Working up an appetite

High winds didn't keep us from going out on the Intercoastal Waterway to test out the new inflatable kayak, which is named Telomerase after the enzyme that is expressed in cells that live forever. So the boat suggests immortality, but alas, the enzyme can also be an indicator of cancer cells, which survive and grow because of this very feature, according to noted researcher Janet Barry, from the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa.

We struggled south against the wind to a landing where we could walk across to the beach and the Gulf of Mexico.While eating our sandwiches we were joined by some royal terns, which look like gulls but have broader beaks and black crowns on their head. Also we saw pelicans swooping low over the water, looking for fish. On the way back we had a minor problem, when both kayaks grounded on a sandbar, but we were able to free them by getting out and pushing.

Later we made Indian food -- samosas and a (sort-of) Gujarati dish that included two of Freddy's beautiful balcony-grown eggplant.

Holding off a food rut

Work for both of us started off with a bang on Jan. 2 and shows no signs of letting up for months to come, so it would be understandable if our culinary ambitions trailed off from the high points of the recent holiday.

But we have to keep our strength up, so Pam is making sure we eat our vegetables.

Last night, she put together a couple of dishes from the new cookbook that Kevin got us for Christmas, The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking. The first was Aloo Sak, or potatoes and spinach, and the other was Baigan Simla Mirch Tarkari, sauteed eggplant and bell peppers.

A couple of surprises here.

The eggplant dish involved steaming the eggplant first, then combining with a giant mound of peppers (three large ones, sliced thin) that were sauteed with mustard seeds until they were blistered and shrunk down to little shreds of their former selves. Add freshly mixed garam masala according to Lord Krishna's recipe, and you have a remarkably dense and flavorful dish that is served with yogurt and cilantro.

Potatoes and spinach? That one you start by making French Fries! Once nicely browned in a thin layer of oil, you pull out the potatoes, dump a hot red spice mix into the oil, sizzle away the moisture, add the spinach and a bit later add the potatoes back in. Squeeze on some lemon and eat with some garlic nan (from the frozen food case at the wildly popular Fresh Farms International Market, 2626 W. Devon), and you have yourself a decent meal.

To keep the momentum going, Pam made some toasted mango, avocado and mozzarella sandwiches for brunch today with Granny and Carolyn. The sandwiches were marvelously light and clean-tasting, almost bland, but the side dish of fiery chipotle potatoes balanced things out.

We'll see how long we can keep this up before falling into the inevitable food rut.

Christmas observed -- with Royal Family Dosa

We decided to have an early Christmas celebration because Janet is leaving town tomorrow, and I had promised to make my "famous" dosa while all the kids were home, so this was our opportunity. And we invited Granny to join in the festivities.

Dosa are those South Indian pancakes that you serve with a spicy soup/sauce called sambar, and they aren't so hard to make thanks to MTR (Pure and Perfect Since 1924, a company out of Bangalore) Instant Mix Rava Dosa. Like it says on the package, "Whether it's a snack or part of a meal, crisp golden dosa are now so easy to make."

What you need is a good hot cast iron frying pan filmed with a bit of oil, or in our case, three of them going at once. You mix the powder with enough water so that when it hits the hot pan it makes a great sizzling noise and creates bubbles in the batter, which is mostly semolina and rice flour. Before flipping the pancakes, you garnish with chopped onions, cilantro and thin slices of fresh jalapeño.

I had trouble flipping some of them because the dough broke apart, but the one in the picture and a few others came out perfectly. Dip them in the MTR sambar, which is redgram (lentils) and spices with added potatoes, and you have yourself a nice spicy meal. For a cooling balance, we also had Pam's new Mexican Christmas salad, with jicama, roasted beets, pomegranate seeds, pine nuts, lettuce and oranges.

That was fun, especially all the frenzy around the hot frying pans, but there was one incident. The raw jalapeños were pretty strong, and I was sweating pretty well from eating them, so I wiped my face near my eyes, but YOW! I was wiping with the hand that I used to sprinkle the peppers onto the dosa, and in about three seconds my eyes were blazing and tearing enough that Janet rushed to the laptop to seek remedies. She suggested aloe vera, so I cut a branch off a handy plant (thanks Sandra!) and everyone laughed at me as I swabbed my nose and around my eyes with aloe juice. Ahhh, what relief.

We opened our own presents and then Brian and Sheila and Erin and Adam and Grace stopped over and we opened a few more, all of us jammed into the kitchen because the rest of the first floor is out of commission due to construction. It was a fine pre-Christmas celebration.