Day 12 March SOLSC! #SOL23

We use turmeric in all the dishes that we make.  We have ginger and turmeric plants in our garden. A few weeks ago, we pulled out the rhizomes of the turmeric plants and washed them. I cut them into thin slices and dried them in the sun for a week and powdered them. This I have kept aside for medicinal purposes. Our doctor told us to add half a teaspoon of powder in warm water and drink it first thing in the morning. It helps in reducing cough.

Turmeric powder

Flower of the turmeric plant

I wrote earlier about Suma, the caregiver at Asare, getting tamarind from hometown and selling it here. On Wednesday I went to Asare. Earlier I had asked for two kgs the dried fruit. She told me that from February to April all people in her village are picking and processing tamarind. The fruit has to be deseeded and the fibrous material removed from it. For every seer of seeds removed the workers get Rs 20 as wage.

To the right is the new tamarind. The darker one is last years.

My mother used to tell me in her childhood her mother roasted tamarind seed on embers. The children would chew them on the way to school and loved them. I have stored some of the tamarind in the fridge. I prepare juice out of it for the summer months. To the rest I added salt and stored in a glass jar. Tamarind becomes darker with age. We use it in our daily cooking to get the sour taste. According to some tamarind is not good for those suffering from arthritis. They use kokum. I use it too. Kokum is a red coloured fruit. If I get fresh fruits, I make juice with peels. Or the peels are sun dried and used later. We get them in the market too. They give a nice red colour to the dish.

We use many spices too. For any vegetable sambhar I make the masala using black gram dal, coriander seeds, fenugreek seeds, Asafoetida and red chillies. I fry them in a little oil and grind the spices with fresh coconut gratings to a paste. This mixture is added to cooked vegetables and water. The sambhar is boiled and seasoned with red chillies and mustard seeds. This adds an extra flavour to the dish. Different spices are used for different sambhars.

I remember in the early days of our marriage, it took me so much time to cook anything 😊. My husband knows to cook. When our children were small, they insisted that he should make dosas for them. He used to make them thin and crisp 😊.