Mornings are a tight rope walk most days. Between 7 and 9 am, I make breakfast and a traditional lunch for V to take to office. This picture is from today, when I had to do everything from scratch in 2 hours - the rice, the ladies finger fry (burning the onions a bit while checking the phone), fish washed and marinated and fried, buttermilk curry apart from puttu and kadala curry for breakfast.
No small feat for me, who is a procrastinator. I delay getting out of bed till 7ish since kids do not have to go to school. Making tea takes some 10-15 minutes unless I heat the water first in the electric kettle. The pressure of the piped cooking gas is probably low which is why it takes so long. So the actual cooking starts between 8-9 am after sipping tea, though pressure cooking rice and kadala happens on the other burners.
I worry I will not finish before V is ready to leave, but I somehow manage. While I pride myself in my multitasking and quick cooking skills, the hubby says it is all a hastily done and occasionally a botched-up job.
If you are wondering why I am giving him so less, it is because he is trying to practise portion control. So I pack only a small bowl of rice these days, and add a fruit or a box of nuts for snacking later.
Mira is another one who is trying to skip rice at lunch time to reduce weight. Some days she eats only the veggies and meat/fish. I try to sneak in a tablespoon of rice. (But when I retire to take a nap, she goes to the kitchen and snack on bread and jam or Nutella!!) Ash eats what is given and is generally a non-fussy eater. He avoids certain foods - brinjal, small fish like mackerel, sardines and anchovy, and among breakfast items puttu - which I respect owing to his food allergies and try to give him a substitute much to Mira's irritation.
On some mornings, I force him to take a small portion of puttu mixed in curry. He finds puttu too dry for his liking. I suspect it is a revulsion caused by 6 months of steamed rice dishes for breakfast long ago when he was on the Ottapalam swami's crazy diet for his eczema. All he could have was puttu or idiappam, and for lunch plain rice and bittergourd fry!
I tell him he will start missing puttu when he is an adult and away from home. Like Bobby uncle in the US who is now showing a return to the roots syndrome and a love for Kerala food and relatives.
I add that I hated puttu as a kid too and my mom often said that she would make a hole in my tummy and drop the puttu straight in there! I hated it because it had too many small rice balls which I carefully picked and threw away. Now that it has become my favourite (rather easiest to make) family food post marriage, I take pains to crumble each persistent rice ball although I try to ensure V gets his maniputtu or puttu with riceballs.
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