Spice Obsession

I am in love with Indian food right now.
The problem: No Indian restaurants within 100 miles. Though I'm told now there is a lady who sells some Indian food out of a freezer in the back of her grocery store if you know the right way to ask.
The solution: I'm cooking a lot of it.

Don't get me wrong. Joel still does most of the cooking around our house. (He made a most excellent sesame salmon the other night.) But when I have a day off to cook it usually involves masala. Aarthi gave me a quick lesson on cooking before we left Cleveland and that was very helpful in teaching me how to use the spices. Since then I bought myself a great book and I've tried about a dozen recipes from it. It's awesome.




Along the way there have been a few hiccups and advice to share for anyone interested in cooking some Rogan Josh for themselves:
-don't burn the mustard seeds in oil, you'll set a wooden spoon on fire.
-Some of the spices are not easily found. I had to buy my cardamon pods and Amchur on amazon.com (love amazon!)*
-cook and store. I've had luck cooking a lot of things in bulk and freezing it so that it can just be pulled out and added to a meal with a fresh dish later.
-It makes a mess. I cooked an indian meal last week for some friends and I used every pot in the kitchen at least twice. I'm not kidding, I did a lot of washing.

*The spices themselves amaze and interest me. I have a seed and pod shelf in my spice cabinet now. I use turmeric and cumin more than I use basil and thyme. I have green and black cardamon pods in neat little glass containers and I just harvested my first batch of saffron. I love the smell, the feel, the taste of all of these ingredients.

All in all I love Indian food and since I'm so far from a restaurant it's worth it to have to cook it for myself. SO if any of you have any favorite Indian recipes please send them my way.

Next stop Thai????

Tread Lightly

It seems that I have not been alone in my fall funk. A quick sampling of various friends' blogs, Facebook statuses and emails make me feel like there is something in the air that we are all breathing. I feel ya girls. I'm there with you. But I'm getting a little better. My funk is dissipating and I can feel myself coming up for air.

Joel and I have been really busy lately. Joel is building a hops trellis and spends most of his spare time in the fields. I'm at work a lot which has been very busy with influenza etc. lately. When I'm not at work I'm spending time with Adeline which is precious time indeed but also limits the time I can spend doing other things. I still find some time to read and time to spend with Joel. These things are easy to do once Adeline is in bed and the sun has gone down. But the one thing that I had all but cut out of my life to make room for Adeline and my new job was exercise. Ah yes, the age old story. Woman has baby, goes back to work, and doesn't have time to address the plaque she can feel building up in her arteries as she misses run after run.

Overly dramatic, maybe, but I really feel a huge difference in my mood when it's been a while since I got some good cardio in. Ask Joel, when we lived in Cleveland every once in a while he would just say, "Sarah, I think you need to go to the gym." I know that these words have sparked marital strife the world over but it is not his intention to imply that my thighs are starting to get unruly. It's just his way of saying I'm being a bitch.

Over the summer Joel and I were better. After Adeline went down we would take turns running while it was light until nearly 9:30 at night. But alas fall and hops have come upon us and our evenings and weekends have been gobbled up by dusk and manual labor. Meanwhile my Sauconys stare at me from the bottom of the hall closet as if to say "What did we do wrong Sarah?". It's not my shoes' fault. It's just life.

But last week Joel and I bought a treadmill. A nice one. One that is quiet enough not to wake up Adeline if I run in the morning or at night. And I love it. I've been on it nearly every day and I remember now why I've often considered myself a treadmill slave. I can't get off it. I'll get on to do a quick two miles and then I'll say to myself, OK just finish up this five minutes, then it'll be like, alright just go to you hit 200 calories, then it's well you're almost at 3 miles you might as well just do that much.... It's nice to feel that my body remembers it's job. It remembers that I like to sweat and I like to run.

Anyway, the funky cloud is rising... The light at the end of the tunnel is not a train... I hope all of my friends out there struggling with life's problems much larger or smaller than mine find your way out of the fog.