mind your own business" Joey Adams
I bet you're all wondering what's been happening all week aren't you? You are? Well I'll tell you...
NADA happened all week, not one thing of any interest at all. Now I bet you're wondering where is she going with this (and truth be known I'm beginning to wonder myself) but you know, NOTHING happened, just sayin'. Well I say nothing happened I mean the usual load shedding/banging/drilling/drumming/bugling happened, but that happens every week so technically it's a nothing new situ.
BF is still away with work and I have been faffing around with food and spices and the usual what not, but aside from the odd pop to the shops I have been a residential guest of Dullsville all week. So there we have it, proof that it's not all glitz and glamour in my world you know, far from it.
And even when I do leave the house I have to carefully peep through the spyhole as we have the nosiest neighbours in the universe (not to be mixed up with the soon to be new neighbours who are the noisiest neighbours in the universe). No these are different ones and they must live on planet NADA and be the Mayor and Mayoress of Dullsville as the comings and goings of our house appear to have more thrills and spills attached to them than a whizz round Space Mountain, even if I make it to the car park I am more often than not, pounced on by the car wash guy. Every time he sees me, usually with the clearly marked carrier bags from a well known grocery store, stuffed appropriately with groceries and heading towards our front door with the front door key in my hand, he questions me about my whereabouts as if he's a human tracking device. "Where have you been? Where are you going?" he asks. Now to my mind if I have grocery bags in one hand and a front door key in the other I feel this is a visually explanatory situation, yet I still have to confirm that I have been to the grocery store and I am now indeedy going home.
It's for these reasons I tend to stick to the same stores, sellers and friends circles as meeting anyone new can often lead to questions that make a full scale FBI interrogation look like a brief chin wag. Lest we forget the in depth report I had to provide to purchase a microwave and booking into a hotel is akin to going on 'The Dragon's Den, I wouldn't mind if they were interesting and stimulating questions or at least some new ones but the questions I get asked are the same ones day in day out, year in year out and I can now totally sympathise with celebrities who have to spend their days being interviewed.
So here is a list of my most frequently asked questions when people meet me....
 |
| (Futile Arduous Questions) |
1. Where are you from?
2. Why are you here?
3. What do you do?
4. Why did you come here?
5. How long will you be here?
Now here's a list of the most frequently asked questions I'm asked online...
1. You don't look Indian, Are you Indian?
2. That's not an Indian name, what's your real name?
3. What do you really look like?
4. Can we have friendship? (often spelt as 'fraaanship')
5. How do you have Broadband in India?
Answers...
Actually my answers vary on a day to day basis depending on A) what mood I'm in and B) how stupid the person actually is. With reference to question 1 of online FAQ's I told a particularly stupid guy I was an Albino Indian and being particularly stupid, he believed me.
However, just for the record, here is the set of real answers which should be referred to once and for all and then never asked again....
1. I am not Indian. (Albino or otherwise)
2. I just so happen to live here because I want to live here and am geographically located due to BF's work. (which is far more important than mine as while he is busy saving lives and generally healing people I am usually busy arranging a bunch of coriander leaves in a fashionable manner)
3. We will be here as long as we need to/wish to be.
4. I really do look like me
and above all....
5. Strange 'fraaanship' is out of the question.
Well now that that's as clear as the Ganges I want to tell you a bit about last night's dinner. I had run out of potatoes (for some unfathomable reason, when BF is away I eat an obscene amount of potatoes) and there was hardly any meat in the house, well there were a couple of frozen chicken thighs idling around in the freezer but that hardly constitutes as a Man V Food style Meat feast, so I thought I'd be good and whip up a vegetarian dish. And as we were planning to have vegetarian guests over for dinner next week I thought I'd play around with a rather attractive eggplant I had lurking around in the fridge, (not that I'm attracted to eggplant you understand, but it was pretty beefy) so I made a vegetable risotto.
Risotto is a superb and speedy dinner for when you have odds and ends of vegetables and what not in need of using up and so to try out a nice dinner party twist to it I simply scooped out the the middle of the eggplant (don't go too deep leave a good bit of the flesh round the sides to make sure it stays in shape) massaged a bit of olive oil onto it and roasted it in a hot oven for about twenty minutes or so and then stuffed it with the risotto and et voila I give you a simple dinner party dish, which I (rather unimaginatively) called...
Roasted Vegetable Risotto
1 cup of Aborio Rice
good glug of olive oil
4 large eggplants, flesh scooped out & roasted
4-5 cups of vegetable stock
1 cup of dry white wine
juice of 1 lemon
1 tsp of each cumin/coriander/garam masala powder
chilli powder + S&P to taste
1 green pepper diced
1-2 red onions diced
2 handfuls of mushrooms, sliced
4 tomatoes diced
flesh of the eggplants diced
handful of hard cheese (I used Gouda)
handful of black olives
handful of cilantro (coriander leaves, chopped
spring onion tips or chive for garnish
V suitable for vegetarians
Heat the oven to a hot setting and roast the eggplant case & the eggplant flesh & peppers for about 15 - 20 mins or until lightly browned
In a non-stick pan heat oil & gently fry red onions until soft and opaque
Add the spices and a splash of the wine & lemon juice then add rice and stir constantly until all the grains of rice are coated with the oil
Add a further splash of wine, raise the heat & add the stock, half a cup at a time ensuring there is enough liquid to cook the rice, stirring constantly.
Add the roasted vegetables + the mushrooms & continue stirring adding wine & stock accordingly
When the rice is starting to soften add the tomatoes & lime juice & taste for seasoning & adjust accordingly
When almost cooked throw in the olives and cheese, when the cheese melts into the sauce & the risotto is still quite 'wet' ladle the risotto into the eggplant shell adding more cheese & spring onion tips
Bake in the oven till lightly brown and the cheese is bubbling
If you aren't having a fancy dinner party but do fancy roasted vegetable risotto on a tray in front of the TV, simply scoop it straight onto a plate instead...Like so
Enjoy and feel free to have a more interesting week than I did.
