bluerainroom

this is my life now

Forensics on Monday
Lacrosse on Tuesday
Karate on Wednesday
Lacrosse on Thursday

This is how we all feel by Friday.

pensieve

Sometimes Neel's brain gets so full during the day that he gets up in the middle of the night to let stuff out.

epilogue

 I've been working on the palak part of the palak paneer too, trying to perfect it.  I almost have it.  This is the onion, spice mix part.  Cardamom, cumin, coriander, paprika, salt.  The garam masala comes at the end.

This is the spinach.

Here's everything bubbling happily away on the stove.  Neel's stirring tamarind paste.  We'll work on perfecting that next.  By this point we've added the cream to the spinach, and we both agreed that we got the spinach/cream/paneer ratio quite right with this batch, but that we needed more garam masala/paprika/salt.  Live and learn. 

And here's my family patiently awaiting dinner and not muttering things under their breath like, "Oh God, here she goes again.  Come on, Mama."  Oh, and one last thing about paneer.  When I first tasted the paneer (made by me!), I had to admit I was a little disappointed.  It was not quite as good as that which came from the Indian grocer.  Alas.  But, you know?  Once in the palak, it tasted really good and authentic.  Not superior, but definitely as good.  I could see myself going either way.  Sometimes I'll want to swing by the Indian grocery, and sometimes I'll want to curdle some milk.  Who wouldn't want to curdle some milk?

how to make paneer in one easy lesson

1. Get out your favorite apron.  I chose the lemons because of the lemon juice I'd need for acid in the paneer.

2.  Have lunch.  You don't know how long this will take or how stressful it might be, so you may need sustenance.  This is my standard go-to-the-grocery-store-lunch of roasted corn salad and tofu with sun dried tomato pesto, straight from the Harris Teeter salad bar.  Pomegranate juice and seltzer.  My plate does not always coordinate with my apron, but today it did.  That was nice.

3.  Choose music.  Technically I should have picked some nice sitar music, but let's face it, I'm not a fan.  Wilco radio on Pandora.

 4. If your printer is broken or out of ink, or both, jot down the recipe so you don't have to keep walking back and forth to the computer.  It's so far away.

 5. Face it that you've stalled long enough and get ready to not boil a quart of milk.

6. While the milk is coming to an almost-boil, squeeze enough lemons to make about three-four tablespoons lemon juice.

7. Line everything up to reduce risk of panic.  Milk, lemon juice, cheesecloth-strainer, teaspoon.

8.  When the milk is almost at a boil, add the lemon juice, a teaspoon at a time (and stirring after each addition) until the milk curdles.  This will take about three tablespoons of lemon juice.  Call everyone in to see.

9. Sit on your tuffet and knit patiently while the curds and whey cool.

10.  When cool enough to handle, strain the curds in a strainer lined with cheesecloth and rinse.

11.  Squeeze as much moisture as possible from the cheesecloth and shape it into a round.

12. Place something heavy on the cheesecloth-wrapped paneer and let it sit as long as possible.

13.  When ready to prepare, slice into cubes.  It should be pretty firm by now.

14.  After you slice it up, fry it up and eat it up, YUM! Get ready to do it all again.

15.  Eat a great dinner and rest on your laurels.  It only seems like magic.

I did it!

See that?  There on the plate?  Actual, homemade paneer! Made by me!  Homemade in my own home.  By me!  Number Five  is done and dusted!

not bittman, but...

New cookbook = YUM.  And I haven't even opened it yet!

in a bittman frame of mind

You'd never believe this, but I can go for months without thinking about Mark Bittman.  I know.  Crazy, isn't it?  We have a couple of his books, and he has a new one out.  It's wending its way towards me.  I like cookbooks with pictures, so I wasn't sure at first about How to Cook Everything, but I love it.  I've had it for years, and it's a staple.  When I remember it.  We used to have the coconut chicken all the time.  I need to go dig that book out again.  That's one I can just sit down with and browse through.  Our Sunday Dinner this week was from The Minimalist Cooks Dinner.  Roast fish and leeks.  Couldn't be simpler.  A bit too simple, perhaps for even my fish-loving boy.  I probably should have laid in on a bit thicker with the salt and pepper.  I loved it though.  The bright green taste of the leeks and the lightness of the fish. Minimal, even.

so we went skiing

Neel loves to ski, Callum loves snow, and I love Neel and Callum, so a winter vacation seemed in order. 

This was Neel's birthday present actually.  A winter getaway from the flatlands of marshes, bays and beaches.  His care for the ocean is a direct connection of his love for me, he picks the mountains over the continual wash of the waves any day.  Me?  Don't ask me to choose.  I grew up in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, and those rolling hills sing to my soul as much as the sea spray of where we live now.  When I was a little girl I yearned to live where I do now, nearly a stone's throw from warm sands and warm water.  We treat our beach the way little-girl me treated the mountains of my childhood.  A quick trip after work or school.  Stop by for a swim or dinner.  Sunday morning for a few hours before getting on with the day.

We both miss mountains.  Vistas.  I have so much to be grateful for, here in the little gray house.  The rhythm and clank of neighborhood life.  So much that I wouldn't trade.  But sometimes I yearn to break away from the chains of suburbia.  A little hut on a hill.

We arrived at the beginning of a ferocious windstorm. Did you hear about it on the news?  I think Pittsburgh had a wind gust of 92 miles per hour.  Holey Moley!  The wind howled around our little rented condo and whistled down the fireplace.  Throughout that first night, I'd wake up and hear it whistling around the window and think, "We're here!  This is so exciting!" and fall back asleep.  It was still dark when I got up, but as the sun came up the snow cats came out and started working the slopes.

There's Neel, headed off down the hill.

Callum's not too far behind him.  First in his class down the hill, of course.  Oh, if I were nine.

It was a wonderful trip.  Except for the tv, we were totally unplugged, and just together, inside and out. Happy to be there and be together.  We learned a lot, actually.  Like the fact that we like taking winter trips.  We already planning for next year.
  

numbers 7, 8 and 9 respectively

Although, I'm pretty sure the only thing I really accomplished was number eight.  Taking a lesson may qualify for number nine, but I don't think I ever actually skied.  And I can tell you for sure that number seven was a near thing.  I certainly didn't feel very brave.  Still, it was Friday the 13th, so maybe...

unexpected treat

Neel was thrilled to get a chance to clean out our shed this weekend (go ahead and ask if I'm kidding), and he stumbled across this rare treat mixed in with a pack of asters.  It's a letter from my dad to his parents, written when he was at work (a-hem, I never waste time at work, so clearly that genetic defect jumped a generation) when I was a whopping five months old.  He writes about the house they just moved into (the first house I remember), my five-month doctor's appointment (I'm getting ready to crawl) and a recent illness of my granddad's. 

Nearly forty years old, that letter is (but not quite) and it's so quintessentially my dad.  I can picture that house so well, and my grandparents, and my mom.  A little bit of our history, encapsulated.