Tag Archive | "Resources"

Friday Connections 27-11-09

Friday, November 27, 2009

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Friday Connections: a time when I give links and a bit of commentary to things I'd blog about if I had the time. This week the categories are mixed families, cross-cultural food, and gender inequality issues in India (with a really sweet video).

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My Hindi Language Learning Goals and Plan

Monday, November 2, 2009

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I've written briefly in the past about ways to learn a new language, but with my new Hindi Project pushing language learning to the forefront of my free time, I realize that I need to spell out exactly what my language learning goals are, and the timetable I'm setting to achieve them. A large part of the Hindi Project is accountability - and that requires specific details!

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The Story of India

Monday, January 5, 2009

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If you happen to be sitting around at home tonight, wondering what to do, PBS is presenting (in collaboration with the BBC) what looks to be like an amazing six-part series about the history and culture of India. I haven't had much time to poke around the website, but I'm told by a lazy Indian friend who spent the day watching clips from the series that it'll be fantastic. It comes on at 9 pm here on the East Coast, but the website says that there will be repeat showings of all of the parts of the series if you can't catch it tonight.

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Homecooked Indian Doesn’t Happen Much Here

Sunday, March 30, 2008

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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:

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