Free Patterns, and Nostalgia
Cloverleaf Socks Free Pattern
Okay, so I charted the cloverleaf pattern and wrote it up, and it’s available as a .pdf download on the left under "free patterns." You can also click here. As I was writing it, I realised, I used Wendy’s toe-up pattern, but you can adapt it to any toe-up or cuff-down pattern. You can just use the cloverleaf charts for the cuffs and feet. This is my first attempt at writing up a pattern; if you do take a look at it or even – gasp – knit it, please let me know how to make things clearer and shorter, and if there are any mistakes. I have a lot of respect for pattern-writers all of a sudden.
After hearing me complain about eating so much junk on the road and missing my kitchen and some decent home-cooked dal and rice, Manisha rightly figured I was feeling nostalgic and tagged me for a "meme", so here we go.
Ten things I miss of my mum’s cooking:
My mum isn’t one of those legendary cooks who can put a fabulous meal together within no time with no effort. I don’t say this negatively; I admired her for freely admitting that she did not like cooking that much, and cooked because she had to. She always said that left to herself she was fine with some bread and butter. Amidst all the women in our colony who wore their culinary skills with pride and fell all over each other at festivals and colony get-togethers, this must have been tough to admit, but also liberating. She can put together a comfort meal like nobody else, though, and try as I might, I can never replicate some of her dishes. All of them are Marathi/north Kannadiga vegetarian preps.
Amti. A Marathi version of toor dal (yellow lentils) with tamarind and jaggery and Marathi "goda masala". I can live on this and rice all my life and indeed, have, come to think of it, for most of it.
Pithla, aka Zunka. Chana-dal (chick pea?) gruel. Very difficult to screw up, but with the right combination of jeere-khobra (ground cumin-dry coconut), heavenly. My dad and sister prefer this with green chillis and I with red chilli powder. Nowadays since I live so far away the latter gets made more often when I’m home.
Sabudanyachi Khichadi. Sunday morning brunch, alternated with Idlis or Dosas depending on how much time she had to soak, grind and ferment everything. The best part of the khichadi (which is a kind of spiced sago with ground peanuts, cumin and green chillis) was the slightly burnt part at the bottom which I got to peel off the pan. With the idlis or dosas she makes this Tomatocha saar (kind of tomato curry?), with a little jaggery and ground sesame seeds instead of the usual sambar, which is heavenly. Also, I like that her dosas are always thin but soft, not the papery restaurant things that poke around in your mouth.
Puran poli, which I had blogged out a while ago. Also, Godi kuttada payasa, broken wheat with poppy seeds and jaggery. Mmmmmmm. Oh, and some Tambittu, which also have poppy seeds and jaggery and coconut and some kind of flour, which are made in the month of Shravan (around August) for Nag-panchami. We’re big on jaggery-lentil based desserts in Maharashtra/north Karnataka, rather than the milk-sugar ones in the north and east, and I love these:
More than actual dishes (there are lots of simple ones, like Gajarachi koshimbir, or carrot raita or Pushpicha kanda, a kind of spiced onion salad named after Pushpa, its creator and a relative), though, my mum is a specialist at using every part of a vegetable, fruit or whatever and creating different dishes out of the same thing. This developed out of sheer necessity initially but now she’s honed it to a fine skill. So the flesh of a gourd goes into a curry, the peels into a chutney, the seeds roasted and salted for afternoon snacks, that sort of thing. If it’s edible, it’s to be eaten.
This wasn’t as traumatic in my childhood as it may sound. Over the years I’ve really grown to respect it and try to follow her example as I use the cauliflower florettes in a curry and chop and save the stalk for adding to the sambar the next day and scour the net or ask some serious food geeks for ideas. I prided myself on wasting very little, but when Aai visited me last year , watching her in my kitchen was still an eye-opener on how much one ends up wasting on a daily basis and how one can do better. I think of her every time I save the dratted peels off something.
All this nostalgia is making me really eager to go home now. Maybe next month I’ll take pictures of some of these things. Thanks, Manisha!
The pattern looks good! Nicely done, especially while on the road.
The thing about your mom using every part of the vegetable brings to mind the common trusim about [ethnic group here] using every part of [animal here], but is certainly much less traumatic than say, the idea of Native Americans using every part of the buffalo. Those roasted salted gourd seeds you speak of, for example, sound delicious.
By the way, having had the pleasure of tasting the magnificent produce of desiknitter’s legendary kitchen, I think it would be wonderful if you were to post a recipe or two every now and then for your adoring readers (and also perhaps a selection or two from Mr. desiknitter’s experimental continental-Calcutta fusion cookbook).
Oh, is there such a truism? I had no idea. But in that case am happy I had only a vegetarian experience of it. The reference to traumatic was meant to be funny, as in forced-to-eat-baingan funny.
Alas, the continental-Calcutta fusion cookbook is only part of oral memory; documenting it for this kind of globalized technological consumption would do it irreparable epistemic violence. Best thing is to be there and eat it when it’s made: Dilli chalo!
Thanks for the pattern – can’t wait to knit it!
Thanks for the pattern…I hope to knit it too (when, oh when?…too much going on!).
I’m thinking of knitting it too. I enjoy patterns that go diagonally as this one does. I’ll send feedback but it’s on the list for winter holiday gift knitting.
Fabulous food post. My mom’s specialty is Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.
So I had to go and lookup epistemic…^-^
Glad you had fun with the meme. Tomatocha saar with idli? I’ve never had that. I do love tomatocha saar. Once I ran out of sambar and served the family varan with idlis. The kind you get at weddings. They told me that the idlis were great. They told me the varan was super but if I could please not do this to them again! So I haven’t tried experimenting in that vein again.
Have a great time in India!
do write about the modaks one makes esp at ganesh chaturthi. i have studied at Belgaum, in Karnataka, and had a few marathi friends. so at festivals we used to go to their house to EAT, and boy i still remember the tastes of all the lovely dishes, my friends mother used to make. funny isnt it moms make such lovely things and when we are in late teens and early twenties we dont bother to learn those nice recipes. now my mom is not so well and cant cook so i keep learning over the phone but neveer get the same flavour — mom’s cooking cant be forgotten
Typepad is very weird: sometimes I get notification about a comment and sometimes not. Manisha, you should try the tomatochar saar with idli: will definitely go over better than varan!!
Shruti, wait till September, maybe I’ll make some modaks this time for Ganesh Chaturthi. The dough is not easy to make, and it’s so much nicer to just eat them, no?