Kadhi or curried buttermilk is a popular side dish from India that can also be enjoyed as a soup. It is consumed by villagers and urbanites. Kadhi is great served over rice or khichdi (or khichadi) – a delicious and healthy porridge made from rice, lentils and vegetables. In this photo, red cabbage was incorporated.

There are delicious variations of this popular dish in various states of India. A popular style of making kadhi is from the state of Gujarat. Guajarathi kadhi is normally sweeter and thinner than other styles. Following is a recipe from All Recipes for this version:

Original Recipe Yield 4 servings

Ingredients

4 cups water
2 cups plain yogurt
2 tablespoons chickpea flour (besan)
4 green chile peppers, halved lengthwise
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger root
1 tablespoon white sugar, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
salt to taste
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 tablespoon ghee
2 dried red chile peppers, broken into pieces
1 sprig fresh curry leaves
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon mustard seed
1 pinch asafoetida powder
1/4 cup chopped cilantro leaves

Directions

Mix the water, yogurt, and chickpea flour together in a large saucepan until smooth; add the green chile peppers, ginger, sugar, turmeric, and salt. Bring the mixture to a boil and then immediately reduce heat to low; cook on low 5 to 10 minutes.
Heat the oil and ghee together in a small skillet over medium heat; fry the dried red chile peppers, curry leaves, cumin seeds, mustard seed, and asafoetida powder in the the mixture until the seeds splutter. Stir the mixture into the saucepan with the cilantro. Serve hot.

Nutritional Information

Amount Per Serving Calories: 185 | Total Fat: 9.1g | Cholesterol: 16mg

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In Threading the Needle, Marie Bostwick discusses friendship lost and then found. She explores the ways we create the experiences of our past and future, along with the impact of relationships with family and friends.

Bostwick uses as the background of her story the recent economic downturn in the US. One character becomes the wife of a corrupt financial man (Madelyn) who is blamed for some of the country’s financial woes. Her long-lost friend (Tessa) is exploring the challenges of entrepreneurship and the challenges faced by her and her husband’s choice to follow their dreams and give up the security they once had.

Both friends find themselves and each other in the town they had left behind. Quilting is the back-drop of their journey. They learn about forgiveness, taking chances, healing, and starting over. Following are some inspiring and thought-provoking excerpts from the lovely story.

p.237 to Madelyn from a friend/foe: “I know what it is like, my dear, to be married to a difficult man. A man who is hard to love and who, perhaps, you never loved, and then to suddenly lose him. We’ve led strange lives, Madelyn. We know about regrets and private grief that others will never understand. But you mustn’t blame yourself or look back – not any longer than it takes to learn what must learn. After that, let it go. The past is past, Madelyn. But you’re still here,” she whispered urgently and exerted a gentle pressure on my arm. “And I’m glad. You be glad too.”

p. 256 “The quilt was beautiful but, to me, it was more than that. It was a touchstone, a reminder of the person I once had been, an invitation to gather up the best of myself and carry it forward, to pass through the slender door, a difficult feat, but not an impossible one. It was a symbol of restoration, of work in progress.

No one would stay in this room, no one who knew me, not even Tessa, who had restored the quilt and our friendship, would fully understand that symbol, but it didn’t matter. It was a beautiful room now, a place of rest and respite. I hoped that everyone who stayed here would find both.”

p.257 “I couldn’t wave a wand and make it all better. I couldn’t remove the sting of her husband’s betrayal, or the shame of having it played out in public, but I could give her a good meal, a soft bed, a private place to cry and, when tears were spent, mentally prepare her to greet the little life that she carried inside her and face her future as a single mother. Before continuing down the hall to my own room, I paused to lay my hand flat on Angela’s door and silently wish her well.”

p. 257 “I wanted success; I had from the first. But now I wanted it in a different way, not just for myself. I wanted it for the town and the people who had welcomed me…I wanted it for Angela and everyone like her, people who needed a peaceful place to recharge their batteries and remember that life was still good,….For the first time in my life, I might actually be able to help people.

Lying in the dark, my eyes staring up into a chasm of black, I felt a tightness in my chest, like a hand clamped around my heart. This is what it’s like to be a part of something, of someplace. This is what it’s like to care. I never knew.”

p. 260 “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

p. 271 “Sometimes if you’re lucky, you realize that the little things are really the big things. Or as Lee might say, “Broke I may be. Poor I am not.”

p. 299 “Maybe the New Bern of the 1960s wasn’t all that different from the New Bern of today, populated with the good and the not-so-good. In the end, maybe it all comes down to where you choose to look and what team you decide to play for.”

p. 323 “I liked her. I don’t know that I’d ever encountered anyone with such enthusiasm or energy, and as the weekend went on, I saw that it was entirely genuine. There’s something very attractive about that. It helped too, that I knew her story, how her husband had deserted her upon the birth of their son, Howard, and how Mary Dell had soldiered on alone to raise a child with special needs, eking out a living as a quilt teacher. Mary Dell was optimistic, not because she didn’t know hardship but because she had overcome it.”

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Share your story of reconciling your bi-cultural heritage and seeking authenticity, anonymously. Email it to priamba6@gmail.com. You may find that sharing is cathartic and healing. You may also find support and connection. I will make certain that there is nothing to identify you (unless you state otherwise).

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Microfinance is an innovative type of charity allowing effective improvement in the lives of many needy people in some of the most destitute areas of the world.

One way to get involved in the concept is through The International Alliance for Women (TIAW). TIAW is an umbrella network of women’s organizations designed to support the economic interests of women around the world. Microlending is used to provide small loans to poor entrepreneurs – if appropriate for TIAW since most microloans are for women. They are denied access to sources of credit that men have access to.
With the loans, women are not only able to add new items to sell but be able to collectively buy in bulk from wholesale distributors, saving time and money.

A typical microlending arrangement is a village bank. Through this, a small group of women are given individual loans. They are then jointly responsible for repayment. The repayment rate has been 95%, making microfinance a successful form of development aid. Microfinance allows the funds to go directly to the hands of needy entrepreneurs rather than bureaucrats, increasing its effectiveness and power.

Source: The Denver Post

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With my children on Mother's Day

I’ve thought about this role in my life considerably, particularly as I became a mother myself for the second time around to my now 2 1/2 year-old daughter. I have not experienced actual “mothering” from a mother for the majority of my adult life. This prompted me to be more independent and find ways to mother myself, which I feel we all have to learn to do eventually.

I have not actually seen my mother since 1994. She has lived in India and will be making a trip to my home on the 17th for three weeks. We have been talking on the phone since my father’s passing in December of 2008 (while I was 7 months pregnant). I sent pictures and she sent presents for all of us. I look forward to connecting at some level and hope the visit goes well. I am glad that my children will get to meet her and my husband will get proof that I actually do have relatives!

At the same time, I am aware of barriers – one as a result of my family moving to the US in 1976. As the youngest of 4 and only 7 at the time, I identified with the American culture increasingly as part of my identity. I was encouraged to speak English and that had the eventual result of my not having enough practice speaking my native language. To this day, my mother speaks in my native language and I respond in English. I am aware of the limitations in this process. I question some of the vocabulary I want to use and in essence what I am able to communicate. This alone prevents a depth of closeness as I feel handicapped in being fully myself and conveying all that I am and my life.

I am grateful for being able to provide complete mothering to my children and plan to try the rest of my life. I want to make certain no barriers are erected and that I am able to evolve my mothering according to their needs at different ages, even if I have to hold myself back (perhaps a lot at times, as I’m experiencing with my teen occasionally).

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Curried Quinoa

I sauteed some red onion and a little chili pepper in coconut oil with cumin seeds, asafoetida, turmeric, and chopped ginger. I added a can of diced tomatoes and chickpeas. I threw in some chopped spinach from the yard for more nutrition. I let this cook and added it to the cooked quinoa, which I had made in the rice cooker just like rice – 2 parts water to 1 part quinoa.

It satisfied my family, and most importantly, my picky toddler.

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I love reading books by South Asian authors so I asked my local librarian to find me more. She was not able to, as it’s a complicated search. However, when I walked over to the fiction area, “The Way Things Look to Me” by Roopa Farooki was the first book I noticed. How ironic! That is the way I’ve come across many of the books I’ve read.

Roopa’s story recounts the lives of 3 South Asian siblings who are now adults living in England. There are 2 sisters and a brother that looks after the youngest, who grapples with Autism. It was peculiar timing for me to read this story recently, as I was in the process of having my daughter evaluated for Autism. I was given the diagnosis while still reading it. I tried to compare the descriptions of what was described of the disorder with my own experience, although the comparison was between an adult fictional character and my toddler.

At first, I wasn’t sure about the flow of the book, since the voice is changed from one character to another, as we follow the character’s intertwined lives. The characters distinguished well from one another, though there could have been more description to visualize them better. I’m not certain why some information was provided later rather than earlier, such as an explanation of what had become of their parents.

Some memorable lines from the story:
“He wishes that Mum and Dad and everybody who ever meant anything to them could all be there, sitting at the table with them, having tea, holding their hands, inhabiting a world filled with those who have chosen life, with all its unfairness and lunatic irrationality, with all its endless potential for happiness and hope.”

“I have learned that you have to be courageous to live, because living can be something that is very complicated, especially if you are alone…..And I can be courageous too; I can choose life.”

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On our Indian adventure

For most of us, the trips were less about touring the country and more about hanging out with relatives and/or religious pilgrimages. We did both, and both bored me. I wanted to explore and see the country and I didn’t enjoy being uncomfortable on the pilgrimages and then not have the end objective explained to me. I ended up feeling more like an ignored, resentful accessory. I particularly remember being hot while walking in the desert, just wanting something cold and perhaps a treat. But golly, we were on an important pilgrimage! So comfort and enjoyment were not a factor.

I vowed to do things different as an adult. My kids would understand everything that was going on, it would have meaning for them, and they would be comfortable and enjoying themselves. In 2007, when my son, Colin, was nine, I took him on his first trip to India. We toured like crazy, sampling different locales daily on average. It was grueling, and he was the only one to not get sick.

I prepared my son and husband in advance on how the trip would be an adventure and not necessarily relaxing. We would be getting the obligatory “golden triangle” including the Taj Mahal out of the way, since it seemed important to include it in the first sampling tour of India. I advised that once we got a taste of some different places, we could focus on one during a future trip. The plan did work out from this angle – we ended up agreeing that Kerala would be a worthy place of focus in the future.

We would be going from North to South, something I had not done before. My family is from Rajasthan and that was primarily the area I had experience with – a wonderful area that many stereotypical images of India are from. I would be seeing the South for the first time with the rest of my family. I was a fish out of water like them since I could not rely on my functional use of Hindi like in the rest of the country.

We had gone in the Winter, so going towards the Himalayas was not much of an option. We decided on a future trip in the summer when we could go in that direction and visit some mountain towns. It will include my daughter Maya when she is old enough to appreciate where she is and be able to handle the adventure (and us her).

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Pakoras

I mentioned I would make these and post on my site to a gal on my Facebook page for “Raising Vegetarian Kids,” so here it is:

1 cup chickpea flour
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
2 cloves garlic, crushed
3/4 cup water
1 quart oil for deep frying
1/2 head cauliflower florets
2 onions, sliced into rings

Directions

Sift the chickpea flour into a medium bowl. Mix in the coriander, salt, turmeric, chili powder, garam masala and garlic.
Make a well in the center of the flower. Gradually pour the water into the well and mix to form a thick, smooth batter.
Over medium high heat in a large, heavy saucepan, heat the oil to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
Coat the cauliflower and onions in the batter and fry them in small batches until golden brown, about 4 to 5 minutes. Drain on paper towels before serving.

I used a very small amount of oil to shallow-fry. Other vegetables can also be used, as desired. I used sweet potato. Try using eggplant slices and consider them for veggie burgers! I have even used the pakora batter for chili rellenos! They were crispy, like my husband and I like.

* Note: if you like spicy food, you could add more chili pepper or diced green chili to the batter

Source: Vegetable Pakoras (All Recipes)

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When we are “American Born Confused Desis” or even become “American Born Confident Desis,” how do we reconcile past cultural expectations of us with our quest to be our own empowered authentic women? Do expectations of our upbringing fit with our quest to be true to ourselves or do we have to make adjustments? If so, what are they?

Are there women who think about or struggle with this or do they experience a seamless process? I would think that even without a different cultural heritage, women may grapple with this issue, particularly in light of institutions such as marriage. Marriage hasn’t always been the place for female empowerment. Indeed, many women have had to make black and white choices – either be married or not.

How do women find happiness in the “grey area?” Possibly they take one day at a time, where they must navigate the waters of self-denial and self-respect. It is a body of water that men do not normally have had to wade in much. Perhaps this itself creates a level of divide between the genders?

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