Anu Chenji

The country where Louisa May Alcott lived, wrote and espoused staunchly feminist principles.

The land where crayons come in unbelievable colours.

George Washington and the cherry tree story.

Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Rich country where everyone has a car and some even have two!

They play a very funny and completely incomprehensible game called baseball and seem to actually prefer it to cricket – how strange!

Where people speak with an accent that begs for subtitles (not that we had even heard of subtitles back then!)

Scary country. It has big grizzlies and even saber-toothed tigers! (We learnt only later they had become extinct several hundred thousand years ago!

Where Elizabeth Taylor married Richard Burton some ten times or so! Why????!

Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning conductor and why it didn’t strike him dead was one of those mysteries of science!

Where schools were full of Archies and Jugheads and all-American middle class Betty was always more popular than that catty Veronica – why did Archie even bother with Ronnie?!

You made it there if you were very, very good at studies!

Perry Mason and Della Street. James Hadley Chase – the thrill of feeling very grown up as you read them!

MacKenna’s Gold and the Wild West and everyone had a horse and a gun and boots with spurs which jangled when they walked (many of us would have cheerfully sold our souls – if we knew we had such things in our possession! – many tomes over to the devil to possess these!)

You could buy trick-y things to be used at school like you read about in the Mallory Towers books like invisible ink and squeaky chalk and other such exciting paraphernalia from the catalogue at the back of comic books!

And finally and above all else, the land which is covered with apple trees Johnny Appleseed randomly through around as he wandered round the country side (image of a barefoot tramp with a sack of apple seeds slung over his back rather like how tea pickers carry their babies in a sack on their backs!) scattering them as he walked (image courtesy Radiant Reader, the series of English textbooks we had up to class 6, i think).

This was what we knew of America when we were growing up in sixites and seventies India! A random set of facts – mostly gleaned from books – ranging from schools texts to Archie comics and little bit of serious literature!

Growing up, unfortunately, de-mystified much of this. Some things stayed – like the Little Women series, Anne, forever glorious at Green Gables – as comforting and as familiar as Thangam maami next door!

Driving through New England these couple of days, seeing such unbelievably pretty towns, I remembered another old favourite – Johnny Appleseed. And then comes random thought, would apple pie even be American if it were not for this one man?!

And so, to celibrate America is the essentially American…

CORNBREAD (recipe adapted from Betty Crocker)

• Salted butter – 1/4 cup
• Milk – 1 cup
• Cornmeal – 1.25 cups
• Maida – plain flour – 1/2 cup
• Whole wheat flour – 1/2 cup
• Brown sugar – 1/4 cup
• Baking pwd – 2 tsp

Melt butter in a saucepan. Switch off.

Whisk in egg and milk, stirring frequently.

Add all the other ingredients and mix till just combined.

Pour into a greased pan and bake till golden brown and the centre is cooked – about 25 minutes – at 200 C.

Serve with any gravy – I like a mushroom gravy with this.

I think even Johhny Appleseed would have liked it – he was a vegetarian in the latter half of his life!

“Sputnik? You’re having me on!!” I protest as I am introduced to a girl from a different school at an inter-school cul-fest. She is introduced with the name of this Russian satellite. “I wasn’t born yesterday,” I think to myself. “Don’t try to pass off an outlandish name like that to me!”

But it turns out to be true – she was born the day the Sputnik was launched and the parents, in their abundant (?) wisdom and satellite-struck state, decide to commemorate the day by naming their first born after the satellite!

I move from shock to curiosity. “So, how does it feel to have a name like that?” I enquire politely if not quite politically correctly! (Political correctness was born much later and I’m sure someone must have named their kid after that too!)

“Oh, it’s quite cool, actually. No one ever forgets my name,” she says quite proudly. Sets me to thinking about all the unusually named people I know and which of those monikers I’d prefer for myself. A childhood playmate called Subhaschandra Bose Raju (we Telugus are seriously star-struck!). Or how about Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi Reddy?! I once did a summer internship in a company where I had to interview an Eisenhower Subramanian!

How about “My name is Singh, Bond Singh, James Bond Singh”. For real, I promise!

How about the girl named Full Stop by parents who’d already had six kids and intended no more! Well, accidents happen and a year later, they had to dig around for a name and decide that this time they mean business – with a little boy named, hold your breath, “Period”!

How about this actual name on a Singapore passport – Batman bin Suparaman?! Wonder whether his son would be named Robin bin Sidekick?!

Or this skinny police officer in America whose nametag read, most inappropriately, I may add, Chris.P.Bacon!

Was thinking of this today when we ordered what in America are euphemistically called “Kid size cups” of ice-cream at this ice-cream farm called Erikson’s Icecreams in Maynard, Massachusetts (one of the prettiest little towns I’ve ever seen, btw!) – it would be a “large” anywhere in India! Wonder what they would call our single scoop cups in India – doll sized servings?

The most delicious ice-cream ever, btw! I had “rum butter” and took spoons out of everyone else’s – all yum.

Here’s a recipe for

SPICED RUM BUTTER ICE-CREAM – adapted from allrecipes.com

• Butter – 2 tbsp
• Cornflour – 1 tbsp
• Brown sugar – 1/4 cup
• Whole milk – 1 cup
• 1/2 cup rum – white or dark
• Cinnamon – 1/2 ” stick
• Vanilla icecream – 400 ml – leave outside the frig for ten minutes till a little softened.

Melt butter with the cinnamon stick in it. Mix the sugar and cornstarch together.

Pour over the butter and mix well, stirring continuously.

Pour in milk in a steady stream and continue to stir till it begins to thicken. Discard cinnamon stick.

When thickened, remove from heat and stir in rum.

When cooled completely, fold into the ice-cream and re-freeze.

And call it Osama bin icecream if you want – rum butter by any other name is as sweet!

(Pic: Courtesy internet)

There’s a bunch of us parents – all of us at about the same stage in life – in our thirties for the most part, parents of small, growing families, one or two little kids each, just-paid-the-down-payment-on-a-house-and-are-neck-deep-in-debt with no money to spare stage of life! We may be in the EMI trap but we do manage to have a lot of fun in life – growing kids do that to you- provide a load of laughter and busy-ness that is the stuff of much happiness!

We exchange notes on how to save the extra rupee by doing something else, birthday parties are entirely home-grown, with all food served being made at home except for maybe chips and Coke (in the days when Coke and Pepsi were not bad words!), dinners and picnics were usually pot luck affairs with everyone pitching in with a dish, with the entertainment and booze!

Money is short – all the time but life was long, very long – on the happiness quotient! The kids are obviously aware that they can’t always have everything they want and sharing toys, clothes, books – is the order of the day but are quite happy about it – it is normal and it is so with every other kid they know almost! The words they’ve heard most frequently from us parents is, “We can’t afford this just now!” A was for afford, B for budget, C for cash in our households!

We’ve just bought our first apartment and are desperately trying to make ends meet – along with at least five other couples – close friends we know in the same stage of life! Obviously the little pitchers that listen in occasionally to adult conversations have long handles and we are sometimes surprised by the things they say.

We are at a bookstore to pick out a gift for a little boy – a friend’s son and bump into the friend at the store also there to pick up a gift for my little one, whose birthday is also round the corner.

“So glad to catch you here, Kanch,” says Tara (mother of the little boy). “You can help choose your birthday gift.” She then shows Kanch a couple of things she’s picked up for her to choose from. “Do you like either of these or would you like to choose something else?”

Kanch looks up at her with concern (she must been about five years old) and asks, completely innocently, “I like it, auntie, but are you sure you can afford it?!”

I make embarrassed noises of explanation but my friend is not the mother of two for nothing – she laughs it off and approves highly – of a thoughtful kid who’s so worried about her budget!

Today, staying in a B & B in upstate New York, at the home of a lovely couple, Jo and Julia, with a cherubic toddler Elson, whose home seems to welcome everyone, where a neighbour drops in to cook a vegan meal for all of us and other neighbours drop in to share the meal, I am transported back to twenty years ago and how our lives were then… feeling energised by the community feeling – have a most wonderful evening and end up learning an awesome new Indian dish (no kidding!) from Matt, America-born and bred but with a real feeling for Indian food!

So here’s Matt’s creation – a completely made-over palak paneer in the form of…

MATT’S KALE SAAG WITH TOFU

• Tofu – 4 – 5 cups – cut into 1 cm cubes, immersed in warm salted water for about 15 minutes, drained and rinsed. Set aside
• Yellow onions – large- 2 – sliced
• Garlic flakes – 6-7
• Ginger – 1 ” piece – chopped
• Tomatoes – 1 cup – chopped or half a can
• Kale – 2 generous cups
• Spinach – 1 cup
• Basil – a few leaves
• Orange zest (kumquat) – 2 sq cm
• Green capsicum – 1 – chunked
• Broccoli – 1 cup
• Coconut milk – 1 can / 200 ml
• Cayenne pepper – 1 tsp
• Cumin – 2 tsp
• Garam masala – 2 tsp
• Salt
• Oil – 3 tbsp
• Mustard seeds – 1 tsp

Saute the onions and garlic in the oil till really well caramelised. Add the tomatoes and cook till softened.

Add the capsicum, cumin, mustard, basil, orange zest and coconut milk . Cover and cook for 6-7 minutes.

Blanch the greens – kale and spinach and broccoli. Add to mix.

Pulse the whole mixture with a hand blender till roughly pureed. Return to pan, add garam masala, salt and tofu. Bring to a boil and simmer for a few minutes till the flavours infuse into the tofu.

The orange zest brings a most unusual zing to the whole dish. Add a couple of green chilies for heat if you like – at the tomato stage.

Serve with brown rice.

And oh yes, invite the neighbours in for added zing and zest!

Big, big, big… is everything I’m seeing,

Why should I always eat something so big,

Is the question I’m asking?

To paraphrase the kindergarten song about colours which goes something like this:

Red, red, red… is the colour I’m wearing

Why should I always dress myself in red?

‘Coz a fireman is the one I like

…and so on about each of the colours. (Oops, this is America, “colors”!)

And in America, that’s the question on my mind too – why is everything so big? Like restaurant servings of anything at all are at least double the size of normal Indian servings. I had to split the first burrito bowl I ever ate here into two meals and still felt stuffed after each one! As for large pizzas, I don’t even want to go there – their girth would rival that of any self-respecting vadyar (pujari/ priest) whose waist sizes tend to start at thirty eight inches!

Today I walk into a convenience store to pick up some travel essentials (we’re trying to see a bit of America from the inside – a couple of b&bs so we get to meet real people). Am examining the cereal aisle and find that the single serving pack of cereal is more expensive than the large home-use pack. I think there must be a mistake. I ask – but of course–  I’m Indian and I’m curious! No mistake – that’s how it’s priced! Wow, you pay less to buy more? Whatever the marketing/packaging logic behind it, something strikes me as very upside-down about the whole thing – maybe Alice fell down the rabbit hole into an American convenience store aisle and that’s why things got curiouser and curiouser!

The only thing that I’m happy to get super sized is glasses of water – back home, in restaurants and homes, I have to ask waiters and hosts to please refill my glass – at least five or six times – most people seem to think water is a non-essential accompaniment to a meal – I beg to disagree!

Ah and the second thing I’m happy about is a large glass (wonder whether one can find small glasses in America at all – will check in some of these supersized stores and report back to you!) of hot apple cider that I get to drink after getting wet – very wet and quite semifreddo after the Niagara visit! All my worries about getting supersized myself on this trip to the land of supersizes wash away when I learn at the Google altar that apple cider vinegar actually helps you lose weight! All you need to do is add a couple of tbsps to a couple of glasses of water along with a tsp of lime juice and a few drops of honey and voila, wait to get to size zero!

Also, this is the land of apples – there seems to be nothing that Americans cannot do with apples – though I rarely see someone just munching on a plain ol’ apple – they must be made into something!

Like this delicious…

SWEDISH APPLE CAKE (the only good thing in the Ikea cafeteria!)

• Maida/plain flour – 1.5 cups
• 2 tsp baking powder
• Table butter – 100 gm
• Sugar – 1.5 cups
• Eggs – 2
• 3 apples- peeled and sliced – get crunchy ones – NO woolly yucky ones!
• Cinnamon pwd – 1/2 tsp or vanilla extract 1/2 tsp
• Nutmeg and mace – a pinch each

Sieve together the maida and baking powder.

Cream the butter, sugar and eggs.

Add the flour and the spices.

Pour into a greased pan, arrange apple slices on top in a whorl and bake at 350C for about 40 minutes till done.

Glaze over with 2 tsp marmalade or apple jelly warmed over with a tsp of water and serve with cream.

And don’t worry about the size – just wash it down with the apple cider vinegar water!

Pic: Courtesy internet

“Don’t miss walking by the Chicago lake when you are there,” advises a friend who’s been in the US for many years now, when we tell him our program for the US.

“Sure.” I assure him blithely, thinking that we’ll take a little chukker around the lake after a leisurely morning at the museum followed by lunch. Would be nice to stay out basking in the afternoon warmth with little sailboats on the water. (I have the image of some of the lakes I’ve seen in India in my mind – like Hussain Sagar and some smaller ones like Chembarambakkam and Red Hills).

We go to the Field’s museum – completely awe-inspiring collection of natural history stuff, by the way! Watch a show on Galapagos, with my eyes popping out of my head and my jaw a few inches from the floor. Having been through a Darwin phase in my teens, I can’t believe I’m actually seeing what the great man saw – almost two hundred years ago!

The planned three hours stretches… and stretches… we take a break for lunch. And then decide to take a stroll “by the lake”. It is the Windy City after all and I am shivering in less than a hundred meters from where we start. The lake seems just a little bigger than I had anticipated. In point of fact, I can’t see the other side!

“How long will it take us to walk around the lake. Can we walk around it in one afternoon?” I ask my husband innocently, thinking of my friend K’s suggestion that we do! Husband and daughter stare at me, their turn to drop their jaws now!

“Do you have any clue where we are? And what lake this is?” asks hubby.

“Yes, Kr said it’s the Chicago lake,” I respond.

“This is Lake Michigan – one of the largest lakes in the world and it is all of 190 km wide,” he shoots back! He’s obviously done his homework – unlike me! I know the great lakes but had thought that there was something else called the Chicago Lake!

Never thought I’d qualify for the Darwin awards but have to award myself one right there!

And to celebrate my award (not!), we present the appropriately named, sinfully delicious…

TURTLE SUNDAE

A combination of vanilla ice cream, hot fudge, hot caramel sauce and toasted pecans! The name derives from “Turtle candy” which consists of pecans coverd with caramel and then dipped in chocolate! In this land of plenty, nothing is done by halves! Toppings? Why stop with just one?!!

• Brownies – 2″ squares – 2
• 1.5 cups vanilla ice cream
• 2 tbsp caramel topping (mix together 1/2 cup brown sugar with 1/4 cup milk, a pinch of salt and 2 tbsp of butter. Cook on a low flame for about 5 minutes till it thickens.  Add 1/2 tsp of vanilla essence and continue to cook for 1-2 minutes more. Switch off)
• 1/4 cup crushed pecan nuts (I’d substitute walnuts too)
• 3 tbsp chocolate sauce – either Hersheys or melt 2 tbsp dark chocolate in the microwave for 20-30 seconds and whip in 1 tbsp cream.
• Whipped cream – 2 tbsp

Warm the brownies and place a piece on each plate. Spread the crushed nuts on top. Drizzle over caramel topping. Scoop icecream on top. Drizzle over the chocolate sauce and a tbsp of whipped cream.

Go straight to heaven. Do not pass Galapagos. Do collect half your daily requirement of calories in one scoop!