Melting in Wisconsin

It's been roasting lately, so I haven't had much energy to post on the blog! Here are a few garden shots of the late-July flowers.

Weekend in the Windy City

We arrived in Chicago on Thurday night after Avinash got off work. The trip down was uneventful and we found our hotel in Addison, which was a Hilton Garden Inn. This hotel was a cut above our usual bargain basement hotel, and featured a HUGE room with two double beds, large bathroom, free high-speed internet, large bathroom, and kitchenette. It also had a pool, restaurant, and exercise room, but we did not check them out.

Friday morning we drove downtown, parked on Wacker Drive for the usual downtown Chicago fee of $27 a day, and walked to the NBC building where the Indian consulate is located. The Indian consulate has a "take a number" system to even drop off paperwork, but it wasn't a horrendously long wait for Mom to submit her paperwork and Yankee dollars for the visa. We were told to come back later in the day after their 3-hour closure for lunch? naps? processing? for the visa.

We walked all the way up Michigan Avenue to Water Tower Place for lunch. After a small detour at the Apple store, we browsed the shops and tried some samples from Lindt chocolate and "Teavana" (a tea shop). Both Mom and Ani liked the raspberry rooibos tea, surprisingly. They featured cast-iron teapots of varying attractive Chinese-type styles. We had focaccia sandwiches at California Pizza Kitchen, and then wandered back down Michigan Avenue toward the consulate.

We had to wait a little while for the visa, since we had arrived earlier than instructed (like typical Americans who cannot follow directions). Mom enjoyed seeing all the different ways the salwar-kameez and dupatta could be worn. After a while, he name was called and we headed back to the car. The weather had not lived up to the warm and pleasant forecast. It had started to rain and was cold and windy. We decided to investigate the Merchadise Mart (not very exciting) on the way back to the car. I made an emergency purchase of sweatshirt and exercise pants at Walgreens (the cheapest place) to cover up. I changed clothes at the parking garage, and we picked up the camera tripod. Then we headed south across the Chicago River to the Art Institute.

The Art Institute offers free admission on Friday evenings all summer, so we took advantage of that opportunity and saw as much as we could before closing time. We saw the major impressionist gallery, the armor gallery, and the South Asian gallery. We will have to go back sometime and see the exhibits more thoroughly sometime.

Next came dinner (at Subway, which surprisingly enough, was not at inflated downtown Chicago prices) and the long trek back up Michigan Avenue to the John Hancock buliding. This is not the tallest building in Chicago, but it is very high and they have just completed a renovation which made it more enjoyable than the expensive, time-consuming, and somewhat anticlimactic Sears Tower observatory. We also had some dollar-off coupons we have obtained on the street earlier in the day, and Mom qualified for a senior ticket.

Avinash, like all foreigners, loves big cities. He wanted to take some nighttime city photos from the observatory, and had brought his tripod along for that express purpose. He had a wonderful time capturing all views of the city, and his photos turned out very well.

After we descended, we made the long trek back to our car and the journey from the downtown to our suburban hotel. We were all tired, having walked about 8 miles that day.

Here's a nice photo of the city lights from Avinash's collection. There are some more photos here

Concerts on the Square in Madison

Here is the lovely Wisconsin State Capitol illuminated after the concert.









The "Cows on Parade" adorned the streets around the capitol. They were very cleverly done in Wisconsin themes.





Ani especially likes the jolly and crowded atmosphere of the concerts. It's not very common to see a crowd of 25,000 people in the USA!

Dosai

Linda had made some dosai batter the day before yesterday. The batter fermented quite nicely by yesterday evening, when we decided to have dosai for dinner. This time she used whole urad dal (urad dal with chilka) . We'd previously noticed that whole urad dal doesn't make any difference to the dosai. In fact, it gives it some much needed fibre.

We decided to try out our new Lodge cast iron tava. The cooking started off on a bad note. We wasted about five dosais before the tava was seasoned properly for the dosais to come off without sticking. I was on the verge of giving up on the cast iron tava when one of the dosais did not stick. My guess is that I will have to dedicate one griddle for cooking oily stuff all the time. I can't clean that tava very often (even though I don't use detergent or any other cleaning agent for cleaning cast iron cookware). We're thinking of buying another cast iron tava exclusively for rotis and other non-oily foods.

The whole urad dosai turned out quite nicely in the end. We also made some potato sago, using the MTR ready-made masala. The sago was also quite tasty. It was better tasting than the usual aloo masala that I make for masala dosai.

I will later write a more detailed post on my experience with cooking dosai and rotis on cast iron cookware. I've had mixed luck.

Suki Blog

Since Suki is here right now, the Suki blog is active. Check the Suki blog as well to see the latest from the Bhat household.

Backwards into Delhi

I'm reading a book which Mom lent me, called "Backwards into Delhi", by Bunny Knott. Mom thought I would enjoy the book, and indeed I am finding it immensely entertaining. Bunny Knott and her husband Ed are intrepid retirees who travelled to India for several months in the mid 1980s. Bunny is a cozy lady with a personality to suit her name. Her husband Ed is a very agreeable and pleasant man who clearly dotes on his wife. Bunny reminds me a lot of the character of Mrs. Pollifax - she is an optimist in some daunting circumstances, and delights in many of the same everyday occurances which I also experienced in my travels to India. Little experiences such as being offered a beverage while shopping, or waiting interminably for money to be changed are greeted with much pleasure and enjoyed fully. She is charmed by each and every Indian she meets, which I'm sure brings out the best in their behavior, too.

She also faces with great equanimity, if not excitement, some grisly things such as dead bodies lying on the sidewalk in cities (two so far in the book) and a dead bloated dog in the Ganges. She also is intrigued by Kali Puja ceremonies complete with animal sacrifices - so she's not your genteel normal retired lady.

Avinash and I have done many of the same things she details on our trips, especially since we also didn't do things the high-dollar way. Many things have changed in India since the mid 1980s, but much is the same. I think we stayed in the same hotel in Ooty as she did, and saw the same sights - but unfortunately, we did not see any trace of wild elephants at the madumalai sanctuary. There is much in the book which sounded very familiar in South India.

I did find it humorous that they took two rickshaws everywhere they went, but I think many of them were bicycle or hand rickshaws. We've always squeezed in two with luggage in one, but that's nothing compared to how many Indian schoolkids fit in an "auto". Avinash says at least one guy always has his butt hanging outside.

Independence Day

We celebrated Independence Day by attending the local fireworks display in Reedsburg, as we usually do when I'm on-call. Here's some nice photos Avinash recorded of the event using the "bulb" setting on his digital SLR.