Dearest better half,
Let there always be
Long drives on winding roads
Destination none in particular
Us, tuned in to our song
Singing along, off-key, in high pitch
While the raindrops pitter and patter
On the windows
Keeping us company
Us, waiting to stop, somewhere, anywhere,
And do a jig for the rain
Let us always have
Between us
The magic and love of all things rain
Your eternally romantic
Wifey
*************************
For this week’s Magpie. I simply loved this week’s prompt. 🙂
Filed under Love, My poems, Prompts, The better half
I came across this post about the influences of tradition on food quite by chance, and it has set me thinking. It made me think about why I like the food I do, and why I cook what I do. And the memories made me smile. It took me back to long, long ago.
I was born in Chennai, but brought up entirely in Gujarat. There would be month- and two-month long visits to Chennai in the summer holidays. Part of my family drooled over Gujarati food, while part of them liked only purely traditional South Indian. I spent part of my childhood in a locality full of Maharashtrians. I had a fast friend who was a foodie, and she was largely responsible for introducing me to a variety of tastes. My stints at eating out made me realize I am fond of Indo-Chinese and Indo-Italian food. Â I am married into a family that has strong Keralite connections. The husband loves Kannadiga food, and introduces me quite often to flavours from Bangalore. As a result, my taste buds and my kitchen have had one influence too many.
Mom and granny majorly used to cook traditional South Indian cuisine. I was blessed in the sense that both of them are wonderful cooks. I fell in love with Masala Dosas, Avial, Cabbage and coconut curry, and with the variety of chutneys and thokkus that these ladies used to make. I loved my nani’s vettalkozhambu and morkozhambu, and would plead with my mom to replicate the exact taste. Nani taught me the joys of adding a spoonful of liquid ghee to a plate of steaming rice and vettalkozhambu, or just plain, salted paruppu. Of course, rasam and sambar were ever-present both at our place and nani’s, but I never much fell for them. Mom and granny’s Gujarati and Marathi friends taught them a lot of recipes, which have now been passed on to me. It was in Ahmedabad that I developed a taste for sweet dal and sabzi, Bombay chutney, vegetable pulav, sabudana khichdi, chivda, khaman, undhiyu, patra, samosas, jalebi, methi na gota, paav bhaji, and dalwada, among several others. Granny and Mom learnt how to make soft parathas and roll out the fluffiest of phulkas, arts which were passed on to me. Because I should not feel different among my Gujarati friends, Mom learnt how to make several Gujarati and other dishes like Paneer Butter Masala, Patra, and Sabudana Khichdi, recipes that were painstakingly noted down by me and which I use till date.
Whenever Mom had to make South Indian food and I wasn’t in the mood to eat it, I would head off with that foodie friend of mine for some yummy but affordable street food. Ahmedabad is a heaven for food lovers, I tell you! I fell in love with the street sandwiches, pani puri, dahi puri, sev puri, et al, and even learnt to make a few of these things at home. Another option when I wanted to eat something different was Maggi – the faithful Maggi which never lets a hungry soul down. Mom and me would experiment with Maggi, and try to cook it in as many ways as possible. And then there were the Knorr soups, which made quite a regular appearance at our place in the winter months. I learnt that I prefer Indo-Chinese and Indo-Italian food over typical Italian or Chinese food. Mom and me developed our own recipes for homemade pizza and Indianised pasta, which we would keep experimenting with.
Bangalore taught me to love Bisi Bele rice, Masala Puri, Holige, and medu vada. My aunt who resides in Bangalore taught me several new recipes, like a customized version of Fried Rice, Gobi Manchurian and Kurma, which I fell in love with too. I thought rasam was only for sick people till the husband made me realize it’s not so, with his wonderful rasam. He taught me to love bajjis, smoked sweet potato, brinjal rice, papads, vadams, and his own version of sambar. The MIL taught me to love Palakkad Adai, Onion and tomato rice, Parikkai Gotzu, and Kerala style kootu and morkozhambu. Like marriage has expanded my viewpoint on a lot of things, I believe it has expanded my tastes also, and (I think) it has improved my cooking skills too.
My taste buds crave change quite often. I’m not one of those who can eat curd rice or roti-subzi or upma or Maggi for one week straight. Hence, I keep experimenting. One day our kitchen turns into a South Indian one with coconut, dry chillies and paruppu all over the place. The other day, it emanates strong smells of garlic and onion and tomato. I refer to several food blogs too, and each one of them has taught me new recipes, which have been tried and tested and loved. I prefer homemade food over outside food, the only condition being that it should be yummylicious. If I love some dish that I had somewhere, I try to get the recipe from somewhere and try it out in my own kitchen – like the mushroom sabzi that I made recently. Thankfully, I liked to eat the food that I cook, and the better half loves it too. He is more than willing to be a guinea pig for my experiments, and is generous with his praise. What else could I ask for?
I am yet to experiment with a lot of flavours – I have never tried Arabic cuisine or Mexican, amongst several others. There is a world of taste I am yet to explore, and I do want to get around to doing it.
I think I love Gujarati food above all – I love the sweetish taste of it, sans the generous quantities of oil. But then there are days when all I want is rasam rice or curd rice or Maggi. Some days, I crave for a combination of North and South – I want avial with phulkas or mushroom sabzi with dosas.
Curious people have asked me – what will your child eat? Will he/she eat roti-subzi or rice, dosa or fried rice? I honestly don’t know. I would leave it to my child to experiment and discover the joy of finding a taste that he/she loves. I can only make sure that I provide him/her ample exposure to every taste that I have had the good fortune to taste.
Filed under Life, Musings, The better half
Scene: The better half is on a work tour, and his wife is pining away for him missing him. There’s an exchange of SMSes between them.
Me: Hey! How’s the work going?
BH: Great! Hey, did you water the plants in the morning?
Me: Yes, I did. Don’tya worry about them. When will you be back?
BH: Ok. You watered them properly, right? Please water them again in the evening after you get home.
Me: Sure. Listen, when are you back?
BH: Listen, the tomato plants are large, so give them more water. Don’t water the orchid too much. There are some stones in the pot that’s there in the corner. Don’t throw them away. OK?
Me: Go man. Come and water them yourself.
BH: Hey, can you call the neighbours and ask if the plants are looking well?
Me: Grrr
BH: Yeah, yeah. Miss you too… So, how are you doing?
So now you know why the plants in our house are flourishing and I am floundering.
Filed under The better half
Two men are walking down a street. How do you differentiate between the married man and the single one?
Simple. The married man will have a bag of vegetables in one hand, and groceries in the other.
Flashback to college days. This joke used to do the rounds in our gang of friends at college, and we all used to laugh every time we used to hear it. I always felt sorry for the married man in the joke, though – I refused to believe that his condition would be so pathetic – and I vowed never to let my husband be in that position, the butt of jokes.
Back to the present. The hubby returns from a business tour of Gujarat. With a bag of ivy gourd in one hand and a bag of sago in the other. Because his darling wife always complains that she doesn’t like the ivy gourds and the sago available in Bangalore. He hands them over to a very amused and happy me. And the joke is doing the rounds once again, this time in the family – louder than ever before. I’m not complaining.
🙂 🙂 🙂
Filed under Life, Love, The better half
The Internet at our place is still down, in spite of repeated phone calls to BSNL. As much as the no-internet-at-home status is giving me more time to do other things, it is bugging me as well. And I, in turn, bugged the better half so much that he got his wireless Internet connection home from work over the weekend. 😀 That’s how I could upload a few pics from our Goa trip.
There’ll be more pics coming soon, but this is it for now. 🙂
Finally, the better half and me decided to take the plunge (literally!) and do the parasailing at the Colva Beach, Goa – after not doing it in Thailand and Diu. 😀 And, I must say, it was scary initally, but was lovely fun. We both LOVED the experience of flying in the air, even if it was only for a few moments. 🙂
Dear better half, may we be together as we conquer all our fears and fly high, leaving behind what we once feared, to a new ‘Us’. 🙂
Watching the sun set on a beach with the company of the better half seems to take away ALL my stress – always. I don’t think I will ever tire of beaches in my life. I just LOVE the sights, smells and sounds of a beach.
Dear better half, may we be together in all the sunsets of life. 🙂
Filed under Life, Love, My pics, Places, The better half
Dear better half,
My adulation for kiddos, their toys, books and other stuff is not new to you. You know how I can spend hours together in the kids’ section of stores, just drooling over things there: admiring and longing for the things I didn’t have in my childhood, and gazing in fond memory at those toys and books I did have. There’s something magical about the kids’ section for me – and I am drawn to it. I have always felt like that, and I still do. I proved that again yesterday by refusing to come out of the kids’ corner till the store threatened to close down. If, in future, you find me grabbing our kids’ toys and refusing to part with them, do remind me that I am the mother and not a wide-eyed child, will ya?
Much love,
That part of your wife which hasn’t grown up yet
Filed under Life, Love, Musings, The better half
Dearest better half,
This is a note to remind myself how darn cute and adorable you look when your eyes are all scrunched up shut, and your face is contorted – because you just can’t take the horrible taste of that slimy green cough syrup. It always brings a smile on my face when you never forget to check if I have got a piece of chocolate ready for you before you pour out the syrup, and reach out for it even before the syrup has gone down your throat. Ok, call me sadistic if you want, but I can’t help preserving this memory of you.
Much love,
Your wife
PS: Let us both get well soon so that we can bring home a big party pack of icecream, and irritate the hell out of mom. 🙂
Filed under The better half
… you and your spouse making big wish lists, sharing them, and slowly and gradually, making each other’s list come true.
Filed under Life, Love, The better half
… fighting with your better half for the first piece out of a bar of chocolate, and then choosing rasam rice over pizza for dinner because your spouse prefers it.
🙂 🙂 🙂
Filed under Life, Love, Musings, The better half
… you irritating the hell out of the husband by doing a tap dance on his morning paper with your fingers while he is reading it, and him returning the favour by shouting into your ear when you are deep into your book, dead to the outside world.
🙂 🙂 🙂
Filed under The better half
uniquely priya 