Chai Tea and Saag Paneer

            Two terms that drove me up the wall.   Anyone mention it to me and I'd go,      "there they go stereotyping this innocent Indian woman". I went from this notoriously irritating phase to "Oh, let me help you stereotype me into one of those Indian women".

             From where I come from in India, which is the Southern part, we drink tea. Add tea leaves to boiling water and milk, simmer a couple minutes, add sugar and drink. We even call it.... tea. Some households, drink it twice a day, some thrice, some keep no count. But that is it.

             I had never heard of 'chai' unless it was part of learning Hindi where chai means tea.  The first time I drank chai was in the United states. After hearing so much about chai and after being asked numerous times if I can make chai, I relented and got some chai powder added it to my tea and whoa! was blown away. The spices deepened the flavor and heightened the taste. The aroma tied it all together and my throat was beyond pleased.

             Since then I have taken a keen interest in switching things around with what I add to my chai. Crushed ginger, or pepper or cardamoms and cloves and cinnamon. Anyway I make it, it hits the spot. This year, I downloaded a recipe from the internet and made 25 packets of chai powder as a gift for my kids' teachers and my friends. Thus, enlisting myself to be kindly stereotyped.

           Oh and remember the time I said chai was a hindi word for tea? That is why I still get all riled up when someone says Chai tea, but maybe I shouldn't. I live in a town that has a Table Mesa mountain!!

             Saag paneer..................never heard of it either, until I came to the US. Did not even know what Saag meant. Sounded like it could be soggy and guess what, it IS! Once again, I have to pertain to the fact, that it is a North Indian dish and there was no reason for me to hear about it in my state where we have our own cuisine and very spoilt taste buds. Yet again, when people ask you over and over if I knew how to cook it, there is a sense of intrigue that makes you want to try it. That or your town only has North Indian restaurants and your choices  for  Indian eat outs are limited. Today I have had 2 friends tell me that I make the best Saag in the world. GREAT! Stereotyping going great.

                                               

American Cuisine

                                                    American Cuisine

            When I first got to the US, I was just fascinated with the novelty of American food. The new smells in the restaurants and the numerous  herbs with unique names were so intriguing. I pestered my friends to give me recipes from their cooking  magazines and followed them to the tee. Had no idea of substitutions, no idea that I could buy extra groceries and put it in a pantry. Got what I needed at the store and that was that. Definitions of cuisine terminology were not a given with my Indian metric system upbringing- measurements in quarts and pints and ounces, and cups and tablespoons  seemed to limit my imagination or creativity but if I wavered, how would I know how the dish was supposed to look or taste? So I stuck with it.

            New names were another torment..... like casseroles......I had once made a sweet potato casserole for dinner. That was  it. Nothing else. Nobody told me you needed meat to go with it or a salad. We just stared into that dish all evening!

            I slowly dawned on me that no matter how Americans agreed or disagreed on Hispanic immigration laws, I realized they all loved Mexican food with a passion. Vegetables were optional. Pizza was not. Lettuce was zero calories but the salad dressings were not. The one, big lesson for me-weight gain was easy, weight loss was not.

            I loved being introduced to a built-in oven.  In my hometown, we did not have ovens, we lived in one. So seeing one below the stove gave me a kick. Amazing how you put everything in and dinner is done in an hour. WOW! That was  a welcome surprise considering  the  number of  hours we log in, in the kitchen, cooking our lentils and rice and curries. Since almost everything in Indian cooking is water based, almost all the dishes need to be supervised to avoid getting them burnt.

               With the new oven, came the discovery of boxed cake mixes..... With baking came humility. You wouldn't think they'd go hand in hand but the first time I made a batch of cookies, I looked in the oven when the timer beeped and saw they were perfect, so I closed the oven, turned off the stove and walked away.......so we could eat those yummy cookies when they cooled down. HUGE mistake.... Note to self, remove cookies from oven when done unless you want them burnt beyond recognition.

                An oven and a dishwasher, to me was joy on top of freedom!!! But the dishwasher story is for another day.

When my 2 worlds collide

                                           

            Generally, when there is a collision, you expect sirens........ and if that does not happen, you wait for something to start hurting....... when that doesn't happen.......You look at the crossroads and wonder which road to take. Eventually  you do what you  have to do, you make a choice. Not so much like Mr. Robert  Frost, you  tell yourself  you're going to  try to make the best of both worlds. This was me 12 years ago. Some days this is me today.

            You guessed it. I am from the beautiful India. One day, I moved to the United States.

            I had been in the same place several times in my life, where cultures clash and you can't figure out if it's yours or the other's that clashes more.

           The questions, the frowns and raised eyebrows - I encountered rather hesitantly and braved the culture that seemed hard to grasp.  

            But  after 12 years, I feel I have embraced it enough to make my way thru' it but out of the blue, something would come along and leave me speechless or breathless. I find enough oxygen soon enough and muster the courage for yet another day and another year.

             I read amazing, intelligent blogs of brave people. This is not such an attempt. I do not aspire to be amazing or intelligent and least of all brave. I just want to make you smile. Maybe even laugh. Just want to give you a peep into my life of how I seemingly handled my culture shock and share my adventure in pitching my tent in another country with my family. Where will I be if not for my family?

             My sweet husband taught me how to start a blog. I have the loveliest of kids. They read my blog and call me 'the blogger'. I think it is catching on in my household that mom is going to share her stories.

              So check out my blog every week. Or every other week.

             

 

 

 

Say something in Indian!

            If  you can possibly discount the politics and poverty of India, you would think this country is absolutely the most beautiful place under the Sun. But, who am I kidding, how do you discount the corruption of the political world  and the ignore the starving elephant in the room. So as you add these 2 to the mix, then appears the land of contrasts. On one side live the poorest of the poor and on the other side live the insanely rich, neither can quite explain how they came to be where they are now. The first can't come up with an answer and the other better not come up with the answer.

           But as you scratch the surface of what meets the eye, lies a greater something  that is masked by the 2 already mentioned giants of the nation. I'd call it sheer beauty. Beauty in its art, music, literature, diversity of religions, tolerance to the diversity of religions and respect to this tolerance, in the most part. Then, there is beauty in the landscape. Ranging from the snow capped Kashmir to the intolerable scorching heat of the small towns to the mesmerizing greenery to the long winding rivers that are looked upon as the source of life. Beauty in the art of driving without traffic lights or driving with no lights at all.

            Beauty in being content.

            Beauty in disregarding the greedy. Beauty in the jostling crowds that move at their own pace. Beauty in the different languages they speak in every state. Pride in owning their language with its own poetry and literature indigenous to that land. Beauty in broken English when you can't speak the language. Beauty in Bollywood, Kollywood, Tollywood and Mollywood. Beauty in its spicy food and spicier TV masala.

            Beauty in trying to explain this awesome country to an American friend who says, "Say something in Indian".  Beauty as you bite your tongue because I want to say," we speak a million languages in India. Not one of them is called Indian."