Engagement

JWise Photo of the Day

Rachna Patel on the day of her engagement to Niral Patel in Phoenix, Arizona

On Saturday morning we arose early and drove around the block to Suru and Anju Patel’s so I could begin taking photos of their daughter as she prepared for her engagement later in the morning. It was about five years ago we went to our first Hindu wedding when their older daughter Alka was married. Today, though, it was Rachna’s turn at beginning the process of moving towards marriage. The engagement ceremony was held at her fiance’s parent’s home. Dinesh and Panna welcomed about 40 friends and family to witness Niral and Rachna become engaged. Mrs. Rajaguru presided over the formalities, she is Kushbu and Shital’s mom and it was Kushbu who was the second engagement we attended. After the ceremony, we took a short drive to a local clubhouse for a reception with approximately 75 guests invited for this part of the day’s activities. Lunch was catered by a local temple that prepared undhiyu (a favorite of mine), tindoora, rice, puris, and one of my other favorites, shrikhand, for dessert. Sonal’s daughters Kushbu and Hemu performed a dance number with Satchi and Poorvi as a small entertainment moment in between speeches given to honor Rachna and Niral – the two are to be wed next fall.

Farm Update

JWise Photo of the Day

The herb sorrel sprouting at Tonopah Rob's Vegetable Farm in Tonopah, Arizona

A few days after my last plot update I replanted some lettuce, planted a bunch of herbs and fenugreek, transplanted two cauliflower seedlings, and did some thinning. Today’s photo is of sorrel that is now two days old. The cress and Genovese basil have also sprouted, I’m still waiting on parsley, chervil, lime basil, Thai basil, and lettuce leaf basil. The fenugreek started sprouting within a week of dropping it into the soil. It appears I planted the original planting of lettuce too deep, the new crop is already coming up and looks great. Maybe the corn mache was also too deep as it’s been slow to sprout so next to those rows I dropped some southwest greens called quelite and huazontle into the dirt with a thin cover, slowly they are emerging. Other failures in my plot are my golden beets which seem related to the viability of the seed while the red mustard seems to have suffered the same fate of the lettuce with being buried too deep. Now I know that the tiniest of seeds need the shallowest planting. I’ve been thinning cabbage every so many days as I try to choose the most robust plants to take to maturity – sauerkraut here we come. Eleven cloves of garlic have sprouted, every time I go to the farm they are the first things I check on. The plot was seeded on September 21st and my first harvest occurred on October 27th only thirty-six days later. On that day I pulled half a pound of radishes and cut a mix of almost two pounds of arugula, mezuna, and Tokyo bekana – we are still eating salads from those greens. On October 29th I picked a half-pound of radishes and then on the 31st another half pound of radishes along with a half-pound mix of arugula, mezuna, and Tokyo bekana that was all used for a salad shared on the farm for dinner. Yesterday I picked a bit more than a pound of radishes including my first mantanghong “Beauty Heart” radish – my favorite.

Little Rangoon

JWise Food, Photo of the Day

Oil, lemon, onion, chili, and salt are the simple ingredients that make this Burmese salad

Recently we have been frequenting a Burmese restaurant in Scottsdale called Little Rangoon. In short order, we came to know the owners, Alfred and Elizabeth, and probably due to the fact we are eating at their place once or twice a week and on occasion with lunch thrown in, three times a week, we have become very familiar with Little Rangoon. So much so that we are now the recipients of tastings of Burmese food items that are not on the menu. A couple of weeks ago we tried pigs’ ear salad, tonight I will be trying some oxtail curry. Today for lunch though I had an excellent salad, a salad without a name which I was told was typical for the kind of food that a peasant or person of small means might eat on a regular basis. I enjoyed the sample so much that I just had to order a larger portion and asked if I could photograph the salad being made and jot down the recipe. Elizabeth graciously welcomed me into her kitchen and one of the cooks prepared a plate of all the ingredients that were in my Onion Chili Salad (see above). Is that all? While the list of ingredients is indeed small, even simple, the chemistry that occurs as these items are mixed is nothing less than extraordinary. Using about 1/2 cup of thinly sliced red onion, about 2 tbsp of crushed red chile (very spicy and hot), 1 tsp coarse salt, the juice of a wedge of lemon, and 1 to 2 tsp vegetable or canola oil, the mixture is turned over and mixed by hand. There is no need to let this sit, it is eaten right away with a side of steamed rice. The finished dish looks like this:

Onion Chili Salad from Little Rangoon Restaurant in Scottsdale, AZ

The real reason we are so in love with Little Rangoon though is not only the exotic samplings we are offered but the exquisite, complex, and flavorful foods of Burma as served up by Elizabeth and her kitchen staff. I can not choose only one favorite, I would have to be split amongst four items. First is the green tea salad followed by the ginger salad, pork belly curry, and then the falooda for dessert. The green tea salad is like nothing else I have ever had, it is sublime. Elizabeth starts with a number of ingredients imported from Burma including fermented green tea, sesame seeds, crispy garlic, crunchy yellow peas, peanuts, and smoked ground shrimp. She then adds more ingredients purchased locally including tomato, cabbage, and oil. The ginger salad is a variation on this theme with the green tea swapped for a mild fermented ginger. I have enjoyed these two dishes together for lunch or dinner – I am in love with them and feel I could easily eat them two or three times a week. The pork belly curry is quite the indulgence. Just like bluefin tuna belly (also known as Toro in sushi houses), the belly of the pig is tender and slightly fat, but the kitchen does great work trimming a lot of the fat leaving the tender and flavorful chunks of pork that are cooked with a tomato, pepper and onion curry and served on rice. Try it once and you’ll be addicted.

To top off a meal at Little Rangoon I would do backflips for the falooda. On one of our first visits, Alfred and Elizabeth shared some of their semolina cake with durian – not something they would bring out for just anyone, especially considering the smell of durian, but we loved it. However, it was the falooda that locked onto my taste buds. Falooda originates in India but is popular in the Middle East, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and of course Burma (now known as Myanmar). Sometimes it is the complexity that arises from the simple that can make a thing stand out so much further than the otherwise average ingredients would suggest and so it is with falooda. Using vanilla ice cream, milk, tapioca pearls, egg custard, thin spaghetti-like noodles made of agar jelly, and the main ingredient that brings it all together, rose syrup. They offer a small for $3 and a large for $5 – don’t be silly and order the small, go with the large or you’ll just be forced to order a second one.

Daybreak at the Orchard + More

JWise Photo of the Day

Sunrise at Brown's Orchard in Willcox, Arizona

I awoke before daybreak down here on Brown’s Orchard in Willcox. June, Marvin, the chickens, and the sheep were all still asleep as I crept out into the cold twilight of dawn to watch the stars fade and the orange glow of the rising sun takes hold of the horizon. The first sound of the day was the baa of a sheep somewhere out in the dark under the pear trees, quickly followed by the rooster announcing the sun would soon rise. The cold started to bite: I had not anticipated temperatures nearly as far from Phoenix temperatures as they were proving to be, long pants and a sweater would have been smart. With a sip of the apple cider I had pressed yesterday, I decided it was best to leave welcoming the new day to the sheep and chickens and so I went and crawled back into a still-warm bed.

Once finally awake and well fed, June had made an amazing breakfast for me, it was 10:00 and time to fetch Caroline on my swing back to Phoenix as her workshop only lasted the day.

Sunset in the Orchard + More

JWise Photo of the Day

Brown's Orchard in Willcox, Arizona

This post is being updated from the photo just below this paragraph here in late August 2022. Over on the Caracolina.com blog, Caroline wrote up a short entry about her day while here on my blog I was writing about my visit to a favorite orchard. As I’ve explained in many a post, bandwidth limitations kept me from posting too many photos but that’s no longer our situation and the truth is that we most often view our own photos right here on the pages of this blog, not on my computer. So, here I am reworking some of the original texts, merging them here with Caroline’s to be italicized so you can easily identify who wrote what.

Sunset under the canopy of the apple orchard at Brown's Orchard in Willcox, Arizona

Caroline is in Amado at the Southwest Fiber Festival after having stayed the night in Tucson with a fellow fiber addict. As for me, I continued southeast to Willcox where at Brown’s Orchard I went apple picking to press more apple cider. I just felt I had to do something to help Caroline with all that FIBER, and everyone knows how there’s nothing like fresh-pressed apple cider to get things going, hint hint…you know…fiber humor?

Fiber workshop in Amado, Arizona

After spending Friday night in Tucson I attended a spinning class and spent some time (and money, ha!) at the Southwest Fiber Festival in Amado. Like last year I was going to stay over the weekend with Elaine (former president of the AZ Federation of Weavers and Spinners Guilds) who also taught my class. John had originally considered going to the festival but didn’t feel like it and pushed on towards Willcox. He spent Saturday at Brown’s Orchard picking apples and making cider while Elaine and I got up early and drove down to Amado. In the class (which was about spinning mohair goat fiber) I spun some mohair roving, then tried a plying technique involving sliding locks of mohair into the plied twist as you go along. Kinda cool when it is done right – of course, it will take some practice. Afterward, Elaine and a couple of other women did the skein contest judging, and another gal and I did the fleece contest judging. At first, I was really nervous about it but I learned quite a bit and had a good time to boot. And… I also submitted a skein of handspun and walked away with a red ribbon! I might have gotten a blue ribbon if I had used proper ties to fix up the skein but I’m still very pleased since I didn’t expect to win anything. Yes, that’s my skein that won.

Brown's Orchard in Willcox, Arizona

Now for the truth: Caroline’s fiber workshop is one of learning to spin with mohair as in making yarn, not dietary fiber.

Brown's Orchard in Willcox, Arizona

And for the fiber addict reference, well as any spouse of a spinner, weaver, dyer, knitter, or other fiber arts junkie can tell you, once bitten by the fiber, there is no end in sight for how far these folks will take their obsession.

Fiber workshop in Amado, Arizona

Totally forgetting about lunch (I think there was some food but all the vendor booths and critter pens had me completely distracted), I managed to spend a little bit over my allowance, but not too much. She snagged the first shearing of the cutest little mohair doe, only 5 months old and so soft! We picked up dinner on the way home and spent another fun evening chatting (and spinning).

Brown's Orchard in Willcox, Arizona

My fun today is defined as having the opportunity to pick one hundred twenty pounds of apples, wash them, grind them, and press them to make nine sweet gallons of the yummiest apple cider one could ever hope to make of their own labor, minus growing the apples themselves.

Fiber workshop in Amado, Arizona

Elaine and I left around 4.30 PM. Although I was so tired I went to sleep pretty early. These festival weekends are like sleepovers! 

Brown's Orchard in Willcox, Arizona

My gratitude to June and Marvin for allowing me to come down once again and add yet more cider to my frozen hoard of the stuff up in Phoenix and heartfelt thanks for inviting me to spend the night in your home.