country. Maybe I’ll never do that again.

Fast forward to yesterday. 2013 and the year or the chicken salad. The chicken salad I’ve spent a few paragraphs trying to turn into a metaphor for my marriage to this boy. (Yes, he’s mostly a boy. Just like some puppies are always mostly puppies). I now love cooking. I dream of doing it for a living, or something like that. It’s a little bit of his fault.

Which brings me right back to the salad. That chicken salad is nothing to make. I start with nothing and slowly as I add more of this and that, it became something. Something he really loved even though it’s nothing at all. It’s leaves, fungi and chicken, COME ON. What I’m trying to say is that it’s ALL about the chicken salad.

It’s exactly like last week when I was in the middle of my flu, looking like shit, playing Yahtzee with him and he stops and says: “You’re beautiful.” Whoa. No alcohol was involved.

We’re not striving for a perfect marriage. I admit I’m very shallow at times and expect fairy tales and storybooks to come alive every time our eyes meet. Nope. Not going to happen. What I want our marriage to be is chicken salad. Any salad. Boring when you see it separately but when it’s all in a bowl, I’ll hear that line I never get tired of:

“Salad was good, bb.”

(*I’ve made him a lot (A LOT) of salads in 2012. Always to take to work for lunch. That’s the one thing I can remember so vividly about this past year.)

Christmas card time!

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I’m not used to being cold in December. I’m not used to be cold EVER. This is going to be my first real wintery Christmas away from home and I’m alright with that. I think snow should be on the cards but these are not snowy parts and I’m alright with that too.

Last year, this time, we were preparing for a wedding. Definitely not mine. Last year this time, we were also mourning our first Christmas without grandma. Right after mass, we would wish each other and take some family photos. It was never the presents first, though I think that has something to do with the fact that we all grew up. It was always a chore getting Dada (my dear daddy) to sit straight for a picture. He was always in a hurry to make breakfast for everyone. He can still do that singelhandedly for any number of people. All you’d need to do was make sure there were clean plates. I’ll miss the sounds.

As Awesomepants and my first Christmas together in our new adventure, I feel a lot of pressure. We do have an amazing tree that he chopped and we carried home atop our “not suited for carrying trees” car. I also made a little banner..just a little something nice. It all looks happy.

Now I wish. I wish my family could have been here. I wish his family could have been here. I wish there were more sounds other than the TV showing ads with modified Christmas carols. But, it’s him and me. We will go to church, take photos, whip up a breakfast and be thankful that we’ve made it through another year as have our family and friends.

RIP Skittles, you silly cat. You could have stuck around. I’m sure there would’ve been prawn tails to spare.

We are family

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(Recipe followed to a T — minus a tart shell — from Smitten Kitchen. CLLLLIICK ME)

I must say, Awesomepants and my first Thanksgiving alone was a disaster. This dessert was delicious. Next time we will cook a lot less and by that I mean order pizza. No shame at all.

Made in the oven

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Sun_dried

By now you must know that I live in one giant gloom bucket. Washington is beautiful…stunning in fact, but like every stunner, it’s very high maintenance. Summer was two months long this year. The rest of the year (or the six months I’ve lived here rather) it rained or threathened to. So when I finally got up off my butt and decided to make sun-dried tomatoes, summer was long gone.

What the heck.

I’d heard of the oven method and it did seem like a piece of cake.

WRONG.

I got impatient waiting for the oven to do its thing for 6 hours and I just ate them un-sun-dried. Un-sun-dried. I just made that up on my own. I’m such a unicorn sometimes.

This time, I waited 6 hours and 17 minutes. Voila. They shriveled up and died and that was a very good thing. I used this recipe as a guide of what I wanted my ingredients to be. I left out the sugar but you don’t have to. I didn’t want to mess with the inherent sweetness the tomatoes already had. Plumpy yumpy things.

Now on a perfectly related note, if you were wondering if tomatoes are fruits or vegetables, let Science Bob help you with that.

Oven-dried sun-dried tomatoes

Ingredients

  • 3 Roma tomatoes (sliced in two, length-wise)
  • 3 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
  • Dried herbs like thyme, oregano and basil
  • 4 garlic cloves, chopped
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons sea salt
  • Fresh ground black pepper

Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees F (90 degrees C).

Slice the tomatoes and lay them cut-side up on a cookie sheet lined with aluminium foil.

Season the tomatoes with sea salt and leave them at room temperature for 15 minutes. This will get some of the water out of the tomatoes, which is what you need to do for that sun-dried state of mind anyway.

Flavour the tomatoes with the remaining ingredients…Oh the bright fresh flavours. If it’s smells amazing, it will taste amazing. Place the sheet into the oven and let it sit for 6 hours (or more*), until you see the tomatoes are shriveled up and the juices have run out.

Take the out of the oven, cool, chop and enjoy over pasta in a cream sauce or as a stuffing for mushrooms. Or not. I just ate them whole.

*The drying time depends on the ripeness of the tomato. If you feel you need to go over the 6 hours as stated in the recipe, do it! Just remember to keep a check on them every half hour extra.

 

That’s what’s up.

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Bananabread_copy

Before I begin, I want you to know what I was contemplating. It’s something about wanting to get off Posterous and get Typepad instead. I don’t know what the benefits are but Posterous take FOREVER to publish my posts and sometimes doesn’t do it at all. I’m not one to sit around because I got me some baking to do so I just sulked and didn’t blog for more than a month. What’s wrong with me? I did take a bus to Arizona for 10 days (including travel…by a BUS), but I wouldn’t consider that a “psychological problem”. It’s just this strange side of me.

It’s a very rainy day in Washington today. “Rain? Washington?! WHAT. What?”

So I decided to make banana bread. I always need fruit in my life. Fruit in the form of cake is an even better excuse. As usual I had to battle my demons (which I found out from this post) but my other demons include not wasting food in the form of three uneaten bananas so I channeled my inner Smitten Kitchen and said, “Eh, what the heck?”

(I didn’t use your recipe though, Deb. I’m sorry)

This is the recipe I used. I tweaked it because I’m a firm believer in doing as I please.

“Eggs one at a time you say? Separating them at birth is not my style.”

“Lightly beaten? No ma’am.”

And other fables.

Banana Bread

  • 3 ripe bananas
  • Pumpkin spice (or a mix of cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, allspice powders)
  • 1 tablespoon milk
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon sea salt
  • 8 tablespoons butter (1 stick)
  • 1/2 cup of cane sugar (or even less if you prefer. The recipe called for 1 cup)
  • 2 large eggs
  • Chopped walnuts for added crunch
  • A 9in x 5in x 3in bread loaf pan

Pre-heat your oven to 325 degrees F (160 degrees C).

In a bowl, mash the bananas and add the pumpkin spice and tablespoon of milk. Set aside and batter up for step 2.

Cream together the butter and sugar in another bowl of choice and then add the eggs to the mixture. Stir till eggs are combined.

In a totally different bowl, mix together your flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. This step is important as your baking powder/soda need to travel all across the bread and not just sit on the top and act like they’re on vacation.

Now you’re looking at three bowls and wondering: “Where is the banana bread?”

Step 4 is the wedding. The banana mixture goes into the butter/sugar/eggs mixture and stirred up well. The flour is then added little by little until it all disappears into a big bown of gooey, banana-y goodness.

Pour it in the bread loaf pan and add the walnuts on the top. You can also stir the walnuts in prior to pouring the mixture into the mould.

Bake for 1 hour to 1 hour and 10 minutes. Make sure the loaf passes the knife test* before declaring it done.

*Stick a butter knife into the centre of the cake. If it comes out clean, it’s ready. If not, bake fore 10 minutes more and re-check

1 year

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That’s how long it’s been since my Grandma died. I remember writing a post about it in this blog but I don’t remember it being a year ago. It feels closer. Just like she does.

I remember how everything about that day was wound around fate. Every single thing. “What if” is always at the tip of my tongue. I can’t forget a single moment. It played out like a movie and there we all were. There she was. Fate? I don’t know for sure. I don’t think that should be anybody’s destiny.

As I sit here, a million and a half kilometers away from my house, all I feel is sadness. She never wanted me or anyone to be a million and a half kilometers away. Never. That would mean she was alone and yes, she would be alone. But what she didn’t know is so would I. In a different way, but how can we say our sorrow is more important that anybody elses? That’s not true. If misery loves company, I wish I could be there.

Fate, what a silly, loaded word. What a silly, loaded world.

Rest in those golden meadows Gramps*.

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(*We called her “gramps, even though it’s short from “grandpa”. We had seen it on this Cartoon Cartoons cartoon on Cartoon Network once in her house. Flashbacks. Got to hold on to them.)

Love is love

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I believe that human rights are not dictated by any God. For those who still don’t understand why these battles are being fought thousands of years after some imaginary code was written, I’m sure little will change your mind. Be ignorant but don’t jump into the ring because this is not your battle.

Love is love.