Christmas mischief

One day, right after Thanksgiving, I caught my husband smiling a Grinchy smile.

‘Why are you smiling like that?’

He said he had an idea. A wonderful idea. Just like the Grinch, he had “a wonderful, awful idea”. He told me his plan and I gave him a hearty clap on his back for being so deliciously evil. He came up with the plan and I executed it flawlessly. It was a perfect team work.

I bought gifts early this year, right after Thanksgiving because what else am I going to do during a pandemic? As the gifts started arriving to my doorstep, I scooped them up, wrapped them right away, and wrote Sean’s name on each one of them. That was the plan. Sean thought of the idea of addressing each gift in his name so the kids would wonder when their gifts were coming. As the pile of gifts under our Christmas tree grew, Ryan and Sahana grew increasingly perplexed. Why was not a single gift for them?

They did not say anything for a while hoping their gifts will arrive eventually. To make it believable I wrote Ryan’s name in one big package and couple had Sahana’s name on them. They gave each other gifts so Ryan’s gift totaled to 3 and Sahana’s 4. Sean’s name was on 17 gifts. A week before Christmas Ryan started mumbling, questioning if more gifts were coming still. I said I was done.

“What?? NO! Are you kidding me? You can not be done. Sahana and I hardly got any presents. Its all for dad!”

“Yes, I see that! You know, I bought impulsively this year. I did not keep count on how many I was buying for who and I got carried away with Dad’s presents.” I replied with an embarrassed smile. That threw him off guard – for the moment.

Sahana was confused like her brother but she is older now and did not verbalize her thoughts but silently supported her brother’s tirades.

Over the course of the week, discussions during dinner were dominated by different thoughts on the inequality of the number of gifts, questioning my love for certain family members, quantifying Sean’s good deeds to have deserved so many gifts. Sean simply smiled while I said things like, “my love for you is not measured by materialistic gifts, my darling.” I do not believe that placated my son. To be fair to Sahana, she smiled and laughed mostly and said, yeah, yeah’ as Ryan carried on about how few gifts the ‘children’ got. I continued to look shame faced.

“Sorry guys! It does seem a little unfair. I guess I just got carried away!” That continued to be my refrain.

On the night before Christmas eve, when all hope of arrival of more gifts were extinguished, Ryan forlornly looked at his 3 gifts and said,

“I guess I am considered the scum of the family. Only 3 gifts while dad has 18. Even Sahana has 4 and mom has 7! What kind of family is this where parents get more gifts than kids?”

I said his gift was expensive and he will be happy. He was quick to show his gratitude.

“Mom, I thank you for that. But why did dad get so many gifts? How good was he this year?”

Sean and I laughed till we had tears in our eyes in the privacy of our bedroom. Ryan is absolutely hilarious without even trying. And his laments about lack of gifts were in good humor. I laughed helplessly at his funny quips and he laughed loudly too with his broken, teenage voice. It was truly entertaining last 10 days or so before Christmas. Laments and funny quips got more desperate and hence funnier as the big day approached.

Christmas morning dawned. We decided to take photos with our gifts in front of us. Here are the initial photos as I handed out the gifts.

Sahana looks happy with her meager gifts.

Right before we were about to open the presents, I pretended to look at the number disparity and shook my head.

“I went a little crazy with dad’s gifts and it looks bad for the photos. Here, why don’t we reallocate them and you two help him open presents.”

“No, no! Let all your friends know what you did this Christmas. Make sure you post them on Facebook. Why will we open dad’s gifts? Let him open his. We will wait. I have only 3 anyway.” Ryan said in his fog horn voice.

“Nah! Let’s redo this.” Amid protests from both brother and sister, I redistributed the packages. And then accompanied by unadulterated laughter, we told them about our naughtiness.

I had written Sean’s name in all caps for Ryan’s gifts. Printed his name for those meant for Sahana and wrote Sean’s name in cursive for the ones that were actually his. After reallocating the packages, the story changed, Ryan’s smile returned, Sahana’s weak smile brightened, Sean and I laughed till we cried!

Since he had no idea we had played a trick on them, Ryan wrapped an empty box for Sean with this note in it:

He looked peevish when Sean opened the package with this note, “Jeez, I feel kinda mean now!”

At the end, it was indeed a holly, jolly Christmas. There was laughter, there were exclamations, there were squeals of joy and thank you’s. There was acknowledgement that ‘we got them’. They never guessed what we were up to and ultimately it ended up being a fun prank. What we got out of it? Days of endless mirth at their bafflement, the fact that our son is very materialistic, our daughter has matured enough to not harangue us with questions about her gifts.

It was, after all, a joyful Christmas. And if you charge us with bad parenting, we plead guilty. But the laughter and evil planning behind their backs were oh so worth it. 😀

Pandemic discussions

At the beginning of pandemic, we spent more time together than we do now. When work and schools closed, when Sahana returned home from her junior year abroad, we naively thought the crisis was going to be over soon. We played board games, cooked, listened to music and even danced together once in a while. Then the pandemic and isolation dragged on and we slowly retreated into our rooms, our books/emails/trainings/school work…… ourselves. Whenever possible though, we still try to eat a meal together or even if we were not eating we come out of our respective rooms to gather around. And we have conversations on several topics. Without sharing our private conversations, I thought it might be fun to document the topics that feature regularly as we break bread during pandemic or just sit together in our living room. This post will also be a reminder of 15 year old Ryan’s and 21 year old Sahana’s topics of interest at their respective ages. This is what we converse about (or the two siblings discuss, Sean and I mainly listen).

Stability of Y chromosomes…

Matrilineal DNA and height…

World history. A lot of world history. Here is a debate that Ryan wants to have with the world – the great wall of China is a reason for Western imperialism. Have a go at it. It is an ongoing debate in our household, no resolution has been reached.

Paradise lost. And Milton…

Politics, Donald Trump, democrats, republicans…

Race, equity, inclusiveness. A lot, I mean a real lot of conversations on this topic…

“In one of my anthro classes, we learnt….” some esoteric theory from Sahana about anthropology (I admit I tuned out sometimes).

More chromosome talk, DNA, heredity…

Astronomy….lot of discussions about astronomy, which includes getting energy from black hole, anti matter and other topics which escape me..

Food, recipe – a whole lot of food and recipe discussion…

Tik tok – l am made to watch cat and dog videos by both siblings on this forum. They make me laugh.

Pop culture, artists new and old…

Humanitarian assistance work – Sean loves to talk about this topic. I wonder why?

“When I traveled in Europe………” Sahana often begins her story of adventure or her lecture about a certain sight she saw or experience she had in Europe during her solo trip there last year. Ryan rolls his eyes…

Library classes…..and yes, customer experiences..

Climate change…

How long is human race going to last…

How is Ryan still single despite being so good looking (according to him) and our collective eye rolls.

There are other topics which I don’t recall now….

The senior in college who will graduate with double major in English and Anthropology has a LOT of facts/thoughts/knowledge to share. And she shares them freely, primarily to educate her brother but also her parents.

The sophomore in high school is VERY interested in world history, heredity, time travel, animals, politics, slapstick comedy, tik tok and conspiracy theories. He also has the compulsive desire to share his thoughts on those subjects and more. It almost bothers him physically if he can not verbalize his thoughts. He can not seem to hold his thoughts for he fears they will be gone from his head and how awful will that be? If we interrupt his monologs on Ghengis Khan or time travel or….any other topic of interest he says (almost vehemently) “Please…let me talk!”

I realize now that in life before pandemic, I got my kids in installments after they left their toddlerhood. There were school, work, extra curricular activities, sports, dinner, homework, sleep. We came together on weekends for occasional chats however most weekends were taken up with sports, music, homework and then getting ready for the following week. Most of our meaningful conversations happened during car rides from point A to point B. Thinking back on how busy our life was exhausts me. During the pandemic and enforced isolation when we were locked together without sports, activities, regular school, I got to peek into my children’s thoughts and interests. And I realized that while I was not looking their interests, depth of perception and comprehension, their ability to think critically, their debating prowess and ability to cite sources have all changed. They are adults…well, almost, and capable of holding stimulating conversations. This realization is bitter sweet (mostly sweet because they are interesting to listen to when I pay attention).

There is nothing positive about this pandemic however if I have to see a silver lining in all this, I would say I got this opportunity to ‘see’ and ‘hear ‘ my children without distraction. I got the time. A lot of it.

Every word is true…and funny.

I was going through my blogs yesterday on my day off to find something funny instead of thoughts and observations. I found this blog. And I laughed. Hopefully you will laugh too.

https://what-mama-thinks.com/2012/04/18/play-ball-girl/

Untrampled snow

Once upon a time….not really that long ago there was a big, yellow mutt who loved the snow. Since he was an itty bitty puppy he simply loved the white, fluffy stuff that accumulated on the ground on a cold winter’s day. He would run out to the fenced in area, dig his nose into the snow and come up with snow on his nose. When we laughed at his snow covered nose, he gave a ‘what are you laughing at?’ look and went right back in it. He play bowed and rolled, he romped with bundled up Ryan and Sahana. He took his time to finish his business and did not care at all that I was freezing and needed to get inside.

The snow in our yard was never left untrampled in all these 10 years. This year is different. The snow in our yard remains pristine. The snow digger is resting in my heart. In his last winter in 2019 he did not get any snow to play with. He bid adieu on January 31st, 2020 and although I don’t much think of what comes after death, I like to think Sage is playing in snow somewhere today.

We had our first snow storm without Sage and all through it I thought of him. I felt the raw pain of losing him all over again.

Dada

I wrote this blog a while ago. Since I have not seen home for a while, this blog was particularly meaningful.

https://what-mama-thinks.com/2015/03/25/dada/

No man’s land in my reading journey

Do you know what I am talking about? It is that space when you are between books. You finished a book late at night. You perhaps cried a little at the turn of events, or laughed, or smirked at the predictable anticlimactic end of the story. No matter what your reaction was, you stayed up late to finish the book. You were invested. Now the book is done, you are sad or relieved depending on how much you loved the book but the possibilities ahead of you are endless. You lovingly look at your pile of books waiting to be cracked open on your bedside table, or you go to your bookshelves where you have library books on separate shelves and personal books on others. You peruse them lovingly, perhaps open a few to read the jackets. Which one or ones will it be? To add to the joy, it is your day off. The weather outside is frightful. There is a pandemic too. You really can not do anything, go anywhere. But you want to savor this excitement of making a choice. So instead of choosing a book right as you wake up, you cook an elaborate Indian meal for the family while listening to Hindi music of yester years. After cleaning the kitchen, you go back to the book shelf. Stroke some books lovingly. You are close to making a choice. Is it going to be Diane Setterfield, Isabel Wilkerson or Laila Lalami? No, not yet. You will extend this delicious feeling of happy possibilities and go clean the bathroom. It really needed cleaning. How about throwing in a load of laundry? It is only 2:25 in the afternoon. The rest of the afternoon and lazy winter evening stretch luxuriously ahead of you. It is a dark day so you will light up the house with Christmas lights. Plug in the lights of the Christmas tree. Now you will make your final decision. You will fold yourself up in your reading chair, and then you will lose yourself.

Sincerely trying – to find the silver lining.

All you see of her face are two beautiful eyes looking back at you. The rest of the face is covered up carefully with her dupatta. And all of her arms as well. She doesn’t wear new clothes, she doesn’t buy any jewelry or apply any make up like most twenty year olds do. She […]
Sincerely trying – to find the silver lining.

Natural oil exacts a price.

Since my visit to Morocco at the end of last year, I have transformed my beauty care regimen. My bathroom cabinet now holds only natural oils. I have become a big proponent of argan oil, so much so that I wrote a blog on it. If you are interested, you can read it:

https://what-mama-thinks.com/2020/09/27/morocco-argan-oil-and-bad-memories/

You can ignore the bad memory part. Bolstered by my success with argan oil, I delved into research and included rosehip oil as well. I use argan oil on my face after shower and rosehip oil before going to bed. It does not clog the pores and keeps the skin moist and soft. My pandemic hair has a mind of its own and is often wild and untamed. Massaging argan oil not only tames the hair, makes it soft but also relieves tension from my shoulders.

Anyway, all that I have written so far is good. You are wondering what price did natural oils exact then and when exactly is she going to stop rambling?

I was reading Sue Monk Kidd’s latest fiction The Book of Longings where a character in ancient Egypt applies clove oil behind her ears as part of her beauty regime. A light bulb went on in my head. I too want to be surrounded by the smell of cloves all day long. Why not add clove oil to my collection of natural oils? I snatched up my phone and started researching clove oil and of course Amazon delivered. The instructions said to mix a few drops of clove oil with some carrier oil like coconut oil or almond oil. I figured I had argan oil as the carrier. I was set. So the following day, I got out of my shower, poured some argan oil in my hands, mixed a few drops of clove oil in it and applied it on my face.

Now, I am not one for swearing. I don’t utter expletives since my mother ingrained in me since childhood that swearing and using bad language was a no-no. But at that moment as concentrated clove oil burned my face, I may have uttered an expletive…..or two…or maybe, more.

My face was BURNING from the clove oil. I desperately reached for soap and washed my face with cold water to get rid of the oil. But the burning sensation subsided only after splashing ice cold water for a long time. I was afraid to look at myself in the mirror fearing burnt face. No, the skin on my face was normal color, extra soft perhaps and glowing. The fact is, I grew up using cloves. It was used in our food to make rice or other dishes aromatic. We chewed it as mouth freshener. I use it now crushed within my homemade garam masala. It was used to diminish toothache when I was growing up. I know the strong taste of clove. I know clove is spicy and has quite a strong kick to it. I should have known concentrated clove oil will be strong. I did not. I paid the price for my…..for the lack of better word, stupidity.

The next morning, I ran to a natural store, bought a big bottle of sweet almond oil. I then filled a small spray bottle with almond oil, mixed a few dropper full of clove oil to create a mix of natural oils that will not only moisturize my body but surround me with the smell of cloves. I have been using the mixture successfully since. However, I have not been brave enough to try the mixture on my face yet. I think I will stay true to my two other naturals – argan and rosehip. They never exacted such a harsh price ever! They are kind and gentle. But clove oil surrounds me with an aroma I love!

Cooking with Sahana

…is fun and …..well, interesting. My 21 year old is an enthusiastic, creative and very good cook. She requests cook books for her birthday, she takes cooking lessons once in a while, she reads and tries to explain the chemical reactions that happen while ingredients mingle (I pretend I am listening, I really don’t), she checks out various recipes and then uses the salient features of several of those to make a dish. And they turn out wonderful. She wakes up excited to cook. To say that I am lucky is an understatement. I love to try different kinds of food and she obliges. Happily! Enthusiastically!

I cooked for Diwali, she helped. She wanted to cook for Thanksgiving and I volunteered to help and cook a few dishes. Our Thanksgiving is spent with our extended family where my contribution is generally a pecan pie. My sisters in law and brothers in law do the real cooking. Since we could not gather this year, we decided to cook full Thanksgiving meal just for the four of us. Sahana planned to cook turkey breast, garlic mashed potato, stuffing, brussel sprouts, homemade rolls and quiche of spinach and sundried tomatoes for the resident vegetarian. I was going to make squash casserole with walnuts and Gruyere cheese, cranberry sauce, peas, apple pie, pecan pie and a fruit pie crumble with whatever fruit was there at home. I am sad to report I slightly burned the top of the crumble.

Anyway, the point of this post is to write about my experience of cooking with Sahana. As I prepared to assemble the apple pie, and Sahana got the turkey breast out to brine, she asked, “What should we name the turkey breast?”

“Why should we name the turkey breast? We are going to consume it.” I replied.

She went ahead and named it Harvey anyway. She lovingly massaged Harvey with herb butter, gagging once in a while at touching raw meat. Harvey was then carefully placed in the fridge, uncovered.

“Shouldn’t you cover that?” I enquired, not wanting to see buttered turkey staring at me everytime I opened the fridge. No, she read that the turkey can not be covered. I did not dare contradict the chef who had been reading one recipe after another to cook this turkey.

After that, everytime she opened the fridge she asked Harvey how he was doing in there. It was slightly creepy hearing her talk to a dead bird like that. Morbid even! And comical! Everything she does in the kitchen is done with a lot of love and tenderness. So I was not overly surprised when I heard her crooning to something in the oven.

“You look so pretty, my darling.”

I asked who she was talking to.

“The quiche. It is looking so pretty.”

It did. I write this as she shooed me out of the kitchen because I was in the way. I half assembled my squash casserole. I will finish it once the very happy, very enthusiastic cook has done her cooking for today. To save her some trouble, I suggested that we buy Pepperidge farm stuffing and store made rolls. She looked at me as if I uttered blasphemy.

“Store bought?? No!”

She bought Italian bread, diced it, spiced it, baked it and made amazing homemade croutons for stuffing. Ryan and I stole quite a few of those already. Here is a photo of homemade rolls.

If you are brussel sprouts hater out there, I strongly recommend you try out this roasted brussel sprouts Sahana made with honey lime glaze with pistachios. It was perfection. I was slightly disappointed that this dish got no verbal love from its creator. It got gushing admiration from its consumer, though (me).

I enjoy cooking, sure. It relaxes me. But I certainly do not put so much love to the task. Cooking with Sahana and watching her work with love, joy and tenderness makes me smile.

This Thanksgiving is different. It is isolating and sad for many reasons. Cooking with Sahana will be a cherished memory though. 2020 Thanksgiving gave me that and I am thankful.

Leftover Queen

All of you hail the Leftover Queen a.k.a me. I claim the title, the crown and the throne. I claim all of it.

I wrote about my nonstop cooking on the Diwali weekend. If you have not read it yet, you can read it here.

Since I go overboard when I cook, I ended up with a lot of leftovers. Generally, Sean eats leftovers for weeks and he is very happy to do so. As we pack away the food in the fridge on the day I cook, I can see his mind planning his meals for the week ahead. He threatens us not to finish the dal or the paneer because he plans to eat them for another meal. The threat is not serious, only semi serious. But this time, I must have poisoned him somehow because his stomach did not feel great for a couple of days after Diwali and he did not want to exacerbate the situation by eating spicy dal makhni and creamy malai kofta. So I, who is not fond of dal makhni or malai kofta too much, had to eat the leftovers. The children, in general, rarely eat left over Indian food. They are high maintenance but thankfully I am done maintaining them. They maintain themselves quite well when it comes to meals.

After 3 days of eating leftovers to empty the fridge, I had a plan. A beautiful, bold, exquisite, earth shattering, tradition breaking plan. I thought outside the box.

This is what I did. I took out the container of malai kofta from the fridge. I follow Sanjeev Kapoor’s fool proof recipe of malai kofta. It is easy and delicious. You can look at the recipe here.

I poured the malai koftas with the gravy in my food processor and made a puree of the whole thing. Then I added 2 and a 1/2 cups of whole wheat to the puree and hit the dough button of the food processor. The liquid in the puree was not enough for a sticky dough so I added 1/3 cup of plain yogurt to the mix. I took the dough out of the food processor and kneaded by hand for about 5 to 7 minutes. When the dough formed a smooth ball, I covered it with damp cloth and went for my walk.

After the walk, I kneaded for another 3 to 4 minutes and made little balls to roll out.

The next part was easy. I rolled the dough out into rotis and cooked them on the skillet with oil spray.

The malai kofta parathas were ready.

I told myself I just transformed a leftover into a healthy meal. Whole wheat, paneer, potatoes, ok fine, a little cream in the gravy made it a tad unhealthy but it tasted good. Everything tastes good with cream and butter, sigh! As I finished cooking the last paratha, my family casually gathered around, “Whatcha making?”

Ryan was stressed about a math test so he walked around to calm his nerves and ate at least 3 parathas in the process if not more, Sahana and Sean ate a few with left over dal makhni. I ate 3 of them. They were soft and oh-so-flavorful. I decided right then that I will claim the title of Leftover Queen in my blog post. And I just did!