93rd Birthday

Joyce with Aunt Eleanor on her 93rd Birthday in Phoenix, Arizona

Today, Aunt Eleanor finished her 93rd trip around the sun – it was her 93rd Birthday. Joyce Moncrieff, her friend, and stepdaughter drove down from Colorado to celebrate the big day.

I made dinner, which was Auntie’s first time eating Indian cooking, I also made dessert. For dinner, we had Navratna Korma, Cholle, Batata Poha, and Roti (photo below), and for dessert, we ate Arroz con Leche with guava. Navratna Korma is mixed vegetables in a tomato cream sauce, Cholle is garbanzo beans in a tangy tomato sauce, and Batata Poha is parched rice cooked with onion, potato, nuts, coconut, raisins, lime juice, cilantro, and a few other things. The Roti was a whole wheat bread picked up at Indo Euro Foods. Arroz con Leche is a Mexican dish I learned to prepare from Guadalupe Silva. Arroz con Leche is rice, sweet condensed milk, cinnamon, vanilla, raisins, lime zest, soy milk, and canned guava – a Mexican rice pudding.

Homemade Indian food

The full list of ingredients to prepare the dishes is as follows: peas, corn, carrots, mushrooms, cauliflower, potato, celery, onion, garlic, ginger, green chili, tomato, cilantro, curry leaves, fenugreek, garbanzo beans, cashews, almonds, sunflower seeds, raisins, coconut, guava, lime, lemon, tomato paste, rice, parched rice, cream, condensed milk, soy milk, Nestle Le Lecher (sweetened condensed milk), cinnamon, turmeric, chili powder, cumin, coriander, mustard seed, cumin seed, asafoetida powder, chana masala, vanilla, salt, sugar, grape seed oil.

Katharina and Jutta

Katharina Engelhardt and Jutta Engelhardt in Germany

Please note: this post was added to my blog in 2022. Don’t mind the copyright either; Klaus Engelhardt took this photo of his daughter/our niece Katharina and her “Oma Jutta,” a.k.a. Caroline’s mom. I’m adding this for continuity as we often received photos from Germany, but for some reason or other, probably because I hadn’t taken the photo, I never included any of them here. Over time I’ll be trying to insert a couple here and there.

Driving Home

Streaked freeway in Phoenix, Arizona

The 51 freeway driving home after watching Amitabh Bachchan’s new film, Black. Black is about a blind, deaf girl learning from her teacher how to see as he slips into Alzheimer’s. This was Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s newest film since releasing Devdas and is his second film dealing with a handicap following Kamoshi – The Musical, which features one of my all-time favorite Bollywood soundtracks. It was from Kamoshi where I fell in love with Alka Yagnik’s voice and what compelled me to buy tickets some years ago to go see her perform live here in Phoenix.