Category: Cooking (and other things) in Atlanta

#10 Postcard – Pour the rice in the cooker. Don’t think!

Whenever you decide, still unmotivated, to walk into your kitchen again, you will have cooked rice waiting for you. And if you have rice, you have a meal. Sort of.

I hate preaching and sharing unsolicited advice. At 27, many a time I’ve walked uninspired into my kitchen unable to cook, and doubted whether I should keep rice in the cooker to boil. And I can vouch that I’ve never regretted half-heartedly pouring that 1 cup rice-2 cups water in the rice cooker.

So tip a lazy measure into the cooker and go back to sprawl across your couch, watch the rest of that Netflix series. Whenever you decide, still unmotivated, to walk into your kitchen again, you will have cooked rice waiting for you.

And if you have rice, you have a meal. Sort of.

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#13 A life too long, too short

Life is precious because it’s short, that’s why it’s special, because we know it’ll end one day.

I watched 24 Netflix/Prime series this year. One of them was The Good Side, a show about afterlife that I watched mostly for Jameela Jamil, where heaven is filled with people drunk on happiness to the point where they are brain-jaded and simply want to leave. Like a death after death. At that point Kristen Bell observes Life is precious because it’s short, that’s why it’s special, because we know it’ll end one day.

Today (two weeks from the day of sharing) was not a good day. Today I also realized that Adulting is hard not only because there’s nobody providing after you, but because it feels like even Nature seems to have stopped keeping track.
At 5, 10, 15 years of age there’s a whole set of social and biological changes you (are expected to) go through. Parents walk (or maybe push, and some yank) you through some of it, but Nature takes care of the rest. There is so much to be discovered and to look forward to.

One day at school your friend tells you her elder sister got her periods, and then you wake up with pubic hair one day. Everyone watches as you grow taller/fatter with cyclically better/worse features while you can only hope it ends well. One day we’re discussing male anatomy over our biology records, and on another we are finally texting guys and on another kissing them. There is just so much new stuff to explore, so much awkwardness that you slowly find your way around.
(Okay I realize all my examples had to do with sexuality and reproductive health but you get it – or maybe that’s all we are as human beings and that’s all Nature intended to keep track of anyway, but I can’t digress today).

Then all of a sudden you’re 25. All you have to look forward to are when the barely-visible but definitely-there folds appear, when the freckles spread over like curry on hot rice and when those inevitable greys make their way. You’ve seen just enough of the world to not have too much to look forward to. Sure you learn new things about people every day but it feels never-ending. People are simple, people are complex. You’ve by now figured out what you need to do to keep in touch with those in your life and with some you indeed do, but you always wish you knew more people and yet once you do you aren’t quite sure if you want them to stay, or if they would.
And on most days they are annoying but by now you know people are what really lend your life meaning so really there’s no way out.

So then what else is left? Why isn’t daily life rife with learning? Why is personal growth all that remains? Why isn’t Nature edging me towards it? Are we just bound to witness trees change the same colors (and not even that in the tropics)?

What do I have to look forward to? So that you can help those less fortunate than you was what I came up with when I was younger (but really my mom came up with that), and I don’t seem to have discovered anything more exciting since, and I am not sure there is one. (And I do agree, it is good enough).

So today for the first time, I wondered at how long life is, and maybe just maybe wished it was shorter. What if we were told we’d only live until 40? How different would things be? My head hurts trying to picture that and I will not vomit that oft-repeated tirade on live every day as if it were your last or whatever.

What else is left?

And I get why people get married then, because what else is left? Yet it’s weird because how can it be that there isn’t more to life, especially when both companionship and progeny are optional? So then it makes sense to me now – it looks like this what Nature had in mind because it begins to deprive you of things once you pass the “reproductive age”. (At the time of publishing I have found something worthwhile, but that doesn’t change the four weeks of hopelessness when I was lost, and I can’t be sure it wouldn’t return.)

I think my issue is the realization that I have been so passionate about so many things all my life, my struggle has always been picking one thing out of my long list, life has always seemed too short to do it all and mortality has appeared cruel, and for the first time my list feels blank. Maybe I’m disillusioned because at 23 I was certain I could help everyone I wanted to but today I feel like our problems are too big to be solved (maybe that’s what a year and a half in the US did to me, or maybe that’s just mid-twenties, I’m welcoming ideas). Once blasphemous, today I can almost understand how the prospect of death might be charming to some, and for all the wrong reasons I believe.

Tomorrow I’ll come back to say life is indeed too short to do all that we want to but for today, I’m wondering what a long life I have ahead of me.

Note : As of the day of sharing, I have found one thing to add to my list so I’m happier (thank you Rohit :)). Last year I thought dancing and training my body muscles was a good personal goal to have but it somehow seems too short-lived a desire today (in other words, I’ll be over it too soon). Reading other mortals’ thoughts seems like a nice thing to look forward to. I’m still not back on the life-too-short sentiment yet but I’ll come around soon, I hope.

Also I’m not depressed, I just feel different and am still navigating my way through unfamiliar territories.

PPS : I almost forgot my GitHub reads an extremely self-centric “The day you feel that life’s long enough to do everything you want to, is the right time to get out and search for something new 🙂“. Well, child is father of the man, no?

#12 Then they smile and float away

It’s strange how for many of us, our privilege to fly was in fact earned for us by others who complied to stay.

I ask, “But how am I to get up to you?”

They answer, “Come to the edge of the earth, lift up your

hands to the sky, and you will be taken up into the clouds.”

“My mother is waiting for me at home,” I say,
“How can I leave her and come?”

Then they smile and float away.

Clouds and Waves by Rabindranath Tagore

I first read the above lines in 2016 while away from home. I didn’t realize it was an excerpt and that the poem didn’t end there. The abrupt end of it came as a cold shock, as if the last line served to close any possibilities, implying the child never left. Yet the brevity of it hit harder – that the clouds understood and left as soon as they had arrived – that there was no discussion, only a simple thought backed by a young boy’s emotion and rationale. It was as if Tagore meant life was usually that simple.

I was 22 then and more free than I’ve ever been. It was more than what many I knew could afford with their time and obligations, and I was quite aware of it. The lines hit hard because I do know people tied to homes, as well as others that leave homes and not entirely out of choice. My mother always said – well she says many things – but one was about how children are like little birds, to be kept in their nests only until they grow wings. And then we let them fly away.

It’s strange how for many of us, our privilege to fly was in fact earned for us by others who complied to stay.

I googled the poem today to see if I felt anything differently now. I was surprised to see there were more stanzas and that wasn’t the end as I’d thought. I still think it can form a whole, just startlingly short, cold and real.

#11 D.R.E.A.M.S

Way out of dreams

Some days I have bad dreams –
Unpleasant places/people
They never end well
Yet it’s usually worse when I wake up

You’d think a way out is to not dream
But that’s tricky
An easier one would be to not wake up
But that’s impious and rude

Now I simply don’t sleep

Image Credits : My deep learning class, Google and Van Gogh

Favorite/first photo

We had a bunch of virtual social activities in the orientation week of my summer internship. There were 55 of us summer interns, and one of the activities was sharing a favorite picture or a memory. I cannot say I enjoyed all the games we played, particularly If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you want to be?, which seems like it would be a fun game during Covid, but it was one of my bad days so the only place I could think of was home. (It was my fourth month alone in my apartment so…)

I landed in Atlanta on August 5, 2019. I was to stay temporarily in a senior’s apartment not far from where I live now, before moving in here. Another Gatech-bound student and I got off at the building, my network wasn’t working and he wasn’t able to get through to his friend to let us inside. So we waited on the pavement with all our luggage for somebody to show up and open the gate for us. That’s when I clicked my first picture in Atlanta, which is what I shared in the Photo-share activity.

Waiting outside with 50kg of luggage on my first day in a foreign country with no phone network is not something I’m familiar with, but the frame before me (apart from being obviously clean and well-maintained) was hot, humid and green, just like my home. This photo was a moment of taking it all in, realizing that Atlanta might not be too unfamiliar territory after all.

(While sharing with everyone, I mentioned for context that I was from Kerala, the “tropics” where it’s humid and full of trees, so this scene felt a lot like home, even while being away from home.)

Trees and beautiful skies – Atlanta

 It rained later that day and I had a beautiful view from the room I was staying in. Shruthy wasn’t arriving until two days later, and I wasn’t jet-lagged so I just sat in the room watching the sunset and vehicles go by.

I hadn’t met the senior whose room I stayed in, but I saw her books and her desk, a couple of framed photos. And I hadn’t imagined a lot about this place (Atlanta or college) before coming here either, so it was just a lot of observing and taking in, than Aah’s or Ooh’s.

Ikea was right across the road (behind those trees) and I could see inside the building at 2am, past the scant traffic. I saw people climbing stairs in those hours, and for a while I simply sat on my bed and watched somebody sitting at his desk, like I expected something to happen, but nothing did. It was a great view to Ikea as well and I probably would’ve spent a lot of time just looking at it had we continued to live there, the way I watch the trees here. 

Even while it wasn’t my favorite of plans, this country and a lot of people here have been extremely kind to me in the time I’ve been here. I’ve got to witness chaos – good and bad – especially in the last few months. Some days I marvel that it’s happening right before me, that I get to learn, witness and be a part of it, while some days the history overwhelms and exhausts me. But maybe that’s the way it should be. And I do love that it’s hot, humid and green here.

View from the room – Evening showers, sunset and tech trolley hub

An evening of sad songs

Ah the good songs and places and things people ruin for us

I wish I didn’t have a headache from lying in bed
Listening to sad songs
Crying
About the old lover, over an estranged parent
It wasn’t meant to go far
But you know how it is on Saturday evenings
One thing leads to another
And before you know it, you’ve taken it one too far.

Ruined what could have been a perfectly nice night
Sipping sweet lime soda with no bubbles in it
The way I like it

This song here, he hated how everyone was singing or talking about it
And I knew I’d ruin it if I translated for him
We’d both hate it in fact.
So I told him it was a nice song
Not how it sounded like us.

Ah the good songs and places and things people ruin for us
The old lover, with his unnecessary soft singing between kisses
That you swoon over, only to break your heart in later
And a parent with their loving lullabies
That later turned too cold and distant and everything in between

The songs come back sooner or later, when one day you think
To revisit the goodness that once was
That you’re ready.
Perhaps not never though, on a less sad note –
Maybe just not tonight.

So it could’ve been a perfect Saturday night sipping sweet lime soda
The way I like it with the bubbles all out
I simply got it all wrong, again.

Featured image : Bawra mann

#10 recipe – tuna sub roti at ~$1

Student economics : Tuna subway roti at 1 dollarish

(This is for when it’s sunny out and you feel like you can achieve anything in the world, or for when you’re stuck at home and have canned tuna in your shelf.)

In Fall, I used to get footlong tuna from Subway very often, it was the closest thing to Old’s Cool’s tuna sub which was (and still is) my favorite.

So I’ve been home for 14 days now and earlier this week I was trying to find new recipes to cook, ended up breaking this thing down. (Really, it was supposed to be beef and rice this week with premium meat from Austin’s farm but we have a lockdown in Atlanta and my friend is hence happily stuck at home so tuna it is. Woeful days.)
The only toppings I ever get from Subway are onion, lettuce, bell pepper, pickles, tomato but even otherwise putting it together should be easy enough. I’ve also never done such a thorough cost-breakup before so this was fun.
Never doing it again.

Ingredients (and price break-up)

Roti : 30 nos. for $8ish from Halal store (they’re small but they’re Haldiram’s so stop complaining)
[$0.267 each]

Tuna : 5oz can at $3.68. I had earlier used half of the canned tuna to make a coconut + tamarind curry (if you saw the shredded fish in the gravy you’d deem it a desecration but there’s nothing like craving meencurry during a quarantine. Also never doing that again.)
This is approximate but you’d need 1/8 of the can for a generous topping on a roti.
[$0.46]

Bell Pepper : $0.99 each. Used one half for 4 portions, chopped into cubes. I also I cannot believe they were Rs. 4 each in Karol Bagh. They were like Rs. 10 back home, but that seems okay now. Also, too much green in your topping is a sham.
[$0.12]

Onion : $2 for a 2lb bag with 6-7 onions. I diced around one half.
[$0.17ish]

Ketchup, mayonnaise.

Kitchen Equipment : Microwave, included with the apartment so add your monthly rent here. Jk. I will not let you sabotage my student economics.
Including taxes, it adds upto $1.1ish or less.

How-to

Scour the surface of the roti with a fork/knife so it doesn’t puff up in the microwave*. Heat roti in microwave for 1min 30sec so it’s crispy and can hold the tuna salad topping.

Mix tuna, bell peppers and onion in mayonnaise, spread ketchup on roti and top with as much tuna mix as you want. I can’t eat more than two at a time, that’s too much tuna for me which is also why I don’t get the footlong anymore.

The first bite was so similar to a Subway that I was disappointed – do they really use canned tuna from Walmart? I guess getting Subway sandwiches only makes sense if you get better toppings on yours, I’m just the sad boring customer.
It was in fact better than my subway because I could finish it faster so the bread would never get soggy from all that salad.
Missed pickles, did not miss tomato. Maybe if I broke down more dishes they’d come out nice too.

* Giving credit where due : Roti pizza from Bon Appetit.

#9 spring break/quarantine – recipe or something like that

Spaghetti with mushrooms and other things. Also, quarantine and cooking.

This past week at home I’ve cooked more meals than I have this entire semester. Right before spring break and the coronavirus going crazy in the US, I did depend rather a bit much on frozen meals for long (how do you not get tired of your own cooking?). Mashed potatoes and steak in sauce and corn, most of the corn I’d throw out, and some of the steak too. But they’re a better recourse for when I get back from class on Tuesday night than a pack of ramen.

That is not to say that I haven’t been cooking this sem. I almost always have shredded spinach in the bottom drawer of my fridge, and at least one cooked dish. It sits there for a week, while I survive on bread and wheat tortillas and chappathi and ramen and frozen meals and Subway until I finally throw it out. Then I cook another dish to replace it and continue with my bad eating habits.

Coronavirus had me frantically chomping down red rice because somehow it makes me feel healthy and ready to fight illness. In fact if I do get sick, my line of defence is just going to be kanji, but more like red rice in boiling water. I hope it doesn’t get to that.

Recipe

https://photos.app.goo.gl/QFQKYX9vN7MSvtFr7 (I tried to upload the video but WP has issues with me posting stuff. It’s 3 seconds and you’d spend more than that getting there but anyway.)

Cooked this earlier this week. No, it didn’t taste as good as it looks. Next time, I’m frying the beef in a different pan, getting rid of the fat and only adding the meat to the dish. Too fatty for my liking. Also, next time I’ll try to make this a soup, sans fat.

Ingredients : Carrots, mushrooms, spinach, ground beef, spring onion.
I seasoned the beef separately with salt & pepper, spring onion to get rid of the distinct smell of red meat. Not enough. If anyone does something to effectively mask the smell, please do let me know. Coming from somebody who once contracted gastritis simply from the aroma of beef cooking in our kitchen. I just can’t.

Also, Pasta.

Seasoning : crushed black pepper, red chilli flakes, salt
Garnish (and brightens it up flavor-wise) : more spring onion but cut diagonally for aesthetics

Cook all the ingredients in a wide pan, boil pasta separately. Add cooked pasta to the pan when done.
I restrained myself from using soy sauce, I don’t know if it might’ve made the dish better, I always add too much or too less such that it never does any good. Also cooked spinach for far too long, they were heavily shrivelled, bitter and the last of the vitamins left my kitchen by the time I plated.
Do not repeat my mistake, add them at the very end. I mean ender than the end.

Maybe I shouldn’t do recipes, I’m not very good at these.


#8 party lights – the world is black and white

“Women wouldn’t be straight if orientation were a choice.” While I am impressed by her clarity of thought at this hour, I feel like this is going to be borderline sad.

She looks amazing in these lights. Who even keeps burgundy lights in their rooms? I’ve known her all this while, and she’s always been pretty. But this evening she’s some beauty. And I’ve met so many beautiful people.

The lights make the hairs on her upper lip look stubborn – the ones that women usually wax/shave to get rid of. I wonder if I should ask her about them but decide against. (I patted myself on the back when I wrote this after, half-drunk and half-hungover.) I was not stupid. Yet.

“Men are horrible.” It sounds like she isn’t looking for an opinion.

“Yes,” I confirm.
The world is black and white under these burgundy lights. So far so good.

“It’s true what they say.” Her voice trails off. Not NOW, ugh.

“What do they say?” I’m patient as ever, fighting the headache rising from my neck and about to lodge itself on the back of my head.

“Women wouldn’t be straight if orientation were a choice.” While I am impressed by her clarity of thought at this hour, this is going to be borderline sad. Why are we doing it again?
“Yes,” I do not dissent. I’m not heartbroken, although it does feel like nothing could break my heart at this point. I tuck it away so it can come back to bother me later. Not here, not now.

She’s resting her head against my bed now and her hair falls across her face. I should probably stop her but I only watch as she takes another sip.

Yes, women can be horrible too.

#7 And never grow up

Remember when you were a kid and fell sick? The whole world just reduced to a bed-ridden little you wrapped in blankets and your mother who sat by your bed and attended to you 24×7, who showed up by your side every 2 hours with oranges, ORS and medicine while you ate and drank everything she asked you to even while making faces? You knew she was going to make it right.

Or how even after growing up, on a really bad day the world could reduce to essentially just that?

Yea.

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