More things

This blog shall be in the form of bullets, because today, I have a neat and orderly mind.

a) I find myself intensely bored with the same old sambar, rasam and boiled veggies, which form my cooking repertoire. These same things were awesome when mom cooked them for me. Now I loathe the very thought of having to cut up radishes for radish kozhambu, I dislike having to make the "vogarNe" with mustard and hing for the rasam and so on.

b) The foods that make me drool right now: a) fettunicini alfredo and b) risotto.
F/A is soooo bland that I cannot understand why I have this hankering for it. Perhaps I only want some cheese. Anyway, both recipes are there on http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/ which used to be my number 1 reference for non-Indian recipes. Now, after nearly 12 months of relatively healthy eating, just the amount of butter and cheese that lady uses makes me shudder. It's okay for her- she's on a cattle ranch, no doubt she can work off her fat somehow. It is different for me, when the only exercise I get (or am willing to do) is walk, somewhat slowly, to lab (~2.5miles. Not bad, right?) and that too, only on some days.

c) In effort to make something, ANYthing new, I turned to "Regina's International Vegetarian Favorites", which, when I had bought it some two years ago promised to open up a vast world of new and interesting things to cook. Unfortunately, all her truly interesting recipes require a visit to the grocery store (or many grocery stores). And of course, the only stuff I have readily available are those suited for (bah!) humbug Indian cooking. Anyway, I chanced upon this recipe called "Curried Cauliflower Soup" in her book. It is your normal Gobi sabji, which she then purees.
I should have just made my stupid sabji and eaten it. But no, I went ahead and pureed it and now all I am reminded of is my grandfather. My grandfather, during the year before he died, decided that he was thoroughly bored with chewing food (he later became thoroughly bored of eating itself). During this year, he made the cook puree every single vegetable that she would make for the rest of the family. This way, he would say, he got the nutrition and the taste without the effort.
Curried Cauliflower Soup is depressing. I need to repair it somehow before Ram comes home.

d) I can no longer reliably use the rooting reflex of my baby to check how hungry he is :(
For those not in the know, the rooting reflex in newborns is when you gently stroke the side of their mouth, and if they are hungry, they will open their mouth and root for your finger. Depending on how eagerly Ani would root at a finger, my parents and I could predict how much time we had before he started bawling uncontrollably for his food.
Now, however, he turns towards my finger even when he not hungry, because he wants to chew my finger. I think he is teething, though 11 weeks seems a tad young for that. Nevertheless, he grabs on to anything he can find- his fists, my shoulder, Ram's knuckle etc and chews studiously upon them and makes really loud sucking noises.
Anyway, I guess my little baby is no longer quite as newborn as he was.

e) Ram and I watched "The Judgement at Nuremberg" recently and it is a brilliant movie. I love stories that I can keep recollecting and brooding on for months and months after initially coming across them and this one promises to be in that category.