Sunday, December 20, 2009

Preparations for the snow

On Friday, I went grocery shopping - I have never seen Lotte Plaza this crowded!! The worst thing was that prices were hiked up! My DS got the milk from Safeway and DH got the toilet paper & fire logs from Sam's.

On Friday, while listening to the news, I chopped up:
4 bunches of kothmir (coriander)
one bunch of methi
one cabbage
one cauliflower
chopped up green thai chili + jalapenos + habaneros for my handy "green marchu" paste
cleaned and chopped up aadu (ginger)
cleaned and separated the garlic
Dinner was idli and sambhar.

On Saturday, while watching the beautiful snow from my window:
I really put my Sumeet grinder to work:

First, I crushed ginger and filled up 2 bottles - one for the freezer and one for the fridge.

Second, crushed up all the green chilis that I had cut on Friday and made my "green marchu" paste. Put one bottle in the freezer and one for my daily use in the fridge. I have started using these three types of green peppers. I have found the combination is just right for my household. One heaping teaspoon of it in all my cooking hits the spice-o-meter just right!

Third, crushed up all the garlic, added a little lemon juice and haldar (turmeric) to keep it from spoiling.

Next, I prepared garlic kothmir chutney - everyone just loves this in my house. I have to prepare extra for my parents, dear brother and sister.

For breakfast, last night's idli batter was used to prepare dhoklas - sprinkled with black pepper. My DS just loves these!

Later on my DS made some cheese sandwiches while I was busy with my Sumeet mixture. DH and DS went and shoveled our walkway twice yesterday and cleaned up the cars. After about five minutes, it looked as if the area and the cars were never cleaned in the first place!!

My DS and a couple of his friends then walked to the nearby school and had a snowball fight and had a ball.

On his return, I prepared methi gota (I used the chopped up methi from Friday) and onion pakoda. We ate that with the just prepared kothmir chutney and tea for DH, milk for DS and coffee for me. It felt good.

For dinner I prepared moong dal khichdi. We had that with yogurt.

I ended my day yesterday after watching Russell Peters at 10 pm. My DS said that he was going to have a Godfather marathon - so he slept much, much later than me.

Overall, the day was good. The snow was still falling when I went to sleep. I was wondering if I would be able to go to work on Monday and how we were going to clean up all the snow!! Let's see what Sunday brings..................................