Day 22 of the March SOLSC! #SOL2022

The weather is becoming hotter and water melons and our star apples are a joy to eat. These days we are getting very sweet water melons and their rinds are thick. I don’t feel like throwing them. I make dry curries, we call them palya. They do not have a gravy. I cook the vegetable with salt, red chilli powder and a little jaggery and then season with mustard and red chillies. We make the same with the rind of ash gourd.  I also make dosas using water melon rind. They are tasty but my son  do not like them because they have an odd smell. Chutneys made with ridge gourd and bottle gourd peels are tasty.

Water melon rind yet to be cooked

One of our popular curries is ‘tambli’. I don’t think it has a name in English. It is made with coconut, buttermilk and different vegetables and herbs. We season all sorts of tambli generously with garlic. On our hill sides we get wild flowers called Kodagasana. We collect and sun dry them. They are used to make tambli. Our food is not very spicy. Coriander seeds, cumin seeds, black pepper, asafoetida, fenugreek seeds and certain grams like black gram are important ingredients in our cooking. On the wall next to my cooking area I have two stone shelves where I keep the spices and other condiments. I like to finish my kitchen work by 10.30 in the morning .

I remember those long ago days when I need much more time to cook. In two small notebooks I had written the recipes for our dishes. I measured everything but now I don’t have to. My hand knows the different quantities to be used 😊. It is a long time since I have looked up my recipe books 😊. There was one Kannada recipe book called ‘Adige’. Most Kannada speaking people had it with them. Adige means cooking.  These days there are so many food channels online. They give step by step information about the recipe. Maybe recipe books will become a thing of the past.

Vegetable idlis steamed in banana leaves

These days we get ‘ready to eat’ food items  in the  shops . Idli, chapati, dosa and other dishes are popular. I have never tried them 😊.  My cousin told me dosa batter is also available. I remember my father-in-law telling me in his time everything was made at home. No one dreamt of buying cooked food from outside. There have been unimaginable changes in Indian society over the last decades.

groundnut chutney powder