Day 18 - Red & Blue

Day 17 - A tower and a tree

Day 16 - Garden Hose

Day 15 - Open Air theatre

Day 14 - Books

Day 13 - Old photographs

Day 12 - Flowers

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.

~Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Afternoon on a Hill"

Day 11 - An Evening

Day 10 - Railway Gatekeeper's Office

Day 9 - An Armchair

Day 8- Dirt Road

The road more travelled

Day 7 - Things on my bedside table

Day 6 – Washing Line

Summer is here already.

Day 5 – Guavas with Coriander flavoured Salt

These days around noon a vendor comes by selling “Taje Meethe Amrud” (fresh, sweet guavas). I bought half a kg today. Guava is known as poor man’s apple. But in some cities like Pune it costs more than apple. I love guavas. I buy them every now and then. Along with the guavas vendor gives some salt. It is not any ordinary salt but very very tasty flavoured salt. They flavour it with fresh green coriander and sometimes with green chillies. It tastes really amazing.

If you are interested in knowing more about flavoured salts read this excerpt from Jamie Oliver’s book "Jamie's Kitchen".

“ ...... A flavoured salt is one of the simplest and most basic ways of finishing a dish - it's so easy and tasty, yet hardly anyone does it. When I was growing up, celery salt seemed very uninspiring, but actually sprinkled over a tomato salad or used to season a beef stew it was gorgeous. Flavoured salts can actually give some really fragrant and shocking results to your palate. Things like Jasmine tea salt have traditionally been used in Japanese and Chinese cooking for flavouring things like tempura. Even a simple portion of chips/French fries can be taken in a different direction by sprinkling them with flavoured salt - using, for example, Mexican or English herbs to flavour.

There's nothing better than trying things out for yourself, but if you start off with a good mineral salt which is not too strong, and fresh ingredients, you'll get amazing results. Garlic and citrus, and soft herbs like coriander, mint and basil, will gradually lose the real flavour qualities you are after, i.e. the aroma and freshness, so they are best made to order- but they only take a few seconds, so that's cool. I prefer to make them as I need them, or a day in advance, so that they'll taste amazing, but if you want to make them ahead of time they'll happily sit on the shelf for months in an airtight container, though they won't be quite as vibrant.

Get your chosen flavours together and bash them up in a pestle and mortar until you have a powder or pulp. If you are using ginger, lemongrass or fresh chillies, these need to be sliced and warmed in the oven before pounding to dry them out, otherwise they will make the salt wet.

Add 3 times their weight in salt, pound together and then either leave the mixture coarse or pass it through a sieve. You can also use a food processor.
The moisture in your flavouring will probably cause your salt to dry into a block after a day or two which is fine, because you can just bash it up when you need it. Alternatively, once the salt has been flavoured you can lay it out on a tray and put in the oven at its lowest temperature overnight. Doing this means that the salt will stay granular.....”

Day 4 - A Drumstick Tree

Morning was amazingly foggy today. I clicked this drumstick tree in the backyard of my house. We get many visitors on this tree. Its flowers are full of nectar. Soon it will be laden with Drumsticks. It is an exceptionally nutritious vegetable tree with a variety of potential uses. You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moringa_oleifera
Today the month of Magh began. It is eleventh month of the Hindu calendar. There is a romantic connotation to the month of Magh. One finds its reference in many Marathi songs. Rutu Vasant begins from Magh Panchami. It is a month of colours, flowers and life and love.

Day 3 –Pyazkali

Pyazkali (Spring onions with flower buds) is a rare and very seasonal vegetable. Luckily, we get many such vegetables here. I have this habit of buying every new vegetable that comes by. When I saw these on my vendors cart I instantly fell in love with them. These beauties look so fresh and tender. I bought them without a clue about how to cook. But I have my sources. I asked a neighbour who happens to be a Bengali lady about how to cook them as she was buying the whole bunch. She said I cook it with mach (fish). So no use for me. Then I turned to Google. But this vegetable is indeed a rare one. Usually when you search for some recipe you get thousands but this time I could find its references in only one or two websites.
Finally I cooked them with potatoes without adding any spice, safest way I guess. It turned out to be good. I am happy.

Day 2 - स्कूल चलें हम