Sour

Okay, okay. I know I haven't updated this blog in almost a year, but in fairness, I've been a lot better about updating my Christie blog infrequently. I'm still in Turkey. I'm still teaching - they let me stay another year - was there any doubt? But I don't want to talk about Turkey or teaching in this post. I want to talk about lemon pickle.

After shying away from jars of citrus pickles lining the aisles of the Indian section of the grocery store for years, I finally had some forced upon me. John and Michelle gave me a jar when they left for Zambia. This one, lime pickle, looked pretty good (by pretty good, I mean, there wasn't a grease stain on the label, it wasn't a dusty jar, and it looked edible. Needless to say, after partaking of some with my Lahori style chicken curry from my cookbook by Suvir Saran, I was won over. When I read up on Indian pickle and found that the aging process is a huge factor in the excellence of the flavor (Saran boasts owning a 40 year old jar of lemon pickle), I became more comfortable with the look of it and regretted not picking up a jar for one of my colleagues when I was in Kerala last year.

Well, my jar from John and Michelle is starting to run out so I decided to consult Suvir's book and see just how hard it might be to make this myself. The recipe looked straightforward enough so I ran up to the market on Hatay and picked up a dozen lemons. One turned out to be rotton so my pickle will be one short. I began by halving the lemons lengthwise and then cutting the halves in half and getting 3-4 wedges from each. Then I put them on a paper towel lined baking sheet and set them on my balcony to dry out in the sun (having reserved the lemon juice produced from cutting them up).

Next, I mixed up some whole and ground spices - this bit turned out to be a dodg-

Oh wait! I forgot to mention the most important part of the whole lemon-cutting portion - I sliced a good portion of the tip of my thumb. I'm standing at my marble counter slicing away when my knife slides a bit too far to the right and goes right into my thumb tip. As you can imagine, the lemon juice felt great on the new wound. I threw stuff down, staunched the bleeding (none got into the lemons I'm happy to say), disinfected the wound, bandaged it and went back to slicing.



-y undertaking as I don't have a proper spice grinder. I tried my mini processor but it didn't do much. I then resorted to my bamboo mortar and pestle (with the pestle that is entirely too short so my knuckles get a bit of a grinding on the side of the mortar). It took a bit, but I got most of it ground up.
I ran it through a sieve just to get the bigger, ungrindable bits (mostly cardamom pods). I added that to the salt which is sitting in a bowl waiting to receive the lovely lemon slices once they've spent their day in the sun.
Then I have to wait weeks, months, years, to taste it. I'll post more pictures when I mix the salt/spice mixture with the lemons.

Go-Go Goa

First, as promised, a few pictures of the sleeping cars on the trains to and from Goa. I have ridden on many trains in my travels, and I can safely say that the trains in India are the trippiest. The "trip" factor is somewhat intensified after months of riding the hyper-clean, super-efficient-to-the-second, trains of Japan. These Indian trains feel as if they are about fifty years old, have chipped paint, and fairly primitive toilets. The cars have doors, but the doors are usually left open the whole ride, so you can stand in the doorway and watch the landscape speed by and feel the intense, but pleasurable fear that accompanies near death.

One interesting note: there was a poster with a list of rules and warnings for train passengers. This was written in Hindi and English and had simple drawings accompanying it. The rules were things like, don't indulge beggars, watch your belongings, etc. One of the warnings was not to accept food from anyone but the train food vendors as someone may try to drug and rob you. All of the pictures on the poster depicted rather anonymous looking Indians, but in the picture of the traveler offering suspect food to the other traveler the two figures were orthodox Jews. I still don't know what kind of message they were trying to send - that Jewish people are more likely to drug each other than other people? Who knows? It felt like anti-semitism, but a sort of unsuccessful attempt at anti-semitism. Had the recipient of the suspect food been represented by some other people group, I would have been horrified, but because they were both obviously Jewish, all I could muster was a somewhat confused smile. I tried to take a picture, but the train was too unsteady.

Here are a couple of pictures taken from the upper berth of the second-class reserved sleeper car I took:


These are just some random shots to show you just what the trains are like.


This is a pic I took of myself shortly after I found my seat - I'll admit I was a bit apprehensive at this point. But after a few hours on the train, you get used to it, and you realize that you are really having an adventure.

When I got to my hotel in Calangute and booked my return ticket, I immediately went to the sea to look at the waves. Here are the pictures. The waves on this day, were huge and hypnotic.




This is the view from the balcony of my hotel room.




This was about all you could do at the beach at this time of year - just wade and play in the waves along the shore - the undertow was too strong. It was interesting watching people on the beach because they all (myself included) behaved like small children. Because no one could surf or swim or display some sort of athletic prowess, they just did what kids do at the seashore - walked as close to the water's edge as they could and then screamed and laughed when a big wave came up and soaked them.

At one point a group of people were playing along the shore. One of their group noticed me sitting on the beach watching the waves and grabbed his pals and they all rushed over and took a bunch of photos with me. So we all made faces and smiled like we were great friends for three minutes and then one of them ran back to the sea and the others followed. It was pretty surreal, but much more fun than having hawkers and vendors approach me every five minutes.

Here are some pictures of Calangute between rainfalls.



These last pictures are from my second day, when the sun stayed out most of the day and everything was breezy and relaxing.








So that's pretty much it for my pictures of India. I hope you enjoyed them. If you ever get the chance to go, do it - it's a pretty amazing country. I will definitely go back, I only scratched the surface on this first trip.

Pictures from Mumbai

Okay, here are some pictures from Mumbai - this is why I titled this post, "Pictures from Mumbai." However, I should have titled it, "Pictures from Mumbai with Some Additional Pictures from Japan of My Niece and Nephews in the FabIndia Clothes I Bought Them." But if I wanted to do that, I would have erased and renamed it, so I must not have wanted to to it. Well, here the pictures are in all their glory complete with with real half hearted attempts at commentary:

This is a building in Mumbai (see? I don't even remember what I was taking pictures of):

I think this is the Central Train Station in Mumbai (I think...):

Here's one building I know (because I still have the brochure sitting on my desk). It's the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalya (a.k.a. Prince of Wales Museum of Western India):

Ditto...

Here is the Gateway to India in the Harbor:

This is a building in Mumbai - wait a minute, no it's not! It's the harbor:

Okay, here is the building - the Taj Hotel:

This is what life in Mumbai looks like from under a tarp on the street during the rainy season:

Here are a couple more detail pics of the gateway:


This is Haji Ali's Mosque out in the Arabian Sea - there is a long path leading out there but at high tide the mosque is cut off from the mainland.


Here's a couple shots of the coast.


Here's the mosque again.

Here's a shot of one of the buildings at Bombay University.

This is a nice Portuguese style (I think) cathedral in Mumbai - it had quite a Latin feel to it, especially inside.

Here's a shot of my afternoon tea at the Tea Centre on a very rainy afternoon.

At the Oval Maidan, which is a large field in front of Bombay University, you can watch kids playing soccer and cricket. As it was rainy, it was a huge mud pile. I would have loved to have played soccer in that mud - it looked like they were having a blast.

Another shot of the cathedral.

This is one of the cool art deco apartment buildings that are across the street from the university.

Oval Maidan (yes, it's spelled with an 'a').

Some kids playing cricket - a game which fascinates me, but which I have little understanding of.

A cool tower at the University.

Another shot of the deco apartment.

The clock tower again (note: the court house was right slap up against the university so I may be calling one the other - my apologies to both buildings). I do think this is the university, tho'. At least I think I think it is...

I LOVE this spiral staircase at the university (Why didn't they build something like this in dear old Armstrong Hall?).

One of my favorite shots I took - I couldn't have done better if I had asked them to pose for this. The combination of their shirt colors is amazing.

Another spiral staircase shot.

Here's a typical street in Mumbai - I love the way the trees have roots hanging down from the branches themselves.

This is Bombay University:

This very well could be the court house. Hats off to the bird who decided to alight on the statue just at the moment when I was taking the picture.

Here's another shot of what could be the court house.

A fountain (I should really write for Lonely Planet).

Uh, the university. No! No! I'm sure this MUST be the court house cuz I think I decided the court house would be cool if it was all sepia.

Here's the cool library where LP said I could sit.

Liz and Chad - I thought of you two while I was here. I think we'd have all had fun looking around this library.


Court house.

I really was surprised at how much art deco their was in Mumbai - here's a great example.

This is the porch LP misinformed me about.


This is the night view from my hotel room - Residency Hotel is a very nice, inexpensive place to stay in Mumbai.

I will save the Goa pictures for my next blog entry. But I would love to show you the Indian style clothes I bought for my nephews and niece in Tokyo. I got their togs at FabIndia.




I'll leave these up a few days before I post the last group - and there you will be able to see what Indias second class night trains look like.