Roti- the Indian flat bread

The reason I chose to write about ‘Roti’ is that it is one of the easiest and the toughest breads to make. Let me explain that, it is pretty easy as its made fresh at each meal and more often than not the dough is made fresh too but sometimes the dough is made for a couple of meals at a time and stored in refrigerator. Dough is nothing but flour and water mixed together, no yeast, no oil, no egg, nada. Make small balls and roll it out, a couple of minutes on the tava (flat, no edge skillet) and then pouf it up on direct fire.

Although it’s part of main course of most north Indian meals at home it almost never shows up on a restaurant’s menu. I think that’s because of the fact that it needs to be made fresh and requires experienced hands….

More than a decade ago I found myself in a narrow alley kitchen on a third floor apartment building that was surrounded by 2 feet on snow all around. Although it wasn’t the snow that prevented me but it felt like I was stranded bare feet on an icy island and I couldn’t summon the courage to wade through it all and reach out to warmth.

All by myself, standing in front of a big steel plate filled with dry whole wheat flour and a pitcher of water I stood there crying. I had done it before but not really there always was mom and the maid who’d make the dough for me and also made the roti and fed me numerous times.

It just happened, appeared routinely on my plate and it happened so automatically that I forgot the route the flour must have taken and the kneads it must have meandered to become the warmth that my tongue and my soul was seeking. My fingers froze in the coldness of the water as I let it run through the fingers to the top of a mound of flour, trying very hard to recall the kneading motion required to turn that runny lump into the mass of soft dough. After consistent motion that was very unlike the usual curling of the fingers, I kneaded my heart into a stronger and yet supple dough.

It took many years to get over the turmoil of the fingers and heart and mind before I ventured again in this familiar territory, fulfilling the knead of body and mind. My mum again came to the rescue while she was visiting the island which wasn’t as icy and deserted as before and laid the steps for me to follow and now making my own roti is not a torture but joyous endeavor that I indulge in very often…

Dry Flour and pitcher of water

The dough

Dough rolled into balls

Balls rolled out into a circle

On the Tava (skillet)

Flipped over

Pouffed up on direct fire

Got a little more dark than usual, was busy taking picture;-)

Taking care of the sides

The 'Roti' is ready to be consumed....

So that's about it, a simple fresh, easy yet tough 'Roti'....

Valentines' Day through my phone's eye...

Fabric as door screen

This Sunday presented to be a very opportune day when we could hang out at our home together as a family. The ice skating class for kids wasn’t there and had I know it before; I’d have scheduled us for another activity. We also wanted to go see our friends’ new baby but she wasn’t feeling well so we dropped the plan. And I don’t know for what particular reason but we scuttled our plan to go to ‘Mall of America’ too.

And since I started hyperventilating and wallow myself in guilt if at the end of a relaxing day I have nothing to show for but my calm nerves (hypothetically), it was fortunate that we (DH & I) could finish up this quick DIY project.

Our front door has quite a bit of glass in it and though it’s extremely desirable on long summer days, it left us wishing for a little more privacy during the short days of Fall. We wanted a quick, clean solution for the time being till our contractor can come back and change the door style for us.

I got this idea of using fabric as wall paper from ‘how about orange’. The execution once we got around to doing it was pretty simple, got the fabric from IKEA and made wall-paper paste from flour (Recipe).

Everything else is self-explanatory in the pictures; needless to say we love the results and don’t have to worry who can peek into our living room when it’s dark at 5:00pm in the evening.

Before

Wall paper paste on fabric

During

After 1

After

Some scrapbooking...

I did a little scrapbooking the other night. I haven’t done much of it in a long time so it was quite refreshing and challenging at the same time.

I had a few pictures left over from the Project Life pile and I was inspired by a scrapbooking magazine that my friend passed on to me after she was done reading it. I used whatever supplies were available at hand without running over to my crafts area and ended up creating these two simple pages.

This one is just a few pictures from the New Year’s Day. The lighting by the loft window was beautiful and both DH and I took a few shots of the kids and each other. I didn’t have any journaling on the page as there was nothing much to say about this impromptu photo-shoot before heading to the temple.

This one about the girl and their braids can use miles and miles of journaling. They both love the idea that I am letting them grow their hair till the Kathak stage performance in late spring, after which I promised them that mamma will get a haircut too along with them, since my hair has been an inspiration for them to wish for long hair and braids. The highlight of the day was that their dolls got braids too just like them.

With these two pages along with the PL pages, I have slowly inched towards my goal of 300 pages for year 2012. I have 291 pages to go…

Project Life Week 2 & 3

Making slow and steady progress with my Project Life. Here are the week 2 and week 3 layouts. There are a couple of blank pockets in the layout, one for week 3, where I need to insert my daughter's MLK day presentation that she gave to her parents and also another one for art from my younger one, 'Word Illustration :Mom'.

Please don't mind the quality of the pictures of these layout, I didn't want to add another layer of hindrance is sharing my pages, it is more for my own accountability.



Week 2, warm weather, science musuem, celebrating Birthdays





Week 3, MLK day picnic, couple of date with hidden journaling, blinds project, my own book





Inspiration in Recycle bin...

I am suffering with a head cold and with all the pressure concentrated around the eyes and forehead, the brain functioning is quite foggy.

Hot tea, of course is a big help, mostly Ginger Yogi tea but any other kind is fine too as long as its hot.

Ever since I gave up coffee earlier in February, tea has been a big help and I am going through Yogi Tea boxes quite regularly. Today in the fog of the morning and of my brain too, I needed some repetitive activity that didn’t seem mundane. The Yogi Tea box lying open in the recycling basket called out to my rescue and I colored and cut out a few shapes from it. The patterns remined me of traditional Indian Henna designs and in sick times, familiarity brings a lot of comfort...

They are now displayed in my work cubicle and introducing color and cheer to my otherwise bland day.