55Friday: The “Thank You” Edition

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What, like you expected somthing else, after all this? 🙂

Due to one memorable mindfulness class I took in 2003, I have spent the last few years growing more conscious of how we are surrounded by opportunities to be grateful. It’s been such an eye-opening experience, to the point where I feel horrible about the past, because I know I was oblivious to so much goodness which I didn’t acknowledge. I can’t do anything about that, but I’ve tried to incorporate gratitude in my daily life, because the truth is, the act of appreciating something or someone can be transformative and beyond that, it’s just the right thing to do. 294638412_005769f1fb_m.jpg

Around this time of year, it’s even easier to say “Thank you”. 🙂 After all, you get time off from work to do it! I’m not sure if some of you partook in that ritual last night where you go around the table and state whatever you’re thankful for, but if you did, I’d love to hear what bullet points you offered to your family and the turkey carcass. Perhaps you can contain what thrills you in exactly 55 words, but because it’s a holiday, I’ll be just as appreciative if you haiku it. I’m just grateful that you kids play along with my inconsistent flashes of silliness and I’m delighted that a few of you mentioned how you are thankful for “55s” in the comment thread of my last post. It’s nice to know you care. 🙂

This week, our theme song is extra flexible, because I can’t decide if I’m referring to the Dido version of “Thank You” or Alanis Morissette’s much-mocked take on the phrase. I know, the fact that the latter contains the phrase, “Thank you, India” might militate in favor of choosing THAT as our tune du jour, but then, if we invoked the Manish-Vij-anti-exotification clause… 😉

So, write about flavor-free poultry, family, cranberry sauce, gratitude, popular female singers (one of whom was naked!) or whatever else you are loving right now. While you do that, I have to go remind my Mom to make her famous cranberry pickle while the berries are still available, because that exquisite hotness is ridiculously yummy. Unlike the rest of you foodies, I didn’t stuff my strict-vegetarian face yesterday so I’m still hungry. I could totally go for some chor, mor and pickle right now and you’d best believe I’d be thankful for how good rice, yogurt and an extra-spicy condiment always taste. 😀

38 thoughts on “55Friday: The “Thank You” Edition”

  2. Even the lazy ass, good for nothing intern had taken the night off.

    Hello?! Using me as a human placeholder as I shivered my kundi off while waiting for Black Friday sales TOTALLY counts as work. You’re just mad you didn’t think of employing such a strategy last week for a PS3, Scrooge McDuck.

  3. A desi guy got lost in Texas. Was found and embraced by Persians. An axis of goodwill was formed.

    He thanks his Irani peeps — his almost Punjabis, almost brothers. For their generosity and killer Margaritas. For all night parties. For the banging beats. For berry (zereshk) Pulao. For making it vegetarian just for him.

    Mo’teshake’ram.

  4. He observed as the two sat opposite to each other, symbolizing their entire relationship. His mother – artist, creative, liberal. His father – academic, logical, traditional. The conflict wasn’t always easy for him.

    But tonight, as they all sat in silence eating a turkey dinner, he quietly gave thanks for being the integration of such painful contrast.

  5. The Night Before

    Beer (Heineken) and beer (Coors Light) and beer (Corona for the girls), but some have graduated to the Yellow Tail (which I canÂ’t tell them I hate because that would make me a New York snob) Merlot. I wander to another room in a haze of too many people I never wanted to see again.

  6. Abhi- I’m always tickled when you find a 55 worthy of participating in…hope the Cuban food was yum. 😉

    Shodan- Awww, that’s sweet. My best friend is Persian. 🙂

    The King Singh- Yowza, that’s a wicked-good flash of…fiction. And so on topic, too!

    Tamasha- I know EXACTLY what you mean. And I’m no fan of Yellow Tail, either. I salute your snobbery.

  7. Try chor, mor and kimchi.

    The morning after (?!? more like afternoon) – bloody marys, ramen and kimchi, turkey, rice and red bean paste. Thank You Korea.

    The night of – Gigantor bottles of Yellowtail of every kind (snob or no snob, at $3.99 it’s hard to beat) – Classy

    The night after – bad movies and boxed wine – Thanks.

  8. Sounds good.

    Here’s something that blew me out yesterday. I actually made sambaram.

    I took a few leaves from the trusted curry plant (karukapillai), added some yogurt, ice cubes, chopped ginger, salt, and thai chilly. Stuck it all in the vitamix.

    Result: a tall frosty pitcher of sambaram (I guess you can leave out the ginger/chilly but I’m a spice freak). Not exactly turkey day fare but it was awesome.

  9. and while you’re at it, leave the ice cubes out and let the fish/chicken or lamb marinate in some of the sambaram and grill or shallow fry. Deelish.

  10. For the malayalis (and Malayalis alike): anyone a fan of Pootu?

    This morning, breakfast: Started with Pootu and Kadala Curry, then moved to Pootu and etha pazham (plantain) and then capped with pootu, panjasara (sugar), pazham (banana). Of course had a couple more rounds of Pootu w/ the pazham and panjasara. What was missing? Chakaparati – don’t know how you spell that – the jackfruit-brown sugar/molasses stuff that I’ve only had at Grandma’s house in Trivandrum. Holy shit that was heavenly. But I’m still grateful.

  12. La noche antes: Carne en polvo y frijoles negros, para mi, no carne, gracias! This mami here got her back from too much patacones y cucayo (crispy rice and platanos).

    The trick to my sofrito is cumin cooked in the olive oil, cooked with the peppers, etc. (including malaguetas from my garden).

    Besos for Anna Divina!

  13. Oh lawd – I think people either love pootu or hate it. I’ve tried it with everything from bananas and thayirum panjesara to kadalla and I just can’t take to it. Hey, but more power to you J Mehta 🙂

  14. one word.

    bisibelebath.

    ho-kay, ho-kay. i succumbed to the full gobble gobble spread. after completing my last bite of deeeeeeeeeeelicious pumpkin streusel pie, i was afflicted with the itis, and thereafter sprawled out on my couch and watched two fillums in a row: inside man (chaiyya chaiyya anyone?) and thank you for smoking.

    (but i still would have liked bisibelebath).

    good eats, all!

  16. Their bond was the secretsÂ…how at four she hid in the closet behind their fatherÂ’s shirts when their mother was enraged, that she only drinks chai once itÂ’s cooled and smells like wet dogs, which gossip she loved and which sheÂ’d dismiss as aunti-trashÂ…

    A list only a sister and best friend could recount.

  18. I love pootu and kappi for breakfast (though idiappam is my favorite). I do NOT like it with kadala or anything else savory (like the plantains you mentioned). I’ll tolerate it with those sweet baby pazham, but all I really like on my pootu (or with my appam) is panjasara. Nothing else. I think I decided what I liked to eat when I was four and have never deviated. 🙂

    You’re making me feel bad that I forever turned my nose up at chakaparati stuff, I didn’t realize it was special. 🙂 Here’s something I’m thankful for: because of this blog, I now know how lucky I was while growing up (vs. assuming every kid had what I did), as I was given fresh Mallu food daily (never leftovers) made from organically grown veggies, some of it steamed in the banana leaves my parents cut from the trees in our backyard (something flat and rectangular, filled with brown sugar and thenga or chakka). 🙂

    My lazy kundi doesn’t have the energy or motivation to boil vellam for chor and my mom was making korketa (sp??) for breakfast while working overtime. I can aspire to maybe a quarter of such awesomeness.

  19. My lazy kundi doesn’t have the energy or motivation to boil vellam for chor and my mom was making korketa (sp??) for breakfast while working overtime. I can aspire to maybe a quarter of such awesomeness.

    I’m not familiar with those specific foods but I think this is a problem for our whole generation (in the diaspora but also many people in India); the loss of the elaborate cuisines that our parents (mostly our moms of course) are masters of. There is an entire culinary culture that I grew up with and inherited which I do not have the ability to maintain (because I am not into cooking AT ALL even though my mother has offered to teach me many times and even though I tried a few times before giving up). My only hope to enjoy the dishes I grew up with when I’m old is to marry someone who not only enjoys cooking, but would like to learn my mom’s recipes. Because if I marry someone who hates cooking, we’ll be eating a lot of restaurant food most of the time. I can’t count on my sister to keep our mom’s tradition alive either because she hates cooking almost as much as I do.

  20. Lately I’ve been critically analyzing the underlyng psychology to my cooking. I in fact, will sometimes go that extra mile to approximate that special taste that’s slowly disappearing with my parents generation. If it means painstakingly trying to grow a karuvepala plant myself vs buying the leaves from the grocer, then I’ll do it. Why? Sure it makes the thoran taste especially good and almost like mom’s (btw cabbage thoran is my absolute favorite), but more importantly it makes me feel more connected to my parents, to my culture. I get sad and fearful watching it fade, watching my parents grow old, the A in the ABCD taking over… I’ll make choru, thoran, sambar, and eat it all with only my hands, as a way to preserve it; to cope my fear of losing everything…

    Shoot, I may even wear a lungi and eat on a banana leaf… and grow a mustache…smoke beedies while squating.

    btw – the Plaintain preparation I mentioned is not savory. It’s very sweet. Made with ripened plantain (nearing black) and brown sugar. Honestly, the Kadala Curry I eat ’cause my dad makes it (he makes the pootu too); it’s not that I dislike it; it just not the crack that is Pootu, sugar, pazham/etha pazham and ghee (with Kappi)…

  21. I’m not familiar with those specific foods

    vellam = water chor = rice korketa = There is nothing else like it, so I can’t translate it. Hell, I can’t even spell it.

    but I think this is a problem for our whole generation

    Agreed, agreed. 🙁

  22. Two half-brown (one Punjirish, the other B’white) imps whose combined age counted on one hand still leaves me a finger folded take part in a mad innocent dash to see who can get naked first, fastest because it’s bath time! Squeals ensue!

    I am blessed for being allowed to see the future, growing up.

  23. The Cereal Killer of the people hungry. He make some rice, fry some papad and eat it with curd and mama’s mango pickle from village in India. Alas, pickle in cupboard for many months and gone stale; he no realise this. He vomit at night; by morning he dead. Tame end for very violent man.

  24. korketa = There is nothing else like it, so I can’t translate it. Hell, I can’t even spell it.

    Hi Anna,

    Are you referring to: Kozhikatta?

    Essentially, it is a white, steamed ball of flour, which has been stuffed with coconut mixed in Jaggery;) Phew! Love it; can’t recall the last time I had it though.

    Peace

  25. For obvious reasons we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving on this side of the Atlantic, so I can’t write a 55 on this week’s theme; however, you can consider my soft-porn perversion of JoaT’s turkey recipe to be my own contribution to this thread.

    Good 55s by everyone else this week; I thought TheKingSingh’s story was particularly poignant.

    (PS: TheKingSingh — great to see you back here, bro.)

  27. Wow! Cranberry pickle, and i thought i was the only one :). it was one of the first desi-american achaars i made (the other being crab-apples)…..My thanksgiving food (no turkey, as i am vegetarian ;))-this year was mooli-parathas (b’fast), pita-sabzi sandwich with hummus and sprouts (lunch), Rajma-Chawal (dinner) :).

  28. Anna, that picture keeps making me soooo hungry.

    I actually cooked something similar to that picture for lunch today 🙂

    And now I am craving for more 🙂

  30. Miss A N N A (#6) – thanks 🙂

    Jai Singh – thanks as well. I’m not sure why or how I left in the first place but it’s good to be back. 🙂

  31. She hadnÂ’t been in Maryland for Thanksgiving in four years; since then, people had married and procreated. She knew what everyone was going to ask and she cringed. Almost 32 years old, newly single and unfortunately laid-off, her answers would only trigger more questions, questions she couldnÂ’t bearÂ…she gritted her teeth behind curving lipsÂ…

  32. She walked through that familiar garage door, into the bustle of the kitchen. She saw her cousin and his newish wife. Hug, hug, air-kiss. He introduced her: “These are R’s parents…this’s my cousin Anna.”

    “Hmmm. How come we have never met you?”

    Frozen, I lamely replied, “Auntie…I…was at the wedding…”

    “Everyone was,” the woman sniffed.

  33. She helped herself to mac-n-cheese, mashed potatoes and asparagus. ThatÂ’s all, vegetarian folks! No matter, it was delicious. Uncertain of where to sit, she made her way to the nook. A 10-year old followed, as did two adult cousins.

    She looked around, amused. “So…the single people sit at the kid’s table?”

    Everyone laughed, some nervously.

  34. Sated with side dishes, she settled on the couch, in front of the 52” plasma, which was mounted over a rollicking fire. Since she was a baby, this is how it had been; after dinner, she sat with men, though it was unorthodox to do so. They yelled about the NFL, she made a list…

  35. Anna – those are great. This is so me:

    Since she was a baby, this is how it had been; after dinner, she sat with men, though it was unorthodox to do so.

  36. Anna,

    Really nice 55s — touching and thought-provoking. You’re showing the rest of us how it’s done, huh ? 😉

    I did manage to think of one which fits this week’s theme. Dedicated to a certain someone I used to know.

    Thank you…..

    for personifying the first real sunrise in my life for showing me that “one light in two bodies” can be real for proving the truth of Guru Gobind Singh’s words “Only he who loves can experience God” for the tenderness, passion and laughter for inspiring some of my best 55s on Sepia Mutiny

    for the moments of paradise, when so much was said with no words at all for the miracle of true love, transcendent, transforming for the scent of your perfume, lingering on my hair and hands after I left for making me wonder how many lifetimes I had loved you before and will love you again.

  37. Anna:

    korketa = There is nothing else like it, so I can’t translate it. Hell, I can’t even spell it.

    Is this kozhikatta? Flour wrapped coconut and brown sugar goodness?

  38. Is this kozhikatta? Flour wrapped coconut and brown sugar goodness?

    YES! 😀

    Thank you to you and UberMetroMallu for showing me the right way to spell it. I love those. Yum. 🙂