Sunday, December 12, 2010

Jaipur- a flying visit

 We started the day in a big way, Praveen harvesting the first radishes from our market garden out the back. Here radish is eaten as a salad vegetable and also chopped and cooked as a spiced vegetable [white part and leaves used]. I don't like it fresh but cooked it is great.....and we will be eating lots i the next few weeks as it is Praveen's favourite.
 Our one Australian tree is lloking great, love the red that comes into gum tree leaves.


 Baba loves radishes it turns out.....he was swivelling his head this way and that to see what we were up to and can eat a whole radish with out dropping a single bite....so funny


 Then we headed off to Jaipur for more research...along the way we stopped for lunch at a busy small hole in the wall Dahba- the food was fantastic and sitting there I had a little contemplation on words....I speak full English and only small,small Hindi....in English I can relsih some experiences that in Hindi I am only outling....
the waiter in the restaurant was doing full justice to the idea of scurrying around, the dal was festooned [in a taste sense] with corriander....so yummy. the youghurt was bejewlled with crushed cummin and a pinch of fennel seed. H hint of cinnamon in the mixed vegeatbles as well as all the ususal suspects in a spice mix...
So much to learn taste-wise from that meal
 Then to the dye man in Jaipur- how is that for a dye pot?
 and look at their hot water boiler- all your childhood fantasies of a space rocket or what?
 Checking out the wooden blockmakers....to see about the process of comissioning my own designs?
And the paper merchant -research for "Books 'n' Blocks" our workshop with Dawn Thompson in March 2012- keep an eye on http://www.our-pukka-place.com/studio.html for details as I write them up.
Lots more pictures of our dayout in an album on Facebook
Being the doting pet owner at the moment, here is Baba eating radishes.
He is so funny, I love the serpentine way his neck swivels....he is always hungry and camels have very long legs so that is a lot of filling up to do!
Hoping for a bit quieter day today, we have really been running, but we will begin dyeing experiments with the dye stuff we got yesterday in Jaipur so I am not hopeful. Right now it is make a cake for the hotel, fiddle with this an that, inspect my garden it is starting to look like a green fuzz [we have our walled home garden- lots of different things I can't get in India and we have our market garden out the back to grow veg for our hotels, give friends and sell any extra]
Got to drop out and visit the Juuti wallah and give him cotton thread to see how it goes- very excited by the prospect of new shoes and we might be able to take his work further afeild.
Have a good day- Fi

1 comment:

Beatriz said...

Try some shoyo on raw radishes. Tastes good, I think.

Long time no see, but I´m back to quilting and quilting and blogging now. I get tired with all your activities!

Take care!