Gori Girl

Intercultural Families in the New York Times

In case you didn’t catch it, there was a news article today in the New York Times on interracial people, entitled Who Are We? New Dialogue on Mixed Race. Since many intercultural marriages end up producing little beings which grow up to have some of the issues discussed in the article, I thought it might be of interest to you guys here. The article starts off with the obligatory mention of how Barack Obama has churned up discussion on the issue of mixed races, and then transitions into discussing how interracial issues in America have changed in recent years. It’s a good, comprehensive piece, and I particularly like the bits that cover how parents feel about their mixed-heritage children. If the topic interests you, try checking out some of the links on the Intercultural Relationship Resources page here on Gori Girl for something a bit meatier.

Homecooked Indian Doesn’t Happen Much Here

A reader, Veronica, sent in the following question a couple of days ago:

My boyfriend is from Gondia and I wanted to learn to cook some food from that area of India. What kind of Indian food do you cook for your husband?

Heh, well, I guess it’s confession time here on Gori Girl: I can’t remember the last time I cooked real Indian food. Maggi? Sure. Ginger tea? It’s been known to happen. TastyBite or other yummy precooked packaged Indian meals? We’ve got a pantry full of ‘em. And we’ve got a kabob takeout place on speed dial.

But I don’t ever cook a full meal of real Indian food. I mean, I have in the past, but it’s not a regular thing at all. There’s a simple enough explanation for this – I’ve just never learned how to cook Indian food. When I grew up in California I had a lot of Chinese and Taiwanese friends and neighbors, so I can make a fair number of Chinese dishes. I’ve managed to pick up a few things from my Mexican, Japanese, and Korean relatives (yup, it’s a rainbow of colors at family reunions). But until I met Aditya I wasn’t close friends with anyone who could cook Indian food. Of course, given his limited repertoire in the kitchen, I still didn’t know anyone who could cook (much) Indian food after I met him either.

Nowadays, I mostly limit myself to adding Indian spices to change the taste of some of the dishes I already cook. Turmeric powder gets tossed into the stirfry, or garam masala is added to the sausage stew after it’s done. Actually, it’s a bit of a hazard for our friends who dine at our house without knowing this habit of mine – they’ll bite into the chicken pot pie, only to discover there’s a bunch of chicken curry masala in the sauce.

While this response might be a superficial answer to Veronica’s question (no Indian food is cooked for poor Aditya), it isn’t a particularly helpful answer for people looking to make some familiar food for their partners. This question actually comes at a particularly good time, as I’ve been thinking about trying my hand at real Indian cooking. So – how can you learn to cook Indian (or other, new-to-you) food? Let’s go through the difference resources available:

ICR Review: Love’s revolution

Every so often you’ll be seeing an in-depth review from Gori Girl about an intercultural relationship resource that might be useful to you. Shorter reviews can be found on the comprehensive list of resources on the page “Intercultural Relationship Resources.”