Happy new year! On New Year's Day, we followed Southern tradition and ate black eyed peas and greens for good luck. The beans were cooked in a mild onion and coconut sauce (recipe below) and I scrounged up the only greens I had on hand- a bunch of cilantro- and made cilantro rice to go with the curry. It was a delightful first lunch of the year.
The black eyed peas curry is a riff on the Goan curry called tonak. I've posted a version of the recipe here before.
Here is my simple version with common pantry ingredients:
1. Soak 1.5 cups black eyed peas for a few hours. Rinse and pressure cook until tender with some salt.
2. Make a masala paste- heat a bit of oil and fry 1-2 large onions until pink. Add 1/2 cup dried unsweetened coconut, peppercorns, curry leaves, coriander seeds, red chillies, turmeric, salt, a tomato. Fry the ingredients well, cool a bit and grind to a thick paste.
3. Add the paste to the cooked black eyed peas along with some tamarind paste, bring to a boil and simmer for a few minutes.
4. You can add a tempering of mustard seeds- I skipped this and it was just fine.
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I make one-word resolutions most years. Last year, my word was "stretch" and I can truly say that it guided me to stretch beyond my comfort zone in many ways. I taught a cooking class for 18 people, gave a lecture on traditional and modern Indian cooking, hiked 10 miles of the Appalachian Trail, ran the Peachtree 10 K race and earned a personal trainer certification. Yesterday, I went to the local running store and replaced my worn running shoes, and realized with gratitude that I put an estimated 500 miles on my old pair of shoes in 2024. It is amazing how all those 30-45 minute jogs add up.
My word for 2025 is "Upgrade". It is meaningful for me in different ways and for different aspects of my life. Some of it is literally upgrading my cookware and such (I am a chronic under-buyer) but mostly it is not about buying new stuff but about upgrading systems and habits and routines and spaces, both mental and physical.
On the subject of new year resolutions, here's an amusing little poem: It's Me Again by Erica Reid.
Goodreads sent me a 2024 reading report. This year I plan to keep enjoying books as I always do without particular goals in mind. I'm intrigued by some of the 50 prompts on the 2025 PS Reading Challenge and the 24 prompts on the Book Riot 2025 Read Harder challenge. I rarely (OK, never) complete reading challenges but always do some of the prompts and am rewarded by discovering new books and genres. If you have suggestions for any of these prompts, I'd love to hear them.
I got a head start and completed one prompt on the PS 2025 Reading Challenge over winter break- #10- A book you got for free. I found this one in a Little Free Library nearby- I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy. What a very strange title this book has. The author is a Nickelodeon child star from the long-running tween TV shows iCarly and Sam and Cat - not someone I'm familiar with at all. But the book was known to me because it is a well-received childhood memoir published a couple of years ago. It is a very candid and heartbreaking account of growing up with a narcissistic mother, being pushed to be a child actor, and the dark side of fame- the alcohol addiction and eating disorders.
I also started on Read Harder 2025's Task #24- Pick a 2015 Read Harder Challenge task to complete. The 2015 task I chose is A collection of poetry. This was a book sale find sitting on my shelves, Poet's Choice by Edward Hirsch. It is a compilation of poetry columns from a magazine, a mini-course in world poetry. I have it sitting on my end table, and have been reading one section a day, 3 short but deep pages of prose explaining one or more poems on a theme. It has been utterly lovely to spend 10 minutes a day reading this. One recent column talked about the tradition in poetry of celebrating athletic achievement- the Olympian Odes, another of the poetry of Sappho. Yet another talked about Greek epigrams, short poems intended to be carved or inscribed on monuments or tombstones. Like this one--
Take what you have while you have it: you'll lost it soon enough.
A single summer turns a kid into a shaggy goat.
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