Wok Work

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Today's meal:

Noodles and a kind of sauce made from carrots, capsicum, garlic, chilies and tomato ketchup. Interesting to make and eat.

The view outside from my bedroom's window looked great today thanks to all the fancy firework.

Happy new year!

Feel-good cooking

I am not talking about feel-good meals, though today's meal does fall into that category:

Chapati and tomato 'gojju'. A friend of mine famously hates this word, along with the name 'Pushpa', no one knows why. I think Pushpa is a perfectly good name and the Gojju is one of the best dishes ever invented on earth, even if the name itself doesn't sound so great.

What's in a name? that which we call Gojju,

By any other name would taste as great!

(Ahem, sorry Bill! <-link)

I felt good cooking today because the smell of the cooking food reminded me of familiar smells back home.

Yesterday's meal however was a big disappointment and a tragedy in itself, of more epic proportions than the afore mentioned R&J.

Upma. The best dish if made well and a horror story if not. I am convinced that my method of making was perfect, but the rava used to make it was not too good - a little too old probably. I had to camouflage the taste of the upma with large spoonfuls of pickle. The severe shock of the episode held me and kept me from writing here.

If you haven't already noticed, I am feeling very theatrical today.

Swimming in oil

I didn't know it at that time, but my potato fry started out with a few spoons of oil more than what it required:

Chapaties and baby potato fry.

Today I came home to my dear plant drooping to the ground. It had been fine in the morning when I left home. It is a "peace lily" and I read online that it was supposed to be watered once a week. I was watering it more often than that, so I decided to stop. I guess I stopped its water supply longer than needed. I was so terribly scared that my plant was going to die. Just an hour later my plant was almost back to its normal state! If I had taken a photograph of it every minute, I could have made a great animation out of it.

Smells great

Today's meal:

Rice, dal, pepper, cumin seeds and sweet smelling butter - pongal. The whole house smelled great after this!

The sky's view from my room looks new every day, every time I see it. That's today's best sight. I hope I have something new to see tomorrow!

Repeats

Today's meal:

Macaroni, red bell pepper, carrots and olives.

Today's best sights were a gloriously sunny day and a glorious sunset and family.

Maybe we need some more experimentation with food.

Net Blackout

By afternoon today I began to feel that a power shut down would not have been felt so much. I did not have internet starting 7pm last evening up until 7 pm today. I clicked a few pictures, played with them and then watched the sun and snow chase each other ( the weather alternated between blindingly sunny and thick sleet/snow, amazing to see the transitions), day-dreamed a bit, and read some Sherlock Holmes to pass time. Life seems to be empty and without hope when there is no internet. Isn't that terrible.

Today's meal:

Vermicelli, tomatoes, onions and red chilies.

The Return of the Solo-Cook

I am cured of the aversion I had to the idea of this blog as a chore. It is not and my love for cooking has brought me to it again.

Today's meal:

Macaroni with carrots, capsicum, olives and cheese. The meal had absolutely no oil. The vegetables were just cooked slightly in water.
It was fun making this.

In the past few days, when this blog was not being written, I kept cooking interesting meals: chapatis, quite a few times, various rice dishes and on one day aubergines after a very long time. I tried a vegetable called courgette or zucchini. It looks like a cucumber and tastes a bit like ridged gourds -raw. I liked it.

Today I saw a lady walking a tiny dog on leash. I wondered why such a little thing should chained and tugged along - till I cycled close to them. The creature got into such a vicious barking fit that I was very glad that it was tied! It was both comical and scary to see it - the confidence in spite of its size!

Chores!

Writing here feels like a chore nowadays. I would like it to be fun. In fact cooking feels like a really big chore these days that I would rather not do.
Today's meal:


Cabbage, rice, red chilies and salt - pressure cooked. With potato chips.

Today I was amazed to see a starry sky. It was cloudy when I was returning home and I also felt a few drops of rain. As I reached home I just happened to look up and saw a dense cluster of stars. I have not had the chance to observe the constellations here because I have seen stars so rarely and almost never on consecutive nights.
People say they are depressed because of the lack of sunlight. Who needs sunlight if you can see the stars!

Desperate Measures

My worst experiments are when I try to do something new so desperately that it no longer is something pleasurable. Today's meal bordered on that:


Macaroni, raw tomatoes and green grapes with a mixture of curds, salt, sugar and garam masala. The saving grace here was the sugar without which I couldn't have eaten the meal. It was not too bad.

Today's image was a beautiful frozen lake with beautiful iced trees on the side, like icing on a cake. The fog froze mid-air and settled on all objects - gave white hair to people and white streaks to clothes.
This is wonderful weather to whistle in. I came back cycling home whistling some old songs and I had a tough time keeping the volume down. Cold air allows an excellent, sharp whistle.

Dinner at 10

While my breakfast and lunch time is governed by my schedule, dinner is something that I can afford to have whenever I want. Most of the time, my hunger does not allow dinner time to go past 8. Today, filled with coffee and junk food and a lot of laziness I dragged dinner time to 10.

Here it is:

Tomato rice and chips.

Ever since I started writing about the most interesting image of the day I look harder at everything around me and what would I describe each scene as. It works like a kind of exercise in keeping my thoughts focused on the present while allowing me to absorb as much of the beauty of the place as possible. I have been recommending blogging to many people around me. Use it as a diary, a collection of thoughts, a message to the world and what not. It is a process by which you can help improve your creativity while also documenting its growth.

Today's image was not in what I saw, but what I didn't see. The whole place was shrouded in a thick fog and the visibility was about 15 meters. I usually time my cycle trip by a large clock on a very tall building that I can see while riding. Today I couldn't see this building till I was at the very foot of it. Fog always reminds me of bus trips to school in winter at 7.30. I remember our funny blue scarves and pigtails peeping out from under them.

Sunbeam

Today's best image was of the ice melting all around me and of a strong beam of sunlight after days.

Today's meal was quite a bit of work:

Chapatis with curry - carrot, cabbage and peas with chili powder and coconut milk. The chapatis alone took me close to 2 hours to make - counting the time for which I let the dough 'settle'. Worth the trouble. It was such a lovely feeling to see the chapati puff up on the pan and it tasted great!

Almost burnt

Spatial intelligence is an excuse for being too lazy to measure things. But it is the better way to cook.

Today's meal:

Rice and peas cooked with chilli powder and coconut milk. Salad with curds and tomatoes.

The water in the rice was a little too less, causing the bottom of the cooker to get slightly charred. But I could salvage almost all of my meal except for a few spoons of burnt rice. The problem with burnt food is that the smell permeates the entire dish, even the unburnt part and tastes horrible. I stopped the process just in time. This has to be my first burnt meal here.

Today as I was idly watching the snow and admiring the smooth uniformity of the snow deposit on the ground, I saw a family of three having a snow fight. Had to laugh at them and wish I could be outside doing the same. I rolled up some ice collected on my window sill and made a ball out of it and dropped it on the ground. It made a hole in the spot where it hit the snow covered ground. The hole stayed on for at least an hour after that. Yes, I checked periodically. Hee hee.

Starry eyed

I always dislike the flash in the camera. I think it makes images look unnatural. But today I saw this amazing effect of a camera flash on snow. I got a picture that looks like a starry night sky.

Today's meal:

Noodles with cabbage, peas and carrots. This is getting a bit boring now.

Macaroni and peas

Today's meal - macaroni, peas and carrots. Frozen peas were really sweet.

Today's most interesting image was a very small dog wearing a sweater while scampering around. His red faced keeper was having a hard time keeping up!

I read somewhere that the sense of smell is really important for tasting our food. That is why food tastes bland when we have a cold. (That solves one of the greatest mysteries I have ever come across!)

Wimpy's Treat

Today thing-I-saw was my poor potted plant drying up while the world outside suffers and lives at -6 degrees. I have been feeding it with water and lots of attention. There's no reason it should die.

Today's meal: sandwich in burger's clothing.

On the inside it looks like this:

A half-slice of cheese, some carrots and brussel sprouts (finally the last of it) chopped and cooked soft with sabji masala and salt between toasted-till-crisp halves of a bun. I toasted the bun with the cheese slice on it, causing it to melt just enough to make cheese threads when bitten into. Making it was as much fun as eating it. My sister loves to eat this stuff, I get the idea for the 'recipe' from her. She however, would not settle for the duplicate. She makes a proper burger out of boiled potatoes, mashed and made into a cutlet and shallow fried in oil to get a crisp coating on top. Slurp. And I do Wimpy's job.