updates

What HAS been keeping me busy?

1. Dishes, laundry, sweeping, scrubbing floors, tending my children, getting booster shots... who knows what else?!
2. Baking and cooking re-discovered and new recipes - I've recently been making Paneer (cottage cheese), and I tried my hand at hummus (though I was missing most of the ingredients, but still people ate it!) and I even managed to make donuts for my man!

3. AP CALCULUS PARTY!!!

The cake! (Thanks to my creative neighbor who decorated it!)

The AP Calc AB and BC classes were offered to take a practice AP exam after school on Tuesday followed by dinner at our house. 9 students took the teachers up on the offer, so we had a Calculus party!

"What does one do at a Calculus party?", you may ask...

This.

And this.

And hang out eating and talking about all sorts of things... including what certain calculators can and can't do, how impressive their physics teacher is to be able to do any calculation in his head, and has Mr. Burchell ever challenged that physics teacher to a "math duel"?!

It was a fun get-together all around.

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Then we've had some rain recently that has cleared the air a bit and I asked my photographer husband to go and take a picture of our valley - because I'll miss this view:

We're about 5000 feet above the city below us and we can see it from our bedroom window, although there are trees in the way. So Nate took the camera to a clearer spot and got a nice picture for me.

In 7 weeks we'll be on the other side of the world missing the view of this valley.

Since I last posted pictures:

We made sugar cookies together. The kids actually did a great job - such a good job that I just told Will that when I'm done with this post, we'll go and make chocolate chip cookies together. We're both excited to eat them!
Serious bakers!

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The kids love playing in our backyard. They would never come inside if I didn't make them. And we are enjoying beautiful sunny, warm March days.

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Here's the Crazy Quilt square I finished.

It turns out that Embroidery is not really all that hard, and can be quite fun. Maybe I'll make another one of these someday.

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ONE T, TWO T, THREE T, FOUR T!

I weighed the kids on Saturday: Annie weighs 20 lbs, and Will 42 lbs. She has quite the collection of clothes and typically wears things of all sizes from 12 months to 4 T. In the picture above, her yellow shirt is 2-3 T, tank-top is 12 months, shoes are for a 2-3 yr old, tights are 2-4 T, skirt is 2T... I was hoping she'd fit 18-month clothes now, but as I pulled out summer clothes, I was glad I had held onto some 12 month stuff- she fits that best right now (since she's 27 monhths old, you know?!). GROW, ANNIE, GROW!
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And a couple of posts back I mentioned that I was making pumpkin bars for 50 kids. Here are my pans of pumkin bars with maple frosting... MMMmmm! They ended up serving one group of 50 kids and another of 20 kids - and my family even got to eat a few edges! I love baking!

Dal Recipe

One of my big projects at the moment is compiling recipes in an effort to make a proper recipe book. So I finally typed up my Dal recipe for that (and also so I won't lose it) and I thought I'd just share it here for any of you curious cooks.

Dal

1 cup dal (lentils)
1 litre water (about 4 cups?)
2 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp turmeric (haldi)
1 ½ tsp coriander powder (daniya)
1 tsp garam masala (perhaps this is like curry powder?)
½ tsp chicken masala
1 onion chopped fine
6 cloves garlic chopped
3 Tbsp oil

1. Put dal in a pressure cooker and wash dirt off well by running it through fingers, pouring off dirty water and rinsing again with fresh water. Do this several times until the water is pretty clean. Then pour off the water and put 1 litre of clean water into the pressure cooker.
2. Add salt, turmeric, coriander, garam masala and chicken masala to the dal and water.
3. Put lid on pressure cooker making sure seal is tight and cook over a high stove flame. Note the first time that it whistles and then let it continue cooking for about 15 more minutes.
4. Turn off flame and let pressure cooker sit for at least 5 minutes before letting out the steam.
5. Let all the steam out of the pressure cooker so that you can add the last ingredients as soon as they're ready.
6. Heat oil in a pan and fry garlic and onion until well-browned. Add them immediately to the dal in the pressure cooker and mix well.
7. Serve with rice and roti as desired.

Serving size: 4-6 servings
Cook time: ~20 minutes

Options: This recipe is not at all spicy, so you can add ¼ tsp red chili powder along with the other spices if you wish. Otherwise, we enjoy this dal with a spoon of lime pickle on the side.

food, glorious food...

...no matter what it looks like!
We bought some mustard in Korea this summer. Real, American mustard, and it's been sitting in our fridge staring at us for months now. We admitted the other day that we both seem to drool at the sight of it, but can't think of much that we could eat it with except... maybe hotdogs! So Nate brought me some sausages that resemble hotdogs quite well and I baked some buns to put them in. I was so excited about this meal that I asked Nate to take a picture:

- He didn't think anyone would be very impressed - but we were very excited for this rare meal:

MMMMMMmmmmmm! WHAT A TREAT! First time having hotdogs in India - it was wonderful - so wonderful that I think we'll do it a few more times before we leave!

Another meal that has become a favorite for me is the basic Indian meal of rice and dal (lentils) with a side scoop of 'pickle'. I learned to make it myself last year and now cook it up every other day or so and eat the leftovers in between. It's Annie's favorite meal- the only thing we could get her to eat for a number of months, and it's grown on me too. Pickle has got to be one of the nastiest-looking things out there. They make it of lots of different things, but our favorite is Lime pickle. It's Lime pieces fermented in mustard oil with lots of chili and salt. Doesn't it sound delicious????!!! I didn't dare try it for our first three years here, and like the character in Green Eggs and Ham, once I finally got up the nerve to try it, I found that I LOVE it! I plan to bring some back for my dad to try someday- he'd like it too, I'm sure.

-my lunch plate almost every day-

calories?

Last night I went to the gym by myself for the first time. I played 2 on 2 basketball with three very athletic guys and being very out of shape myself, I was certainly no competition for them, but they humored my interest in playing the game and I lasted for about an hour. Then I headed to the weight-training room which is usually full of intimidating "weight-trainers" and I have very little experience weight-lifting. Last night there were only two guys there and they were busy being serious about their weight-lifting, so I took advantage of the emptiness and tried out all the machines- a little of this, a little of that... it was nice. I went finally to the treadmill, and asked if I could use the T.V. that's mounted above it (ok, I admit, the only reason Nate and I talk about ever using the treadmills is to watch T.V.) I watched the news (I'm generally pretty out of touch with the world), which was interesting for a few minutes. Then I glanced at the treadmill screen. It was telling me about my 'workout' - how fast I was running, what the incline was, how good it was for my heart, and then the word "calories" popped up in front of me and I thought: CALORIES?! I just wanted to laugh out loud. You see, after gaining about 20 lbs my freshman year of college, I began to mildly keep track of calories as I ate and exercised. I watched them when I was pregnant with Will - at first to make sure I didn't overeat, and then the doctors told me I had to eat more and more and more because I wasn't gaining enough weight with him. (He turned out ok anyway- was 8.5 lbs at birth!) and then I quit counting calories.

That was 4 years ago. I haven't even THOUGHT about calories since then. The closest thing I can think of is this past year and how I'd compare milk and food labels to see "how many grams of FAT does it have in it?" ... because our diet here is super lean and I've been desperate to fatten up my little girl, so we now stock up on all the fatty foods we can find and we try our best to get her to eat them heartily. :) It's worlds away from my college days of calorie-counting, and it was just weird to recall a life I can barely remember now.

I imagine that when I move back to the world of great food, I'll count calories again since I'll want to eat tons of everything. But for now, I am appreciating loving rice and lentils and getting to eat as much I like of sweet treats like cake and brownies with full-fat cream on them. Calories...mmmm!

Where HAVE I been?!

A: In my house, without internet and therefore no blog posts. Oh yeah, and my computer crashed and I had to re-format it ALL BY MYSELF... for the 3rd time this year. and now it's finally up and running -mostly.

I have thought of a number of things to blog about and I have thought of lots of things I need to write to people about - and I've even started thinking about writing snail mail letters again since I don't have much way to communicate... we'll see.

One great benefit of not having a working computer and internet is that I've been able to get some sewing done. I'm finally doing the hand-quilting on Annie's quilt that I started last summer. I've also pulled out a couple of other old projects and think I might actually be able to finish them up sometime soon. I've borrowed my neighbor's sewing machine and it's working perfectly, so that makes sewing lots more fun!

Well that's a word from my corner. I'm off to cook some rice and dal for lunch! YIPPEE!!! (more about rice and dal and PICKLE later I hope!) All for now.

list 1

It's been a long 3 years- now just 8 months to go. I've restrained myself from writing this list for too many months/years, so I apologize for being negative, but this is real for me these days (and I suspect that it will be an important list someday when I am gone from here and am remembering how perfectly marvelous this place was).

Things I will NOT miss when we leave from here:

1. monkeys stealing my laundry off the laundry lines and making my little boy sob in anger as he watches them steal it


2. the fear of the monkeys whenever we go for a walk, play outside, dare to eat outside... i hate the monkeys.


3. feeling excluded in such a small community because i am a stay-at-home mom


4. endless computer/internet problems


5. having spent all last night walking in the Bazaar, trying not to forget to buy anything, dragging it all back home, only to find that I didn't even think to buy ribbon, which I have to have for my little boy's birthday party tomorrow. OH to have a car and a store nearby where I could go with my kids to pick up last-minute things when I forget.


6. feeling like a failure every time someone asks me if I speak Hindi... that was just one of the many things I didn't manage to do during the past 3 years here!


7. having to have a lady helping me clean my house 5 days a week (i know it sounds great, but she doesn't do a great job and i'm tired of having her in 'my' space all the time.)


8. borrowing a hand-crank sewing machine that barely works, although I AM thankful for the use of a machine at all... it's just frustrating


9. my teeny tiny ovens (although I am very thankful that I even HAVE an oven! -in fact, 2 ovens!)


10. having to wipe black mold off the walls every week


11. dreading figuring out something to cook for dinner almost every night because the options that we enjoy are so few and so much work


12. butter shortages, milk shortages, "no cocoa powder until Monday, Ma'am", no molasses, weird-flavored vanilla 'essence', no good cheese, no beef, and rarely lettuce. I just won't miss these things!


13. skype frustrations and any other downloading of almost anything, which take eeeeeooooonnssss to complete (oh yeah, I already said internet problems, didn't I?!)


14. getting sick from food/water so often and having to deal with the health centre/hospital and all their run-around-info

Well, I'm running out of things to complain about for now, so it's probably a good time to quit. The wonderful thing about this sort of list is that as I hunt for lousy things, I remember scads of things I WILL miss. That list will come soon, I promise! :) I DO have it pretty good, I'm just so weary of some of this stuff. Of course, every place has some good, some bad...

Most of the time I really like living here and I am so thankful for all the ways that God has provided for us.

For My Mamma: Story/Craft time and Bullar!

One thing that reminds me very much of my mom is when I attempt to tell my kids Bible stories or do crafts with them. I'm not nearly as good at it as she was, but I remember so vividly how she so often did these kinds of things with us when we were small.

This time, I had the kids make Necklaces with a Needle and Noodles (which got very confusing: "put the noodle through the needle, i mean the needle through the noodle..." and I decided we should learn the letter N along with this craft... Will enjoyed it thoroughly.

Another thing that reminds me of my mom is when I bake. Especially when I bake bullar (Swedish cardemom bread). I made this last week for my family and they are just so yummy, I had to take some pictures before they disappeared.

Here's what my counter-top looks like when the baking is done:

My counter-top oven:

MMMMmmmm! Fika anyone?

I sure am glad that my Mamma taught me how to bake- it's come in so handy the past few years! :) She taught me a lot more than that too... so much about being a wife and a mom. Thanks Mamma! I miss you!