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.