My mom is in US of A!

Yohoo people! how are you all doing? Its 10:30 right now. My mom was supposed to land at 10:00 pm. I'm so excited she's here! It's been 5 years since I last saw her. Excited as she is to see us- she's also apprehensive about how I'll see her. She's in her mid 60's and says she looks older now and not like I last saw her in person. I tell her that I've grown older too and she'd have to tell me how I have changed. She lives alone in Southern India in Mysore with my brother just a few blocks away from her. When I was a kid, my dad was the dominant personality and he pretty much took care of everything outside the house. My mom was a stay at home mom taking care of us. She didn't know much how to operate in the outside world. So to be like my dad was to be smarter, dynamic, energetic, funny and we did not want to be like our mom. But after dad died, I'm impressed with the way mom has taken care of things. He was heavy into the stock market with such complex dealings which was hard and very time consuming. Mom learnt all that she had to do to unlock our money without any help from us and did it. Talking to her on the phone every week I've got to know my mom. She is smart and funny too and not as naive as she appears sometimes. She does a great job of taking care of her health which is a huge comfort to us. All of us kids have always felt very protective towards her. My mom is gentle and has sensitivity. She introduced me to a lot of good literature, movies and music and I really appreciate that. I want to cook for her because other than accessory help I've never cooked major meals for her. I have a feeling she will like where I live because she loves nature. I want to show her the OSU campus, Columbus Metropolitan library, RPAC, Franklin park conservatory and other places depending on her inclination. Moms are moms- you get made at them, irritated at them, fight with them, but in the end they're there for you.
Events after the last blog post: I had a potluck at my house on Saturday with my African friends. This was really a bad day for me because the potluck got decided very fast and I wasn't ready for it. Originally I had planned for just 3 people, but it turned out to be 5 and I simply was not in the mood for it as it was the first day of my period and I was in huge pain. But I had committed to it so I pulled myself together and decided to give them a taste of South India. I made rasam, cooked beans and rice. Rasam is a sweet, sour and tangy pulses soup made of split pigeon peas. This is a pretty common lunch/dinner and its comfort food for South Indians. Since it was a potluck, somebody bought a pizza so people loaded up on that and did not have much of an apetite for my food and from what little they ate of what I'd made, I'm not sure if they liked it. I have noticed it though- most people outside India prefer North Indian food over South Indian food. South Indian food has less fat, more rice and vegetables, more coconut, different spices, breads made of different kinds of healthy grains whereas North Indian food is richer. People eat more wheat, meat, tomato onion ginger garlic based curries, more kidney beans, chick peas. Personally, I think my taste buds have become international. I can eat tasty vegetarian food and a little bit of chicken from any country. Rice is not a daily need for me anymore, nor is roti or our lentil soup for that matter. I was a little disappointed though because in my opinion everything was tasty and they did not seem to like it. Oh well!

Here's a picture of rasam courtesy pachakam.com



This is how split pigeon peas look like



Sunday, I spent my day sketching the creative genius Freddie Mercury! here it is



This was very hard for me before because I was never able to align the eyes and I got angry and gave up. But I had drawn one eye and still kept it open on my bedroom floor hoping someday I'd get around to it. Then this sunday, it ocurred to me that the eyeballs should be in alignment and slightly slanted coz his face is slightly tilted. So using a scale, I got an estimate of where the eyeball should be and then drew the eye around it. I'm not superpleased with it because eyes are still not perfectly aligned and Freddie has attitude in that picture which I haven't captured. His eyes are darker too. I need to get blacker pencils. But I'm happy with the nose, lips and chin. I posted it on my facebook in case anybody had any new input for me which I hadn't noticed. I'm glad I got at least this far with it. Maybe it will be good when I draw it a second time.

Sunday Nancy dropped by to pick up the books she'd left behind. I love Nancy. She's so interesting with a wide variety of interests. She had attended an 'Art of living' workshop. Since the organization was started by an Indian guy, she wanted to know what I thought of it. Personally, I'm not very comfortable with any organized groups. To me, each person has a different way of dealing with stress and anxiety and it has a lot to do with being able to handle ones emotions. For some its journaling, working out, talking to friends and for some the techniques taught by the organization might work too. I don't have anything against them as long as they don't push it down my throat. I gave Nancy an Indian dessert called Kheer which is rice pudding. It's so supereasy to make! I boiled milk (approx half gallon) threw in a handful of rice and sugar to taste and let it thicken on low heat. Keep stirring it every few minutes so that the milk doesn't burn. The milk did get burnt a bit but the burn added a nice caramelized flavor to it. So it was really good.
Nancy got us some crossiants from Whole Foods. They were so buttery and chewy! awesome! Today we made crossiant sandwiches.



We cut a crossiant in half, slathered mustard on one end, placed some spinach, sliced tomatoes, golden browned zucchini slices, cheddar cheese slices and on the other end of the crossiant we slathered basil flavored mayo. It was really good!

Tomorrow I'm going to the Ohio State Fair for the first time with Nancy. I'm guessing its gonna be a lot of animal petting and I'm really curious about the butter sculpture and the machine which gives my percent body fat and of course food!

So long folks and good nite, sweet dreams!

Love from Smita