23 Hours in Atlanta, Art Walk, Undhiyu

V and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary this month. We've blasé about anniversaries, but this one felt noteworthy. Since our kids have been born, we've never gone away together for even a single night, even though we frequently take turns traveling for work. 

For the anniversary weekend, we went away, leaving each child with a friend, for a WHOLE 23 hours, 90 WHOLE minutes away to the big city. As minor as this getaway was, it was the respite I needed and it filled my cup. 

It was a picture-perfect Saturday, warm with stunning blue skies and a bit of a breeze. Very "Goldilocks" in terms of temperature. We started the afternoon with a guided street art tour in the artsy Cabbagetown neighborhood. Guided tours are great because they open your eyes and highlight things that you may pass by without ever noticing.

Such as this mural on a nearly 100-year old grocery store (owned by the same family this whole time). The "ouch" on the bottom of the mural was apparently painted on after a high speed police chase ended up with a crash right into the building! 

Our guide started us off with a little lesson on the differences between public art, street art, and graffiti. It was mentioned that street art often has social commentary and is a dialog between the community and the artist. Here are just a few of the murals that I enjoyed on the tour- 

Come Together is one of the "stacks square mural project". It reminded me of a quilt, and the figure's clothing reminded me of block printed fabric:

This wonderful piece with hair and hair accessories shows you that just about anything can be a wonderful subject of artwork: 

"How your love makes me feel" with the exploding flower- so sweet and it really does capture that explosive feeling. Watch it being painted :)

Many of the murals are part of the "Forward, Warrior" mural project in which invited artists paint murals during a multi-day street festival. 

When I first saw this mural, "don't set that crown on the ground", to me it was an exhortation to hold on to one's power and self-respect- we are all queens in our own way. I have no idea if that is what the artist wanted to convey. I guess we all get to interpret art with our own lens. Watch it being painted!

This one was just sweet- pointing out to each passerby that each of us brings something to this planet. At a time when so many feel isolated and alienated and struggle to find a place in the world, it is a good message to put out there. 

This one with a girl and her dog immediately caught my eye and reminded me of the happy years with my own dogs. I loved the running dog in the borders (a not so secret animation- how cute!). The artist Linda McNeil writes about the inspiration for this mural on her instagram post. 

This mural has a human heart overflowing with greenery and natural beauty. 

This one was one of my favorites- with just three colors and beautiful lines, the artist (the artist seven) captures such a sense of motion and energy. 

This one is by the illustrator Brandon Campbell. I love his doodly pen and ink style sooo much. Check this out to see his method. This mural possibly reminds us that time is ticking?!

Speaking of murals and social commentary, this was a great mural that commemorates (on gravestones) all the great Atlanta restaurants that have closed. Rising rents are the death of small businesses and they are literally being painted over.

This one was moving- Infinite love by Nicole Kang Ahn. It is pictured as a traditional Korean vase, with a mother and child, dedicated to the artist's daughter Vera who was diagnosed with a serious medical issue. On the bottom right, hard to read in this photo, it says "For Vera, who I'd choose in this lifetime and a thousand more".

There was so much more we saw during this art walk, including the awesome graffiti in the Krog street tunnel. This tunnel has a whole archive and everything. Atlanta has so much personality. 

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Yucca fries with queso,
and anniversary bubbly

We went on to dinner at a restaurant that we had loved 2 years ago- La Semilla, which serves modern plant-based Latin-inspired cuisine. Given a choice, I'll patronize an all-vegetarian/vegan restaurant any day. La Semilla was just as good as I remember it. 

My very favorite dish at this restaurant is the chochoyotes, corn dumplings in a corn sauce with corn chips. An utterly amazing celebration of corn. If you're ever in Atlanta, I highly recommend this dish. 

V got a mushroom steak and we shared a slice of strawberry tres leches. 

The incredible chochoyotes

Lion's mane mushroom steak

Strawberry tres leches cake

We stayed at a cute boutique hotel in midtown ATL, and it was lovely except that the street noise- drag racing, or something of the sort- made for a terrible night of sleep. How do people sleep through this? I'm spoiled by living in my quiet neighborhood tucked away in a corner of town. The only night owls around me are the actual owls that live in my backyard! 

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Sunday morning, after a big breakfast, it was back to regular life, with a stop at the big Indian store to stock up on some pantry staples before heading home. I bought some of the vegetables for undhiyu- fresh field beans (vaal), tender eggplant, baby bananas, fresh fenugreek (methi). I've written about this wonderful vegetable dish before, and after waiting to make it all winter (it calls for a few specialty ingredients), I finally made it. 

Unlike the recipe I've linked to, this time, I did not bother to buy or make methi dumplings. Did not use a frozen undiyu veg mix either. I simply mixed the masala paste in a bowl and stuffed it into eggplant pieces and baby bananas. Then I heated a bit of oil in the instant pot and tempered it with ajwain seeds (the magic thing that gives undhiyu its distinctive flavor IMO). I sauteed the remaining masala with field beans, chopped fenugreek and green peas. Then added the stuffed veg, some water and cooked on low pressure for 4 minutes. It made for a wonderful, fresh, spring-like vegetable dish.

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I just finished reading Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman. What a gem of a novel. It is a slim book that I savored over many days. This isn't a story, per se, and there is no plot to speak of. It is a collection of vignettes. The book (published in 1993) is set in 1905 when Einstein was working as a patent office clerk while creating his theory of relativity, which changed our conception of time. The vignettes in the book are Einstein's imagined dreams at this time.

In each dream, time behaves very differently than it does in our world, and we get to see its effects. In one world, time is a circle and the world repeats itself endlessly. All mistakes are repeated precisely in this life as in the life before. 

In another world, the passage of time brings increasing order. Clothes on the floor in the evening lie neatly on chairs in the morning. 

In yet another world, time is a visible dimension. One can look out into the distance and see births, marriages, deaths stretching into the future. One can crawl to the future or rush to future events.

One of my favorite chapters (I would liken them to thought experiments) was clearly based on the philosophy of free will vs. determinism- "...in this world, the future is fixed. In world of fixed future, life is an infinite corridor of rooms, one room lit at each moment, the next room dark but prepared. We walk from room to room, look into the room that is lit, the present moment, then walk on. We do not know the rooms ahead, but we know we cannot change them. We are spectators of our lives." Welp.

20 Cups of Chai and a Sugary Sunday

Happy April! No foolin' or practical jokes here- I haven't the bandwidth. This is just a quick recap of fun moments from the last couple of weeks. 

I had the chance to give another Indian food talk to local seniors. This one focused on chai culture in India. They say that teaching is the best way to learn, and it is certainly true for me. I did some reading and light research before the talk, and learned quite a bit. Such as the fact that chai culture as we know it, which is so ingrained and ubiquitous in everyday Indian life, only really came about in the last 100 years. I read an interesting article on this bit of history called Making Tea in India, Chai, Capitalism Culture (Thesis Eleven, 2012) by an American professor named Philip Lutgendorf. Some of his work is covered in this article. 

A few of the things I covered in my talk-

• Tea and chai mean the same thing, so don't say "chai tea" :) (a public service announcement, if you will, although I will say that hearing "chai tea" doesn't trigger me the way it seems to trigger some people...)
• Tea and hospitality in Indian homes- the concept of "atithi devo bhava"
• Stories of Irani cafes in Mumbai when I was in college and tea-time breaks in canteens
• Typical ways of making chai (boiling water with black tea, spices, milk, sugar)- stovetop, pot and strainer
• Explaining spices that are added to chai- ginger, cardamom, chai masala, etc.
• Etc.

The talk was secondary to all the food and drink, of course. I made 20 cups of chai in the instant pot in the classroom! The morning of the class, V asked me, "oh, can you make chai in the instant pot?" and I was like, ask me tonight because I'm about to find out! It does work well. 

• I made it in an open instant pot, no lid, on saute mode.
• Added 12 cups of water to begin with, with tea, sugar, and about 4 cups milk...this is in a 6 quart pot
• Made an "everything" chai with ginger, cardamom and chai masala since I couldn't just choose one flavor!
• Strained the chai into cups, then added more water and milk and kept the chai going, just like the tea stall folks do it. Made for a strong tea.

For food, I served 

• An assortment of biscuits (cookies)
• An assortment of mithai (sweets)
• Chaklis, as an example of "namkeen" or savory treats
• Sev puri (with homemade sweet and spicy chutneys)
• Chutney sandwiches, which were a bit of a flop since I forgot to take along the sliced cucumbers and tomatoes! 

I used scraps of Indian block print cottons to sew cute little tea-bag bookmarks to give out as a party favor to all attendees. Wish I had taken a picture of the colorful lot! It brought together my love for books, chai and sewing into one project. The participants were very gracious and sweet and seemed to enjoy my little chai party.

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I generally reserve Sunday afternoons for a good bit of cooking and meal prepping for the week ahead, making 2-3 entrees like dal, lasagna, and/or meal components like baked tofu and cooked black beans. This Sunday I spend a good bit of time instead making cupcakes to take in to work on Monday for a celebration. One work friend requested pistachio cupcakes so that's where I started, with this recipe. Spiked it with a bit of cardamom because I am genetically programmed to add cardamom with pistachio. The cupcakes were great, if a little dry. 

The frosting was my favorite ermine frosting, but spiked with a tsp. of rosewater, zest of one lemon, and juice of half a lemon. It was a fantastic combination!

The cupcakes called for 3 egg whites, so I had 3 egg yolks left over. As on most weekends, my house was overrun with kids, and my daughter and her friends turned up wanting to bake. I pointed them to the three egg yolks and a recipe for vanilla pudding that called for 3 yolks! 

Rummaging through the fridge, I pulled out all available fruit- grapes, oranges, apples- and made a quick fruit salad. The girls enjoyed the fruit and custard in my thrifted "fancy" cups- this was a favorite childhood dessert of ours and I was pleased to share it with this lot. 

No productive cooking got done on Sunday, but we sure had a lot of dessert!

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Recent books--

On The Beach by Nevil Shute, a post-apocalyptic novel. I picked up this book because it keeps being recommended in Reddit book forums. It was written in 1957 and set in 1963, a time when there was a great deal of anxiety about nuclear war. The premise of the book is that a nuclear world war has killed off all humans in the Northern hemisphere. The cloud of radiation is drifting slowly southward, and people in Southern Australia spend a few months waiting for the inevitable.  

As grim as the premise of the book is, it focuses on everyday life and the different ways- from denial to acceptance- in which ordinary people react to catastrophic scenarios. I loved this book- it was a quick and engaging read. Sometimes a book matches your headspace at the time you read it, and this was the case for me. 

• The epigraph of the book is this quote from the poem The Hollow Men - T.S. Eliot: This is the way the world ends/ This is the way the world ends/ This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but a whimper.
• Two quotes from the book--
• “Maybe we've been too silly to deserve a world like this.”
• “It's not the end of the world at all," he said. "It's only the end for us. The world will go on just the same, only we shan't be in it. I dare say it will get along all right without us.”

Not all my books I read come from thoughtful recommendations. Many are books that I pick up randomly at the biannual library book sales, where you can fill a bag for 10 bucks. This was my haul from last weekend. I just grab whatever catches my eye, jostling my way through a crowded room of dozens of other book enthusiasts, and in most cases these are read and donated right back for future sales. 

These are two books I read in the last month that were bought in past book sales-

Good Morning, Miss Dove by Frances Gray Patton (published in 1954)- This looked like one of those cozy, old-fashioned stories, and it is just that. There are a few interspersed line illustrations in this book. You know the type. Enid Blyton vibes. It is the story of Miss Dove, who has served as a small-town geography teacher. She is feared and revered by generations of students. When she ends up in the hospital, she discovers just how far her influence goes. If you're looking for a cozy read, I recommend this book. 

Most of us probably have a "Miss Dove" in our lives. I certainly do- my high school English teacher. She was legendary and we heard stories about her from older cousins long before we ended up in her class. She was highly competent and terrifying, and I credit her for my love of the English language, grammar and prose. To this day, you can wake me up from a deep sleep and I will accurately point out figures of speech on a page- onomatopoeia, synecdoche, alliteration, and so on. They are imprinted in my brain.

Word Nerd: Dispatches from the Games, Grammar, and Geek Underground by John D. Williams Jr. Published in 2015, it is a memoir of sorts by the long-time executive director of the national SCRABBLE association. I have liked this board game all my life, which is why I grabbed this book when I came across it. It is fascinating to learn of these cool and off-beat careers (director of a board game association? how do I get this job?) and how people stumble into them. 

I learned quite a few things about the game, notably, that there is a huge difference between casual players and tournament players. The former (speaking for myself) enjoy the game because they enjoy words and their meaning, and language in general. The latter get where they are by memorizing massive word lists, and don't care about the meaning of words. They treat tiles as game pieces rather than letters of the alphabet.

Best blog post I read recently- Johanna's account of attending a massive cake picnic. Living vicariously!

Best new-to-me podcast- Good Job, Brain- a very entertaining trivia podcast.

Tell me about your month of March- what have you been cooking, eating, reading, watching?