What do these things have to do with each other? Nothing, other than being little moments from my life lately.
We returned from Oman right before the Pongal festival in South India. It is a four-day harvest festival. I decided to try my hand at making some pongal. It tasted nice, but I think in future I will just buy it (tastes much better at some restaurants).
This is the recipe I used. I love cooking and have tried many many new recipes in my life, but I have never seen this advice before! I mentioned this to an Indian friend and asked for the reason. I was told that pongal is made in the Hindu Temples as an offering to God, but on one of the days of pongal the food is fed to the cows. It isn't a good idea to feed chili to the cows.
On the first day of the festival people burn their old possessions and celebrate new purchases. Due to all of the bonfires this is what the air looked like. We hunkered down inside of our apartment and turned on all of the air purifiers.
Grocery shopping. Trying to figure out which ice-cream flavour the kids will like. The answer is neither. There are other flavours that we are more familiar with like vanilla, strawberry, chocolate etc but the stock isn't always available when you want it.
The kids put together another Brick Em Young temple set. This time they made the Brisbane temple!
I took a quick video of this because it occurred to me that one day I won't have to do this weekly routine. Because we can't drink the water from the taps, we have clean water delivered in large bottles. They are heavy, so instead of trying to heft them to the kitchen I roll them through the apartment. I don't think I'll miss this routine when it is no longer needed.
Interestingly the last time we were back in Australia Clara had difficulty bringing herself to drink water from the taps. It has become so ingrained in her that tap water is bad for you. I gave her a cup of water from the tap. She brought it up to her mouth. Then she put it back down without drinking. I reassured her it was fine. She lifted the cup again, then put it back down again and said "nope can't do it". She adjusted after a while. She was also amazed by how good Australian milk tastes :)
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