Eating Well in Winter: Curried Chickpeas (and experiments with food photography)

It’s winter in the UK. Days are wet, windy and unpleasant and we keep on getting one cold after another. Fighting bugs with medicine doesn’t really work for most us. It’s the warm and nutritious food that strengthens our immune systems enough to complete the recovery. One of the nicest aspects of living in England is that it introduces you to foods from all the corners of the world and so it’s very easy to get all the necessary spices and ingredients to make these amazing dishes at home. I rummaged through our larder and took out a few good and healthy foods to replace the loved and cherished but eaten far too often pasta. There are many alternatives to it, of course, different types of wheat, lentils, pulses, sweet potatoes, brown rice. All good and yummy as long as you get the right recipe. I found one for Cholay (Curried Chickpeas) online at allrecipes.co.uk posted by Shammi Edwards (here). I thought it might work well so I decided to give it a go.

It took me quite a while to prepare the dish but I wouldn’t worry if I were you… it’s the photographing, a moving toddler in the kitchen and my personal choices regarding the recipe (like using dried rather than tinned chickpeas) that did it… not the recipe itself. Here are the ingredients I used: Assam tea, bay leaf, water, dried not tinned chickpeas, garam masala, garlic, onions, coriander seeds, turmeric, cumin powder, ginger root, tomatoes, basil, salt. If you’d like to do it, you can find the quantities on the original site where I found the recipe. I used basil out of pure necessity as I just didn’t have any fresh coriander leaves to put in and I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked in that dish (made it quite refreshing and invigorating) and Assam tea as a replacement for English Breakfast tea worked fine too. I actually think that this dish lends itself to some manipulation and as long as you get the spices right and add a bit of water here and there in order not to burn the spices or the onions you’ll be fine. You can also make the dish hotter by adding extra garlic and ginger. That was my option and I was happy I used it. I was not too preoccupied with having grounded spices. I just grounded the seeds myself. It adds extra freshness to the dish.

Dried chickpeas can take a bit of time to prepare as you need to soak them overnight then drain and discard the water. After that you cook them in salted water even up to 40-50 minutes. It felt like ages for me so when my little son went for his afternoon nap I decided to experiment with photography a little. I was trying to find a way of reducing shadows from ingredients on that chopping board that you see on top, normally photographers would use a white sheet of card to disperse the light and I thought that I’ll try a mirror. It worked well and actually it allowed me to take a very interesting shot of the arranged ingredients. Here’s how it came out:

I finished cooking after sunset so I didn’t take any more photographs. The light was too poor for it inside the house. But back to food, I served the curried chickpeas with jasmine rice and it was delicious. Honestly, heaven. So much so that I felt slightly guilty about eating it as I seemed to have pledged to have a year without a luxury… and having this food certainly felt like having one. ;)

This post is a contribution towards: The Caring 2014 Project.

Lasting friendships

My friend is moving. To the other side of the big pond. She will take with her caring family, love of beauty and her sensitive and reflective mothering. Her sense of humour, passion for reading and timely wisdoms thrown at me just at the drop of a hat. She’ll move and from then on we will only be able to have virtual cups of tea when the time change or our owl-like natures permit.

This has been happening to me quite often ever since I settled in England. Different characters and personalities cross my life and our living room, share with us their life events, moments of joy and sadness, jokes and frustrations but eventually venture further to explore different realities and live different lives. It’s difficult to nurture those friendships… divided by space, time and daily routines. We try though… by emails, cards and messages sent now and again, occasional get-togethers, chats and phone-calls… because we miss them, those exchanges of common interests and problems, being part of their lives and their contribution to ours. It often takes to be removed from one’s reality to understand how valuable and enriching our relationships were… how much we’ve been learning from them and how much of a better person we became through them.

When I moved from Poland and decided to study here, I was missing my friends so so dearly. All of them… and you know what… this feeling hasn’t changed. I still miss them. They are still in my thoughts and they are still my reference points, I still see myself somehow in them and through them… starting from those in my primary school through to those that I met at later stages of my education and through various other experiences. I just think that it’s impossible to forget a friend. Lose touch with, yes, that’s possible but forgetting is not. And I think that often this is what we are afraid of, of being forgotten, or of being not loved by them as much as in the past. And perhaps they fear that too.

I met once a very eminent senior academic and had a chance to have dinner with him. Over a plate with nice hot food and glasses of wine, he told us stories… of his friends. His whole conversation was filled with friends. You very quickly realised that they were his focus and his life and what a wonderful focus to have! I expected (and feared slightly) a conversation laden with reflections on politics, literature and history or a strong focus on his academic work but no… as he was reminiscing with a pause to smile or laugh, it was becoming more and more apparent to me that this man is just living, breathing and enjoying his friendships… he was with those people mentally as much as he was physically with us…. he loved them dearly… and that love surpassed the distances that he had travelled.

There is a term in psychology called ‘mirroring’ and it refers to us subconsciously (or consciously) copying of gestures, language and emotional responses of others during our conversations. Apparently we tend to see people who mirror our emotional responses as more empathetic. [Therefore this ‘technique’ of mirroring is frequently recommended to parents who want to build a good relationship with their children… not to reject or disregard the feelings but to mirror them.] I am thinking of my close and long-distance friendships and I can see that yes, regardless of the distance, changes in our circumstance, developments, perhaps this is what we still want from our friendships and friends… to be able to ‘mirror’ us somehow. If sharing and being part of daily struggles is not possible, what else remains for us to do?

2014 – a year without a luxury

A few days ago I committed myself not to buy anything new in 2014 and to share the money saved with people who normally cannot afford new things (or just things). This initiative has been started by Sash, the writer of Inked in Colour, and I decided to make it part and parcel of my Caring 2014 project. I promised that I would give more details on how I intend to go about it. Sash has recently explained some of her rules so I am now in a good position to explain what this project will mean for my family.

I have spent the last few days thinking about this idea, pondering its possibilities and limitations and primarily who should be affected by this initiative. Should I involve my husband, should I consider things for my child as well, should I only focus on my purchasing habits? I decided now that I will not buy anything new for myself and my son and for the house, with one exception: my husband is half-way through fixing our kitchen at the moment and we have already ordered and purchased items for this purpose and thus I am excluding him and his DIY projects from my resolution. So when I say that I will not buy new things for the house I mean: decorations, blankets, pillows, candles, frames, calendars, flower pots, pictures, bits and pieces that I normally indulge in. Food, medicine, health and safety and hygiene items will not be affected by this challenge as it would be unreasonable to go without them.

So how will this project affect my purchasing habits? I am not going to buy any: books, cosmetics, clothes, CDs, shoes, jewellery, electronic equipment, stationery, films, notebooks… and my biggest pleasures in life.. cups of coffee in coffee shops and sweets… for once I want someone else to have the privilege of affording a cappuccino and a muffin every so often. I will also not buy any toys, gadgets, room accessories for my son and will try to use the clothes and shoes that he has already got (growth permitting). We’ll see if we have enough for this year.

I was asked if nothing new means that I can buy second-hand? My aim is not to buy anything. I do think that it’s wonderful to give a second life to a product. I see lots of good in buying used items, renovating them, restoring their original function and beauty or even improving their look. But I do have some doubts about buying second-hand goods and will share them with you in a separate post. In its original form this initiative allows for buying from second-hand shops. I intend to reuse, re-purpose, mend, sew and clean things that I have to make them last throughout this year and hopefully beyond it. I suspect that in doing so I will stop perceiving chores as unpleasant and burdensome routines but rather as much needed daily acts of care. So in many ways I see this project as transformative not only of my purchasing habits but also of my home and character.

How will I measure what I have saved? How will I know how much to donate? I am well aware of some of my purchasing habits and this awareness helps. For example, I would normally buy a cup of coffee and a sweet every time I meet a friend in town and when I travel away from home… so now every time when these happen, I will put the money that I would spend on those treats into the giving pot. For my other things, I will need to review my past purchases and planned purchases for this year to examine how much my indulgences are worth. I must trust that what I previously spent on luxuries would have been typical. I’ll decide in due course which charity, family or individuals I will donate to and will present rationale for my choice at some later stage.

So what can you expect from Postcards this year? Stories of success and potential failures, stories of people who care, debates on buying or not buying, reflections on different ways of caring for our families, relationships, health and the environment. Sometimes it will be an article with text, other times just pure photo(journalism). I am not setting any limitations on myself how often I will post. It won’t be daily, it might be weekly or biweekly… when the ideas mature.

All in all, I’ve got an impression that things will become much more manageable in 2014. I hope it will be like this for you too.

What are your thoughts about this initiative? Do you want to try?

Nothing New – 2014 Challenge

There are some initiatives that I just cannot resist supporting. This wonderful Aussie mama, Sash from Inked in Colour, has just started one of them. Motivated by greater good and caring, she decided to dedicate 2014 to deliberate living and in so doing she resolved NOT to buy anything new in 2014. Since the themes for Postcards without stamps for this year are those of Caring (The Caring 2014 Project) and Saving to Give, I am jumping enthusiastically on Sash’s bandwagon and am promising myself not to buy anything new in 2014. What I want to do is to transfer the capability to buy new things to those who normally cannot afford it. I don’t want to put the economy out of joint, just gently change who buys – at least just for a year. I want to care for what I’ve got and benefit those that are not as fortunate as I am. Care and Share – these are my two words for this year. The Nothing New initiative will enable me live by these two words.

Are you up for the challenge? At least for a month, a fortnight, one day? Think about it. I’ll write more about how I intend to do it in my next post.

This logo above is from Inked in Colour