Showing posts with label Feast Food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Feast Food. Show all posts
Monday, 25 August 2014
What do you do when your best friend shows up with a giant bag of fresh, crisp green beans from her garden? Well, first off, you give her a giant hug, cause everyone loves those beans. You then hand over the bag of beans to your mom and bat your eyelashes at her and ask her to make you the most delicious, super simple, vegetable comfort food of your childhood. I am lucky to have my mom visiting, and am aiming to make the best of having here here with me, even if it's for a short time.
Us Mangaloreans are not known for our love of vegetables. Every meal, however, does include a vegetable or two, usually as the sidekick to a main of meat or fish. More often than not, vegetables are an afterthought, designed strictly as filler food. Even though half of India is vegetarian, simple steamed veggies - like you find here at almost every meal - are a rarity. Veggies are jazzed up with spices and sauces, and cooked to within an inch of their lives. The results are usually tasty, but, hey, where is the distinctive flavour of the greens?
Monday, 17 March 2014
It's Holi. Holi-day. Yay!
A celebration of springtime, this year it feels very apt, as after a
cold, harsh February, the weather seems to have finally turned a corner
here. The sun is warm on my face, the skies are a brilliant blue, the
birds are singing and starting to fill the nesting boxes, it stays light
later and later in the day and my life just feels brighter and happier.
Kay planted his seeds for the garden last weekend, and I started
getting excited about all the fresh harvests and bounty coming my way
soon.
Holi is characterised by colour. People throw coloured powders up in the air, douse each other with coloured water and celebrate the arrival of flowers and fruit. Holi is also the festival of love and this bittersweet emotion is embodied in Hindu mythology. Legend has it that Lord Shiva, in his anger at being shot by Kaamadeva's arrow (the Indian God of love, similar to Cupid) reduced him to ashes. The arrow worked, however, and Shiva married Parvati. Rati, the wife of Kaamadeva, begged Shiva to revive her husband, and Shiva, understanding true love, granted her wish (and everyone lives happily ever after...)
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