The Hunger Struck - Confessions of a Food Fanatic.

My hubby and I are making a concerted effort to learn and perfect his mothers recipes. As I’m sure many of you agree, it’s so important to continue on family food traditions. When a recipe has been passed down from generation to generation there is not necessarily an exact method to follow, as often times it has never in fact been recorded in writing. This of course both liberates and presents some unique challenges.

For those of us experienced with the feel of cooking Indian food, there’s an understanding that you probably wont get it right the first few times, it will take a while before you understand how the different spices are balanced in a particular dish to produce the result you know and enjoy.This is of course universal, but with Indian food I find there to be this temptation to toss in every dried herb associated with this countries cuisine and see what happens. There’s also a tendency to wonder what went wrong when the dish doesn’t turn out the way it was supposed to. I have to confess that years ago I was one of the worst offenders.

This dal recipe comes from my mother-in-law and is as close to perfect as I’ve ever come with making Indian food at home. For me, Indian food is one of those things that is generally always better in restaurants, for some reason despite how closely I follow a recipe it never turns out quite right in the end. While many Indian recipes seem to be fairly straight forward, I was always suspicious that there was a secret ingredient I didn’t know about that was present in Indian cooking, which was preventing me from being able to enjoy making a recipe at home that would not disappoint.

Like most people in this city I have a great appreciation for a good cup of coffee. So much so that for many years this appreciation would result in 3 to 4 cups of the bean juice before noon. I could never have imagined starting my day with a cup of tea, even the black variety. There really is nothing like a hot cup of coffee first thing in the morning to make that 7am wake up call seem manageable. Whether it’s homemade or the perfect Americano at my favorite shop, coffee had always been what I relied on to get me through the morning.

The funny thing is that I was able to get away with consuming this clearly unhealthy quantity of coffee without experiencing any of the common side affects such as shakiness or headaches.

This daily coffee routine of mine went unchallenged until maybe a few years ago. What exactly happened is hard to say. What I can tell you is that it happened quickly and without warning. Suddenly, one morning after JUST 2 AMERICANOS my earlobes started to sweat and my heart appeared to be beating its way free from my chest. I thought I was having a panic attack, but it turns out that what I was experiencing was my body finally saying enough after the years of caffeine abuse.