Yesterday I went to the market on my scooter, in the town about forty-five minutes from where I live. I bought some fabric from a man who refused to let me pay my bill before he could give me tea.  He told me that next time I come, I must have a samosa, too.

While I was driving, many thoughts went through my head, as thoughts always do when I am traveling in the luxury of my own company.

Isn’t it amazing that a landscape can wind itself into you? How you may not have noticed every lovely detail when you were new and raw in your transition, but now, two years later, that lone magnolia tree in a field can bring you to tears? Or the egrets, the great white birds, friends of cows and water buffalos, winging over the emerald rice paddies, the egrets have you waving after them foolishly, able to do nothing more than put your hand up toward the sky as if you thought you could touch them.

How you love even the dustiness, the color of it, all the lonely dusty roads and fields, crisscrossing like veins over a vast country.

India is certainly majestic. But it is not mine, not really, because I am from somewhere else.

We are preparing to go back for a visit, soon, to Canada and the U.S. I am thoughtful and sorrowful and excited and over the moon. And scared. And happy. And thoughtful.

But what I wanted to talk about, on this rambling evening, is the shape our community takes. Christine’s question in the comments on the last post made me think that I take so much for granted, I’m never completely clear.  Actually, I’m never sure just how clear I should be, but I think I can tell you this.

Chinua and I have lived in community for all of our married lives, and for many years before. In fact, in the whole time we’ve been married, we’ve only spend five months out of intentional community.  We’ve lived in many different situations.  There was the big house in San Francisco, with people everywhere, in all the kitchens, falling down the stairs, spilling out of the windows.  That was fun.  There was the house in Arcata, always changing. For a while it was all boys and me, and then it was a few couples with newborns, and then we moved back to San Francisco to a largish flat with all our babies and had lots of crazy fun interspersed with whispered fights in the hallways. That was crazy. And then we lived at the Land. A couple of times. There’s lots to say about all of it, but what I will say is that I really love all those people I lived with, and I really believe in community.

This is the shape our community in Goa takes now.  There aren’t so many of us, really. There have been six of us (adults) committed to being here for six months of the year. We have three small houses close together and one a little farther away. Our courtyards touch.  We eat lunch together everyday. We take turns cooking, and we have a circle once a week to decide who will cook on what day.

We are a meditation community, and we are followers of Jesus.  We do daily meditation in the Christian and Judaic traditions, and we focus especially on the Divine Presence of God among us.  In our weekly circle we also decide who will guide each meditation.

The committed people in our community keep the structure running, but it is an open community, which means that we have a lot of visitors.  The meditations are open to whoever would like to experience this kind of meditation, and lunch is always an open invitation. It’s great, really, because we get the best of whoever is cooking; everyone can put their all into one or two meals a week. Lunch in my family is the biggest meal, and dinner is usually pretty snacky.  Sandwiches, or omelettes, or leftovers.

We live close together (the meditation space is on my rooftop) but Chinua and I and our family are the only ones living in our house. (Thank goodness, because we only have two bedrooms.) I love this. We run in and out of each other’s kitchens, but we can find our own space, too.

Sometimes the rhythm of it all (the lunches everyday, the other meetings we have) gets repetitive to me, since every other waking hour is filled with the restraints of family life, but I remind myself that if I can sigh into the structure of it, into the restraint (as a friend of mine once said) I will gain the freedom to learn to truly love.

Our vision is for a Jesus focused, creative community exploring art and music as well as the disciplines of meditation and prayer and worship, in an international hub. Goa is the place for us, right now.

We will be back here in October, for our third season. If you are interested in something like this, something rather crazy and fun, you can email me.

So.  I hope that clears things up.  If you’re interested, I can write more on meditation in the future.

This feels like a letter, somehow.

I’ll sign it,

Rae

I reached for the simplest of subzhi (vegetable) recipes today, one that I love without limit.  There are two things that I can and will dump into everything I make: spinach and mushrooms.  In fact, I usually add mushrooms to my Aloo Palak, but to keep it simple today I didn’t.  But you can.

Note: another way to make aloo palak is to blend the spinach and make a spinach gravy.  This is probably how it will be served if you order it at a restaurant, but I like it this way, nice and chunky.

So, above, the cast of characters: three bunches of spinach, four or five potatoes (yellow or white ones, not baking potatoes), two tomatoes, two onions, however many chillies you want (my neighbor uses three in her curries, I use half a chili when I cook) and a couple of cloves of garlic and about an inch of ginger. (Not shown in the picture because I was lazy again and used the paste.)

I was cooking during our daily meditation time and Chinua was there, up on the rooftop, meditating, so I took my own pictures. Sometimes with interesting results.

First, peel and cube the potatoes.  No need to be crazy on the cube shapes, because how do you cube a potato?  A potato is round, so naturally you can’t make the whole thing into cubes!  Really, only the middle bits get to be cubed, and the outside bits have to settle for being triangulated, or pie-slice-shaped.

You should put the potatoes into a bowl or pot and cover them with water.  Add about a teaspoon of salt (or just pour a little in your hand and dump it in) and let them soak.  When I first wrote about preparing potatoes this way, I didn’t know why I needed to do this, but Carrien told me that it helps them to absorb flavors.  Which makes sense and makes me happy.

Next you’ll want to wash and prepare your spinach.  Just chop it up roughly.  If you are using baby spinach, (which is fine, most likely, no one I know has anything against baby spinach) you probably don’t even need to chop it.

Next: prepare the players.  Onions.

Tomatoes.

Solo. Playing on the floor.  Eleanor wondered where the kids were, while I was cooking in the last post.  This is where Solo was. Literally underfoot.

Prepare your chillies, garlic, and ginger.  I didn’t get a photo of the chillies.

The spice players. About a tsp of each, or however much you want.

Brown mustard seeds.

Coriander seeds. I rub them between my palms to open them.

Cumin seeds.

And a jaunty bay leaf.

This is where Solo is at this stage in the preparations.  He’s making sure the potatoes are soaking properly.

Cute.

In a wok, cook your spice players in a little oil, until the mustard seeds start to pop, and then add the onions.

Cook them until they’re soft and transparent, and add the chillies, ginger and garlic.  You want to have the heat low enough that it cooks them softly, rather than sizzling the edges.

Add the tomatoes.  I find it helps the tomatoes to cook if the photo I take of them is incredibly blurry. If you’re not taking photos, you can go cross eyed and kind of blur your eyes.

When you add the tomatoes, it’s time to add the other players: salt, turmeric, and kasoori methi. You can also add some masala if you want. Masala is a blend of spices.  Many people use garam masala, which I don’t really like, because it has too much anise for me, but there are other kinds.  My favorite is a kind called Kitchen King, and I add about a tsp. You can totally do without it, though.  Remember to only add about half a tsp of turmeric, and use about a tsp of salt.

Cook the tomatoes until they separate from the oils or something, and then add the aloo.

I mean, the potatoes.  Once the potatoes are in, it’s safe to focus the photography again.  You can refocus your eyes.

Add a little water and cover the pan.  Turn it down low and allow it to cook for ten minutes or so.  You may need to stir it a couple of times.

Then add the spinach.  It also needs to be blurry.

I usually just cover it while it’s on top, and let it cook down a bit, because if I don’t, I try to mix it and spinach flies all over the kitchen.  This time, though, I noticed that it clumped a lot, so it might be good to stir it in while it’s still uncooked.  Just don’t be alarmed if spinach flies all over your kitchen.

After you add the spinach, cover it again and let it cook until the potatoes are soft.  Add salt to taste at the end.

My friends, that recipe is the entry to another world, because with the players, I could have added any vegetable!  Any at all! And it would have been amazing.

So there you go- this time I got a photo of it on the plate, with dahl and rice and raita.

And here are the kids, eating. Leafy is notoriously absent. He has about two seconds of focused eating time before he is off fighting transformers in his mind, and his mother is too busy taking photos to do anything about it!

Okay, a little review:

Veggies:

Potatoes
Spinach

Players:

Onions
Tomatoes
Ginger
Garlic
Chillies
Cumin seeds
Coriander seeds
Mustard seeds
Bay leaf
Turmeric
Salt
Kasoori Methi

Happy cooking!

Today was an up/down/up/down kind of day.  I believe that this what they call a roller coaster. (I’ve heard of roller coasters; I think they exist in that mythical land called The WEST.)

First I had some highly skilled parenting moments in which I had the following conversation:

Me: “Kid A, will you please water the garden for me?  We need to go and meet Claudia at the beach and I’m running late.”

Kid A: “I can’t.  I’m too tired, and I don’t want to.”

Me: “Fine then!  Just wait until the next time you want help!  I’m not going to help you!”

Kid A: “What?”  (Genuinely baffled.)

Your welcome for the stellar example of boundary setting, including a nice wallop of impossible consequences. No help for you, kiddo!  That’s what you get for being so unhelpful!  Of course, I blame my lapse on the fact that I sometimes turn into a nine-year-old, without warning. It’s not my fault!

But then the kids and I made it out and met my friend for breakfast on the beach.  She was leaving today to go traveling to other places in India (with Renee! Ack, Renee-less and Claudia-less!  Double blow!) and we had coffee and peered at the ocean in the distance and tried to tell each other how much we mean to one another. (That was an awkward sentence, that.)

The kids played, and Solo tackled the other babies, just like I’ve trained him to.  I’ve tried to warn him, though.  Go for the toddlers that have elder brothers and sisters!  Because those first-time parents can be lethally protective.  To his credit, he doesn’t mean to attack the toddlers.  He just gives really big hugs and then if you start pulling him away because the other kid is shrieking, he kicks at them, for good measure. Sigh.

A man yelled at me for getting in his way in traffic.  I cried.

Then we ate grapes and cheese and bread and I had a blissful hour of doing embroidery work on a skirt I was making for Claudia while listening to This American Life.  I think it may be my favorite way to spend an afternoon.

Then Solo pulled a mayonnaise jar off of the counter and it shattered on the floor.  Let me tell you, my friends, that you haven’t experienced the true bliss of life until you’ve combed your fingers through gelatin-like mayonnaise on a marble floor, pulling pieces of glass out. There is nothing to equal the greasiness, the potential danger, the pure fatty sharpness of it.

And then it was time to say goodbye at the taxi.  Big hugs and kisses and Claudia and Renee spun off, a little late, to catch their train. I love my friends.  I will miss them.

Back to the house and while I was making dinner, Solo broke my favorite coffee cup, which was nice because I loved it and I didn’t want it anyways!  Stupid coffee cup!  So smooth in the hand, so brown, so perfectly sized and shaped.  I’m glad I’m rid of it!

But around the dinner table I was filled with this warm rush of love for all their crazy selves.  I love this family.  I love these kids.  I even love these kinds of days, when Solo makes me crazy, and then runs into the room, teeth first in that way he has, just to throw his arms around my legs and try to kiss my knee cap. I love that he lets me pinch his cheeks (gently and ceaselessly) and I love the conversation that never stops swelling and ebbing all around me. I love goodbyes sometimes, because we try to say what we feel shy to say at other times.

Also, I love Ira Glass and my blooming bougainvillea and going to the vegetable stand to find the perfect purple cabbage. Life, in other words.  God and His eternal goodness.

The other day when I was posting photos for the cooking post, I noticed my hand in this photo.

It reminded me of something I saw when I was looking at pictures with the kids.

It reminded me of this photo of me holding Kid A as a newborn, seven and a half years ago.

Oh my word, he’s cute.  But the real point is that I never, ever change my rings.  To me, rings become a part of your body when you put them on.  They are not something to be taken off and put back on.  You just wear them.  I’ve been wearing these two for fifteen years.  FIFTEEN YEARS.  Gosh I’m a jewelry fuddy duddy.

(Although yes, Eleanor, sometimes I wear Wonder Woman bracelets.)

When I was nursing, though, I used to take one of the rings off and put it on the other hand to show which side I needed to feed from for the next feeding. Rings are also useful that way.

But really, baby Kid A is so cute in that picture.  Why can’t I just have that back for a day?  I’m sure I would appreciate him even more now, now that I know him so well and stuff.  Sigh.  I want to kiss his addictive forehead.  Maybe I’ll go sneak a kiss on his big ol’ head that is about as huge as a table now.

I’ve had a lot of cooking issues in my life.  I’ve frozen up many times when I’ve tried to decide what to cook, I’ve been prostrate on the kitchen floor, weeping, and I’ve had panic attacks in grocery stores.  All true, unfortunately.

When I came to India, I discovered a way of cooking that slowly started unraveling all those tense, knotted wires in my brain.

I find that I always need a way to think about something. A philosophy or vision, I guess. So, the way I’ve started to look at food, and Indian cooking in particular, is as a combination of fresh ingredients, rocking the beans, and understanding the players.

So, today I’m going to start introducing you to the players, and to rocking the beans.

Seriously, you need to rock the beans. Look at these beans.  They’re so dry!  So cheap!  So healthy!  Indian mamas know how to cook beans, and I’ve been fortunate enough to learn from a couple of them.

This is a recipe for Rajma.  Meet Rajma.  Rajma, meet the readers.

Rajma is a type of small kidney bean.  I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I think you could also use pinto beans for this recipe. (I’ll test it when I’m back in the U.S. this summer.)

So: preparation of dried beans.  You need to soak them overnight, the day before you cook them, and then rinse them completely before boiling them.  I can’t recommend a pressure cooker enough.  I cook beans with a pressure cooker by allowing three blasts of the cooker on high, then turning them off completely.  It takes way less time.  If you are simply boiling them, give yourself a couple of hours and make sure they’re really soft.  They won’t be good if they’re crunchy. You can fill the water up to an inch about the beans, in the pressure cooker.

(In the following dish I used 500 g of rajma and boy did we have a lot of beans. If you make as much as I did, you will be able to freeze some, which could be a good idea.  Or you can cut the recipe in half.)

Okay. The players! The players are a special combination of vegetables and spices that you can add to or take away from, to make a base for almost any vegetable that you want to cook.  I often opted not to cook Indian food in the past because the long list of ingredients made my eyes cross.  Now that I know them as the players, I don’t even think about that long list.

This dish is a little different from some of the others that I’ll write about, because I take some of the players and cook them ahead of time so that I can blend them to make a gravy.

I’ll give you some basic amounts, but the beauty of learning to cook this way is that you can change any recipe to your taste. You like more onions?  Add more.  Hate garlic? Only add a little.  (I can’t in good conscience tell you not to add any.)

These are the vegetable players:

Onions: (for 250 g of beans, use two small onions or one large onion. Chop them into small pieces, not too small, because you’re going to blend them anyways.)

Tomatoes: (Use two small tomatoes or one big one. Chop them into small diced pieces.)

This is me with my tomatoes.

Garlic and ginger: I use this awesome paste which makes my life wonderful. I use two teaspoons or so of the paste, or about an inch of grated ginger and three cloves of grated garlic. (But no measuring!)

And a small green chili. This is entirely to taste. Use as much or as little as you want, and you can add red chili powder for more spice, which can be more controllable, because you know how some chillies are so much spicier than others and there is just no way of knowing which ones! Slit the chili lengthwise and then chop it into teeny tiny pieces.

Begin by heating about four tablespoons of oil in a wok (Woks are best because you’ll need to cook the spices in the oil, later) and adding the onions. You want to cook on a medium or low heat.

When the onions look like this (you know, all soft and see through, yum!) add the garlic and ginger and chili. Cook them for about two minutes, and then add the tomatoes.

Then you want to cook them all until they look like this:

There is this thing that happens where the oils start to separate from the tomatoes or something something blah blah blah, I don’t know what I’m talking about but watch for it!  This is when they’re ready, when they are soft and oily see through liquid comes out of them.  Okay? Technical enough?

Put the veggie players aside to cool.

Now, there are spice and herb players too. These are the Indian ones, and a lot of countries have their own spice players. Some have almost none.  India has a heck of a lot.  I’ve omitted a couple that seem really hard to find, but here are the ones I think you’ll manage to locate. (Many big cities have Indian supermarkets, and you can search around online for distributors.)

Introducing: Jeera.  Or, in English, cumin seeds.  The single best spice in all of the world. Seriously, with all that stuff about spice routes and everything- I get it!  Jewels? Bleh. Silks?  Okay, yeah, they’re nice.  But just imagine that all you’ve ever had is pease porridge in the pot, nine days old, and then you discover cumin! Wow. This is about how much I use.

Mustard seeds: These are brown mustard seeds; you can use brown or black. With both of these I use about a tsp, or maybe a little more. Once again, measuring is not important.

Bay leaves. Easy peasy. I use one large bay leaf, or two if I feel a little crazy.

Cinnamon: My friends, I have no idea how easy it is to get cinnamon like this in the Western world. People just pull it out of the jungle here, so it’s easy. But you can use the powder if you ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO! Be careful how much you use, if you use powder. Half a tsp would be enough. The thing is, which it’s a stick like this, only the essence comes out.  It’s nicer.

This is where I admit that it would have been a lot nicer for photos if I had just clean the pot that I’d cooked the tomatoes and onions in.  But my habit is to just reuse it, because I like the crunchy flavorful parts on the sides. And I’m lazy.  I have six kids!!  I mean, four.

Once again, use some oil, about four tbs, and heat it up a little.  Add the cumin seeds, bay leaf, cinnamon stick, and mustard seeds.  Cook them until they start popping.

Then you need to add the beans. (The cooked beans) Include some of the water that the beans cooked in.

Here are a couple more players that you should add, once you’ve added the beans and stirred:

Turmeric: The trick to turmeric is that you should only use a little. Stick to half a tsp.

This is something call Kasoori Methi.  It’s Fenugreek leaves.  Let me know if you can find these.  They make everything taste so much more Indian, somehow.  I love them. I can’t get enough of them.

And I didn’t include a picture of the salt, but add a tsp of salt.

Now the veggie players should be warmish. Blend them up until they look like this:

And add them to the beans.  That’s the good stuff.  Then stir everything really well and allow it all to cook together for about twenty minutes. We eat this with rice and one other Indian cooked dish, usually vegetables, or maybe with just a salad.

Salt it to taste, at the end.  You really want to have enough salt, friends, but don’t oversalt it or you’ll be kicking yourself.

You know what would be really nice at the end of this post? A photo of the rajma, on a plate, with rice and salad, just the way it would look if you were ready to eat it.  Unfortunately I forgot to ask Chinua to take one.

But let’s cover the basics again:

The vegetable players:

Onions
Tomatoes
Ginger
Garlic
Chili

The spice players:

Cumin seeds
Mustard seeds
A bay leaf
Cinnamon
Turmeric
Salt
Fenugreek Leaves (Kasoori Methi)

If you learn to cook the players, you will be able to make a base that you can add use any vegetables to, at any time.  I’ll do another post, next week, about vegetables and the players, now that we’ve covering one of the many fine beans that we share our earth with.

Thanks to Chinua, for the sweet and artsy photos.  I’ll answer questions in the comments if you have any!  Bon Appetit!

I’m feeling much, much better.  I had some kind of brief, violent flu.  I’ve been taking it easy. Sort of. I’m not very good at taking it easy.

Today I’m going to Mapusa!  So I can run errands in the hot sun!  I will buy some plants and some fabric, drop off my trash, and peer at the steel shops.  I don’t really need any steel right now, but I wish I did!

Anyways, thanks for all your well-wishes.  The real problem right now is that our internet is sick. Again. So I’m at the internet place down the street.  I hope it gets well soon.

I’m working on a food post.  Hope to have it ready for you and have the web connection to send it over the invisible wires.

The air here has been unbelievable lately. So clean, and the sky is so blue, and it hurts, it’s so beautiful.

Oh, I’m sick. Yucky yucky yuck yuck. Chinua and I have been taking turns at running to the toilet all day. Which is more than you needed to know.

But to your left I have put nine of my photographs in a shop at Red Bubble.  They are, of course, of beautiful things I see and feel like putting on the wall somewhere, somewhere they can remind me that life is full of small, unimportant, lovely things. Maybe you want one for your wall?

Love,

me.

It just screams potential, doesn’t it?

I want to live in a house like the one YaYa drew.

And have a tree like hers growing in my yard.

Leafy likes the potential of chalk, too.

He loves to show off his work.

And I love to see it. I’m his biggest fan; his drawings are so whimsical and lovely.

Solo, on the other hand, is all: If I can’t eat it, I don’t want it!  Just take it, already.

We’ll give him time.

Dear Agent,

I have a super fantastic book that I wrote, and I think it will make us both rich and famous! LOL!  There are a few reasons that I think this.

1. Because you are totally awesome, obviously, I read your website and it sounds like you are the most awesome person on the planet! LOL!

2. Because my husband really likes the book.  He told me he couldn’t put it down. And you should know that my husband isn’t the type of husband that would say that it was good just because I wrote it.  He’s actually a really picky person.  Really picky, and he’s totally honest, too. So if he says he likes something, HE REALLY LIKES IT! LOL!  For example, when we were trying to pick a title, he told me that if I said the word “landscape” one more time, he was going to throw me out the door. Landscape. Landscaaaaape. Sounds good to me, but I trust my husband!  Did I mention that he’s in this really cool band?

Anyways,

3. Because my friend Renee likes it and sometimes she calls me to read a line she really likes to me, and then I’m all, “Why did you like it?” because I really like to talk about it.  I’m like that with writing, but not with cooking, because when I cook and people like it, I’m all embarrassed and stuff. And I made a cake the other day and people liked it and one person said I should totally start a cake business, and it was SO EMBARRASSING.  But I like it when Renee reads paragraphs that she likes to me.

What have I been doing for the last few years?  Well…. I’ve been doing lots of stuff, like cooking (I already said that) and sometimes I go for a scooter ride in the jungle, and I have this blog that’s just amazing, you should totally read it, and I take care of my kids and then sometimes I write down funny things they say!  I read all the time! And I do a lot of laundry. I also homeschool my kids. And I know a lot of people from all around the world.

Is that a good biography?

Okay, so… think about it. Let me know in the next day or so, because this offer’s hot and you’d better jump on it! LOL!

All my love,

Rachel xoxoxoxo

A while ago, when I went to the market, I took my camera along and took just a few shots of the thousands I could have taken.  One thing about India- it’s very populated. (I realize that’s terrible grammar.) Populated with people yes, but also with small businesses.  One woman selling dried fish, another selling parsnips, and only parsnips!  As one shop owner explained to me, it’s why India is doing okay during the recession. Teeny tiny businesses and all the support that goes toward them.

Anyways. This is one corner of the market.

This lady is buying the essentials. Lemons, garlic, ginger…

Mmmm. Vegetables. That’s a nice tower of cauliflower that you have there, sir. I also spot some nice dill in the foreground.

Sweet potatoes!  Renee is a little worked up over sweet potatoes.  She’ll let you know, too. She spent six hours preparing the sweet potatoes on Christmas Eve.  I think my title of this photo is sweet potatoes and spring onions, but now I see they are parsnips.  Silly me!

These are some scary walking one eyed babies. Very scary.

Piles of glass bangles.  I want some, but I’m always overwhelmed by the choices.

Textiles. Saris.

Displaying the sari. I could never wear that green, but of course dark skinned people can wear whatever they want.

I told you about steel shops.  They’re addictive, all those piles of tiffins and cups and bowls of every shape and size.

This lady is thinking, finish taking the photo and take these roses already!

This is the shop that made my oven for me.I really love it. You can buy anything here.

A sweet shop. These guys wanted me to take a photo, and I’m supposed to take them a print.

Snacks.  Spicy snacks.

And last but not least. Undies! Right next to the chillies. Things are as they should be.