Work update

Of course you know that the main purpose of this trip is for Rowan's sabbatical work to continue. By no means has this trip been all play for either of us (it's just WAY more fun to blog about the fun things we do and not our work :o) She has been doing a weekly seminar on statistics at the Eye Institute, continuing her work on the seven papers she is working on for publication, working via the Internet on her Associate Dean for Research duties at the IU Optometry school, conducting endless skype meetings with her lab and other colleagues around the world, exploring international grant opportunities with Shrikant for future collaborations between IU and the LV Prasad Eye Institute and starting to set up equipment in Shrikant's lab. The crate that was shipped from Indiana just arrived yesterday, so upon our return from Kerala next week, the next phase of testing will begin.

Shrikant with the men who helped unload the equipment yesterday.

Besides eating and blogging, Jenni has been monitoring the functions of her lab back at IU over the internet aswell. She attends lab meetings on Thursdays via skype to talk about study protocols and works on trying to keep the lab's grant account status healthy. It looks like there will be a few new human subject research projects ready to go by the time we get back. Good news in this financially strained environment.

Blah, blah, blah..............I know, this is really boring! :o)

More fun stuff coming soon.

Food Frenzy

I can’t believe I have actually posted 5 new blog entries in a row without mentioning food once! Don’t worry people; I will make up for it now.

Happy Birthday to Sumit

We have had all sorts of food adventures in the last few days. We celebrated Sumit’s birthday last Wednesday night at a really wonderful Chinese restaurant. We had a private room for the event and ordered our food about 10pm and didn’t leave the place until just after midnight. We started off with kim chi and then went to deep fried veggies. There was burnt garlic soup, creamy garlic cauliflower, potatoes and water chestnuts, crispy lamb in honey, soy and sesame, a squid dish and a seared fish dish. So many fabulous flavors all over again! And then they brought the birthday cake… I didn’t take pictures of the food, but you do get pictures of all of us.

Charanya & Shubha

Shrinkant ready to give us a beer bath!

More Food Confessions

OK, so now that we have our own kitchen, we went out to the Q Mart (the American/European grocery store) to get some back-home favorites. Now we can secretly eat some comfort food from home when one more spicy Indian curry dish is just one too many…. and Rowan can have real back-home British food too. I am still searching for that American hamburger! :o)

Oh, and don’t think you will find a barista pouring a Starbucks for you here. We have not seen one Starbucks. Hardly anyone drinks coffee during the day, although they do drink tea. It’s just too bloody HOT outside to want a cup of coffee. I treat myself to a luscious pot of Nescafe Gold freeze-dried coffee with 3% extra long life milk every morning. The milk comes in a box or a bag. It’s growing on me and I like it. Just like what I drink when we go to England to visit Rowan’s family.

Long Life Milk and the coffee

morning brew, in an instant!

Rowans Chappathi’s & Yogurt

Rowan had her first chappathi and yogurt making session on her own in the apartment the other day. She is very serious about learning how to make Indian breads and yogurt, and I totally support her. I SUCK at making bread (it always turns out like a rubber ball), so I am behind her on this one. It is important to have some kind of bread with most Indian food as it is used as a vehicle to pick up the food on your plate to get it to your mouth. Remember, we eat with our hands here. A short video of her very first chappathi at the apartment.

Rowan is totally into making the yogurt too. It is usually included with every Indian meal, so having it on had is important. Charanya gave us some live culture starter to get us going. Rowan heated some milk, added the culture and let the mixture sit in a bowl on the counter in the afternoon heat. By dinner time we had a DELICIOUS pot of homemade yogurt. We will definitely be doing this one at home too!

Food Coma #2

This gathering was all about fish. Shrikant and Sumit (the other two carnivores besides me and sometimes Rowan) have been talking about fish for days, so I told them if we got some I would cook it up for them. This got the ball rolling for us to have a dinner party for 8. Rowan and I said we wanted to get all of the ingredients for the dinner and cook it as a ‘thank you’ for all of the wonderful hospitality our friends have shown us. Sumit requested grilled Surmai fish (also known as King Fish or King Mackerel) so Shrikant took us to ‘THE’ fish market to pick up some Indian Ocean Surmai fish. We had it chopped into steaks and also picked up some beautiful giant prawns. The next thing on the agenda was to buy a grill to cook the fish. Rowan and I were already thinking we’d like to pick up a grill as a ‘thank you’ present for Shrikant & Charanya, so off we went. We spent a day collecting all of the ingredients for what was heading into our food coma #2 dinner party. I found what looks like a delicious recipe for a Pakistani Tava paste marinade for the fish. It will be fun to see how this works out.

Shrikant and Charanya opened up their house for the party. We put the grill together, took it to the roof-deck, got some cold beer, fired up the hookah and set off for another wonderful evening of good food and friends.

Here is the menu:

Grilled Surmai and Giant Prawns

Grilled Vegetable, Paneer & Pineapple Skewers

Palak Paneer

Tomato Rice

Chippathis

Cold beer, beer and beer

Homemade Custard with Assorted Fruits

And, here are some photos:

The Pakistani Tava paste: Onion, garlic, ginger, curry leaves, red chili powder, black pepper, turmeric, cumin seeds, coriander seeds, salt. Blend in a spice blender. Rub paste on fish and let marinade in the fridge up to two hours. You won't be disappointed!

Rowan mastering the Palak Paneer and Tomato Rice

preparing the fruits for the grill and the custard dessert

Sumit helping Jenni to get the new grill going. He was very keen to learn how it all works so he can be the grill master after we leave. For some reason the Indian's have not embraced the grilling outdoors culture (must be the weather is too hot?). We found the grill at the American grocery.

The Surmai on the grill

This is our scary monster friend Shrikant bringing the Hookah pipe up to the roof. You can tell by his eyes he has already had some (or, maybe the dog Lali bit him and now he is going to bite us?) :o) Hookah is a single or multi-stemmed (often glass-based) pipe for smoking tobacco in which the smoke is cooled and filtered by passing through water. Kind of like the bong in the US. Doing this with a group of friends is customary here.

Sumit is getting the pipe going by lighting a charcoal disk that is then put on top of the tobacco. The tobacco tonight will be flavored with Pan spices. We could call it organic toiletry tobacco! :o)

S & C grilling up the Paneer, vegies and pineapple

The Surmai steaks and prawns served on a bed of sliced cucumber and tomatos.

Extremely delicious!

Beer anyone?

Jenni trying the Hookah. I must say that I prefer to smoke my Pan . The organic toiletry is kinder and gentler this way.

Rowan, Shrikant, Shubha and Suresh

All us ladies. Shubha, Sandhya and her daughter Anusha, Charanya, Rowan and Jenni

The whole evening was just wonderful. We finally got to the custard with fruit dessert course just after 11:30pm. This was definitely a food coma #2 night! YUM!