Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Song Soup
Monday, February 21, 2011
Big Freeze
Today is the kind of day that's wrong and abhorred. Icy cold. And raining. The nerve of Ohio. At least I didn’t have to carry toddlers and hurry kids into school. (I use the plural although I have only one of each.)
Why is my university working on President’s Day? No idea. It took twenty minutes to separate from my pajama-ed loves and say goodbye this morning.
An extra two minutes to wonder if I could claim President’s Day was a kind of a religious observance for me. Big A helpfully pointed out that I’m not even American.
They’re making Star Wars pancakes. Bums.
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Monday, January 10, 2011
We still got it
Big A and I fell in love in New York. And though we’ve hung out with the kids heaps in the city since those early days, there is some lingering sense of surreality about revisiting places which were all about our passionate freefall with two kids, and as more responsible adults. Because, I guess, the “we” that we are in Yellow Springs is irrevocably tied to our personae as parents, but the “we” that started in New York is all us. In my head--at least--the Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park, Clinton Street Bakery, MOMA, Anthology Film Archives, KGB Room, Penn Station… exist merely as picturesque backdrops and bit players in some grand narrative about us and our self-centered fascination for each other. Barf :).
We drew up a complicated and ambitious list of where we wanted to eat that was typically Balthazar for breakfast, Saravanaa Bhavan for lunch, and Motorino’s for dinner. We skipped Balthazar, but I guess two out of three isn’t at all bad. And the night before that we got a corner booth at the fancy steak place, which meant that the kids could play pirates to their heart’s content and I could get tipsy off of beachy drinks (I didn’t realize until I typed that out that there was an ongoing ocean theme there!). At Saravanaa's my people were talking really loud and at Motorino’s the NYU kids were worse behaved than my own, so we made out ok.
2011: More New York!
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Friday, August 15, 2008
Baby Talk 2: The too tasty
Li’l A used to eat a kichri that I used to make him (with rice, and lentils and garlic and peppercorns and chicken and veggies, almonds, and olive oil, pressure cooked and mashed) every day for lunch. When I left him with my mom in Bangalore while I finished up a few things in Oxford, my mother made him this kichri (under my urgent request because this was the only thing in the whole world that would meet all his nutritional needs). Ammama probably futzed around with my rather no-frills recipe a bit. Because after the first spoonful, Li’l A smacked his lips and told her: Ammama, too tasty! Too tasty!
My mother took this as endorsement of her superior cooking skills. Whereas in fact as she found out when he refused to eat any further, he meant it literally. It was too tasty--there were too many tastes in it.
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Tuesday, June 10, 2008
How a family of four turned veg(etari)an
I have always loved food. Even more than the eating of it, I love the process of making something that nourishes the ones I love. I love the way it looks, feels, tastes. I love the enthusiastic “click” sounds my baby makes as she nurses, I love Big A’s post-prandial cough, li’l A’s too infrequent scraping of an empty plate, I love hearing my sister say she lost ten pounds she wanted to lose, I love the pediatrician slotting my babies above the 90th percentile on the growth chart. I love making big, healthy colorful presentations of food, I like taking pictures of it; my collection of cook books almost rivals my collection of South Asian fiction (and I’m paid to work on only one of those).
Somewhere around the time I acquired a household to run, meals became about (an animal) protein volumized by sides of veggies, grains, and beans. This wasn’t the way I ate growing up, although, I’d grown up in a meat-eating household and even at my most anorexic, I’d still happily eat a little bowl of my mother’s chicken kurma (hold the rice) once a week. It was safe to say I thought of meat as necessary to a well balanced meal and that I enjoyed it. As recently as last year, when Chai embarked upon a month-long vegan challenge—I found it frighteningly austere and extreme. I thought I could never do without sushi, without a cup of morning milk, without a nibble of cheese now and then.
I thought that even if I made the shift, I would crave animal products. I did make the shift about four months ago. Can’t say I’ve craved any kind of meat.
I don’t intend to be a vegan vigilante, so skip this paragraph if you don’t want to give up animal derived products. All I had to do was read about factory farmed animals. That’s it. Even as I read that hens cluck to their unhatched chicks to teach them different calls, I knew my scrambled eggs were, in a manner of speaking, toast.
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Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Smells like fish, tastes like salvation
I have a cold. What kept me going today (other than my family calling me, “snotface,” and making me beam, shiny nose and all) was bowlfuls of “Robust Winter Fish Stew.”
It’s a recipe that I saw in The Whole Foods Bible, although typically for me, the recipe provided an improvisational entry point rather than a inflexible plan of action. I added julienned ginger, slivered garlic, snips of fresh tarragon and oregano, plus hearty red potatoes to the called-for crushed tomato base with onions and cannellini. I used freshwater fish, but in retrospect should have used something fattier and brinier--salmon may be.
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Wednesday, May 02, 2007
How I know it’s *definitely* time for a snack-break
the queen “delivered the prizes…”
as
“the queen delivered the pizza.”
_
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Sweet Deception
It’s more likely that I spent the $ 0.49 (buy two, get one free) on Priya brand Kheer Mix, added it to water, stirred the goo for 10 minutes, and then snuck in a tin of condensed milk, a bunch of ghee-fried almonds, cashews, pistachios, raisins, and a few strands of saffron.
If I didn’t tell you, you’d never know. And that wouldn’t be right. Where the payasam’s concerned, love Priya (not maya).
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Sunday, October 01, 2006
When Life Hands you Lemons…
For the dressing: Whisk lemon juice, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, pinch of fresh pepper and crushed garlic.
Pour on: Layered baby greens, tomatoes, baby carrots, kalamata olives, red beans, and crumbled feta.
Bonus cosmic thumbs-up (wink on the side): When you find peace at the center of your tomato :).
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Lamest Rushdie Reference *Ever*
As prepared by Big A, however, it’s delightful--despite the generous robustness of the portion--and i, therefore, give you the recipe in its entirety:
Salmon Rushdie (number of Powerfoods: 5)[P.S. Zinczenko has a lot of funny font things and italics going on in the recipe, but I thought I’d spare you that.]
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon flaxseed
1 clove garlic
4 6-ounce salmon fillets
Green vegetable of choice
1 cup cooked rice
1. In a baking dish, combine the oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, flaxseed, and garlic. Add the fish, coat well, cover, and refrigerate for 15 minutes.
2. Preheat your oven to 450 F. Line a baking sheet with foil, and coat it with cooking spray. Remove the fish from the marinade, and place the fish skin side down on the baking sheet.
3. Bake for 9-12 minutes. Serve with a green vegetable and rice.
Makes 4 servings.
Calories per serving: 411; Protein: 40g; Carbs: 15 g; Fat: 20 g; Saturated fat: 3 g; Sodium: 231 mg; Fiber: 1 g.
[P.P.S. Sort of relieved on Rushdie's behalf that this recipe wasn't Padma Lakshmi's brainchild.]
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a night different from others: four answers to questions unasked
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Friends and old neighbors shutting it down in honor of John Crawford. _
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At had us pose for this pic up at Aunt R's place on Lake Huron so he could put it up in his dorm. "Don't tur...
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