Who says we cannot make some time to enjoy with our family and friends even in the midst of such tight schedules and deadlines to be met. Get together with friends and family can be fun and inexpensive. At the same time we may be able to acquaint the younger generation with some of our traditions and impart some moral and ethical values.
Well the Monsoons have brought in heavy rains, which made us keep to our homes. So this week end we made most of it. My niece loves corn on cobs like me and this being the season for it, we wanted to have little get together and enjoy it.
Starting with the monsoons, the corn on the cobs are sold in the markets. They are very tender now. Unlike the sweet corn, our Indian corn is not sweet but still tasty. It is generally eaten by roasting over coal and dabbed with salt and lemon juice. These days we have our street corners, picnic spots and markets filled with vendors selling these roasted corn. Some of them even visit our residential areas with push carts laden with corn cobs. We can choose the one we want. the cobs are then de husked and roasted over coals to our liking. He than dabs it with salt and lemon juice. It is really yummy to eat hot roasted cobs when it is raining and chill out side. It is also quite healthy.
So, on Sunday afternoon, my niece wanted to try her hand at roasting of these cobs on coal. I used a clay tray filled with red hot coals, as I don't have the traditional clay stove which is used for cooking with coal.
We had fun sitting on the floor around the tray (it kept us warm) roasting corn cobs, talking about our school and college days, how we enjoyed roasting these corn cobs, potatoes, poppadoms, sweet potatoes, jack fruit seeds on coal and eat it with our friends and cousins. We also watched Ice Age - we all love it and don't mind watching it a hundredth time.
Every Saturday afternoon all of us friends used to meet at my place and enjoy such snacks. Or else I used to cook some new dish which was tested by them all.
It was the same when I used to visit my aunts or my Gran. In the after noon, all of us used to sit in the open veranda in the back yard. My Gran used to roast the cobs on the coals in a big mud stove constructed with mud bricks and coated with clay and cow dung. All of aunts, uncles, cousins and friends visiting us would have a great time. Women would sit in a group and gossip about their in laws, recently performed marriages in the family, or the arrival of a baby or clothes and ornaments. Men would have their own group talking about, politics, sports and current affairs. We children used to eat more than our quota by pinching a little from mom or dad and end up with stomach aches in the night, with lot of scoldings from our elders. But my Gran used to have her home remedy ready to pacify us and put to sleep. by next time we would forget all this and be ready to stuff ourselves again with corn cobs.
Hmmm my niece was so very happy that she could roast the cobs herself. She was bouncing up and down as if she landed with a great jack pot. She listened to all our child hood memories. It was really fun to bond with our family. My niece learned the traditional way of roasting the corn cobs and enjoyed it too. That did not cost us much but achieved a lot.
How we roast the corn cobs the Indian way, you can read it here:
Happy Monsoons to all of you.
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