Fat haters, avert your eyes...

I present to you what piggy Kate ate for breakfast this morning:

A big old plate of fat-loaded food!

In my defense, I didn't fry the bread in bacon fat (but instead smeared it with an obscene amount of butter...hmmm, maybe not such a good defense after all...), though the egg and tomato (homegrown!) were fried up in the same pan as the luscious thick cut bacon.

I craved this fat-fest of a breakfast because I have actually soldiered on and am reading the non-fiction London: 1945 despite my previous griping. I confess that I skimmed over the chapter on the Ministries--the author is trying hard to get you interested in the war-time bureaucracy, but it isn't thrilling reading. Once I got to the chapter on war-time food and rationing, though, I was hooked! Today's breakfast is an homage to all the Brits who had to deal with rationing until--get this--1951! That's right, you may have thought that the food situation would improve in 1945 after the liberation of Europe, but the rationing was worse than any prior year and it continued longer than anyone imagined. So this breakfast would have made many a Brit swoon with pleasure. And it did a pretty good job on gluttonous old me.

The biggest surprise is that I didn't get this bacon at Big 10 (Applewood Smoked Bacon = $14.99/lb) but at Meijers! It is the Meijers brand thick cut bacon and was dirt cheap and incredibly meaty. Ok, so it didn't quite have the depth of flavor the Applewood stuff, but for the money, pretty damn good.

On the knitting front, I have new inspiration for knitted toys. Jess Hutch has posted photos of her knitted robots on Flickr:

This one is out for a stroll.

Fiona's current favorite book is this one, Hello Robots.

I have to read it about 4 times each night.

We recently acquired a robot like this:

You wind him up and he walks forward with sparks shooting out of his eyes. You'd think this might cause nightmares among the two-year-old set, but Fiona just lets out squeals of glee. Fiona and I also went to see the wonderful Robots Like Us exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry when we were passing through Chicago.

So I'm hoping I can dig among the stash yarn and find appropriate weights and colors to make Fiona a softie robot of her very own. I like how serious Jess Hutch's robot looks, but since our favorite line from the Hello Robots story is "Hello Robots, happy robots, smiling bolt to bolt" the one I make should have a big smile on its face and I will probably need to figure out how to make a knitted bolt--bobble? little knot? a stitch or two of contrast color? Suggestions welcome.

Organization

The other day I opened my spice cabinet and was beaned on the head by a falling jar of allspice. It fell not because it was a malevolent spice, but because there were so many crammed in jars of various herbs and spices that the poor thing had no recourse but to hit me to get my attention and try to convince me to improve its living standards. Clearly, I am really not the person to turn to when it comes to organization, but I did learn and implement something at the cooking class on Sunday.

Bhanu brought out this container of neatly labeled spices for us to use that day.
I asked her if she had set it up this way because she was traveling (she lives in San Francisco and was visiting her son) and she said that she has a bin just like this one at home (but with a few more spices).

It was so incredibly easy to use these spices--the little gladware containers were much easier to use than screwing and unscrewing endless jars and a tablespoon fit in easily. But best of all, once the lid is on the spice bin, you can shove it someplace out of the way, like on a bookshelf or under the sofa or maybe even in your kitchen if you don't clog up all your cabinet space with appliances like I do...I rarely need regular access to fenugreek seeds except when cooking Indian food so when I got myself organized I excavated many jars from the spice cabinet (giving that desperate allspice a little room to stretch itself out), decanted them into little gladware containers, labeled them and popped them in the bin. Pretty much everything dried that I need to cook Indian recipes is now collected all together and also out of the way of the daily use stuff.

The kids will be sooooo happy tomorrow when I can actually find the cinnamon for their oatmeal without cursing up a storm.

So maybe I should take a lesson from this and try to organize all the hostile piles of paper that cover pretty much every horizontal surface in my house. But unfortunately there isn't any big reward to organizing paper--oh great I found 122 paid bills that should have been filed somewhere! Maybe I could synthesize some sort of reward for doing it, even if it was an unrelated reward. If I clean off one of the crapoires (a term lifted from Lynne for their armoire where they dump crap, though she only has one crapoire and in my house there are numerous crapoires to the point of almost calling the place a crapoireteria) then maybe I can try my hand at making vanilla gelato because I have a hankering for an affogato al caffe which is simply vanilla ice cream or gelato "drowned" in a couple of shots of espresso. (I looked for a photo on Flickr and amazingly there is no affogato tag! If I make one, I must photograph it and post it there...)

Or if I'm tired after organizing all that dreary dusty paper, maybe I'll just buy some vanilla ice cream and give my donkey brain its carrot without making the donkey grow the carrot from a damn seed.

I'm just not a non-fiction kind of gal

I'm trying really hard to appreciate the detailed research that clearly went into London: 1945 but I'm having a hard time following or even finding the momentum to the prose. I don't see how the NYTimes could call the book "thoroughly engrossing" when my perception of the first chapter was a long list of statistics, broken up with quotes by eye witnesses. I know history can be written in a more interesting fashion than this--I actually read the entirety of Stephen Ambrose's book about Lewis and Clark, Undaunted Courage and thought it was a terrific read (I wouldn't choose it over a good novel, but I would choose it over a crummy novel and that's pretty high praise for non-fiction coming from me).

I really wanted to like London: 1945 partly because I thought it might help me understand my somewhat unknowable mother (she doesn't intend to be unknowable, she's just British in that way). She was born in 1941 in London during the Blitz and I keep trying to imagine her as a 4 year old kid and my lovely grandmother trying to raise 3 young children in the city being described in the book. I've made it to chapter 3, but even with my own imaginative constructs supporting the book's narrative doldrums I don't think I'll be able to finish it before it is due back to the library (someone else has requested it so I can't renew.)

Besides there are other temptations on the horizon--the library just sent me an email that Ian McEwan's Saturday is being held for me. As pissy as I was when I found out that The New Yorker had published part of it as a short story, it was a damn fine short story and hopefully will be a damn fine novel.

Mango Lassi recipe

It looks like it is going to be another stinking hot day so here is the recipe for refreshing Mango Lassi. (Note: Brian did NOT clean out the blender until late last night--the bottom had been screwed on so damn tight that my wee little princess hands could not unscrew it to clean out the remnants of the coriander chutney--so I'll be making a pitcher full of Lassi today. And Brian will be lucky if there is any left over when he gets home...)

Bhanu Hajratwala's Mango Lassi
Serves 4 to 6

1 big can (30 oz) of sweetened mango pulp (Bhanu used Ratna Alphonso Mango Pulp which can be purchased for $2.99 a can at Foods of India and which is a hell of a lot simpler than peeling dicing and pureeing a whole bunch of really ripe mangos.)
3 cups of buttermilk
1 cup water
5 T sugar
pinch of saffron (optional, but recommended)

1. Blend all ingredients together. (Note: if your blender can't handle all the liquid at once--mine sure as hell can't--then put in half the mango, half the buttermilk, all the sugar and the pinch of saffron to make sure the sugar is dissolved and the saffron blended. Then you can add the rest of the mango, buttermilk and water to the blended stuff in a pitcher and just give it a good stir.)
2. Serve over ice or well chilled.

Don't you love a simple recipe sometimes? I don't know why every other Lassi recipe I've seen has been made with yogurt--the buttermilk is way better in it and the pinch of saffron is just brilliant. It gives it a little exotic aftertaste that is not really placeable, but really makes the Lassi special.

To go with my Lassi today, I show you these:
These gorgeous huge blackberries were picked off of some completely ignored canes in my front yard which were planted over ten years ago by the angelic former owner of our house. The woman achieved angel status in my book not only for providing me with fruit that thrives on neglect, but for stripping multiple layers of wallpaper off of pretty much every interior wall in the house. Maybe she should be elevated to goddess status...

I can't Tikka my Aloo...

I've spent a lot of time in the kitchen today and after frying the onions to top the rice, I'm gonna stop. This means we will not be starting with our little potato appetizers because for the life of me I can't figure out how to get the mashed potato with its spices to hold together enough to make a little patty (which then has to be dipped in a garam batter and bread crumbs before frying--that means it has to be sturdy enough to be handled.)
Here is the mess I have made with my Aloo which refuses to be Tikka'd:
After at least a dozen tries I have one little misshapen patty and garam batter that is chock full of globs of potato. The bread crumbs have remained relatively unscathed but that's because most of the patties disintegrated in the batter phase...

Lest you forget what an Aloo Tikka should look like, I remind you of Bhanu's perfect little circles (well, it was perfect before I stuck my fork in it).
So I'm giving up on the Aloo Tikka for now. I would love suggestions from anyone who has managed to make these and get the potato to hold together.

We are eating well enough tonight even without our little potato patties; I managed to make the rice dish, chicken curry and coriander chutney. And if Brian will clean out the blender, I will make the Mango Lassi too. (Recipes coming soon, I promise.)

It has been a good day on other fronts because Fiona has done terrific with potty training, she pooped twice but her underpants have remained clean and dry all day and even the diaper that I put her in when we went out stayed dry. Girls have such great sphincter control--I think that should be printed on a T-shirt.

Indian feasting part 1

For those of you bored by my continual gluttony and reluctant to read through an invariably long-winded discussion of the Indian cooking class I took, I first present proof that I don't just spend my time stuffing my face:
Sometimes I do take a break and interrupt my hands from their regular plate-to-mouth route to play with yarn. On the left is the broadripple sock (I seem to have mastered my ick face and forgiven the yarn for the brief moments of dinge) and on the right is the start of my fern colored sleeve for my Ribby Cardigan. I'm knitting it in the round using Magic Loop and Denise interchangeable Needles. It would probably be a bit easier if I was using Addi Turbos since there wouldn't be the little stiff join to deal with. I also had to rip out the sleeve down to where the increases started because I realized that in translating the pattern from flat knitting to in-the-round I hadn't changed the location of the increases (the original budgeted in two stitches on either side of the increase for seaming). But with worsted weight yarn, the knitting goes so comparatively fast that I didn't even get very pissy about my mistake.

Now, back to food.
On Sunday I learned to make this:
Oh yea, and this too:
My friend Ami's co-worker Sarah's sister Heidi's Mother-in-Law (follow that?) Bhanu Hajratwala taught the class.

Here is Bhanu with her three-year-old assistant chapatti maker granddaughter Zoe:
I'm not going to do a blow by blow of the class right now (I think I'd be typing all day)--I'll save that for when I attempt to recreate the dishes at home. But I'll tempt you to come back by listing the menu:

Appetizer: Aloo Tikka (potato patties)
Drink: Mango Lassi
Salad: Layered Kachoombar
Rice: Shahi Vegetable Pulau (also known as Biryani)
Vegetable: Bhinda Bataka (okra)
Meat: Chicken Curry
Chutney: Fresh Coriander Chutney
Bread: Fresh Chappaties
Desert: Kopra Paak (coconut squares)

I plan to attempt to recreate all of the above except the salad and the desert.
I was underwhelmed by the salad--very pretty and jewel-like in the bowl, but not a hell of a lot of flavor, just sort of a cool crunch. I'd prefer a standard Raita; I think it cools down the chili heat better and tastes more interesting.

And Indian deserts and I just don't get along very well...they are so sweet they make me feel like I'm going to go into a diabetic coma after one taste.

Today I plan to hit the Indian grocery store Foods of India (much to my very pissy discovery Indian grocery stores in Ann Arbor are not open on Mondays....grrrr) and get some missing ingredients--fresh tumeric root, star anise, ghee--which will hopefully enable me to make at least the rice (probably my favorite thing from the menu we cooked) and the Lassi and possibly also the chicken curry and the aloo tikka, though the last two may have to wait for another day.