Yesterday, the lady and I made the long, three-block trek to Aathi's place to learn how to make South Indian food... there were about six of us, and we each made a little something, everything from scratch:

• Potato podimaas (spicy potatoes with curry leaves, mustard seeds and fried daal)
• Palak paneer with homemade paneer made just the previous night
• Rajma masala (kidney beans with onions, tomatoes and lots of spices
• Yellow pepper, plantain, eggplant and potato bajji (spicy fritters)
• Chappathi (puffed wheat breads)
• Vermicelli payasam (spiced vermicelli pudding for dessert)

Delicious! Who knew cooking Indian food could be so much fun?

Click here to see the photos!

UPDATE: Aathi sends a poem from the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. We were discussing politics, and decided this poem was especially profound given the state of things abroad and at home:

My Country Awake

Where the mind is without fear and the head held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

—Rabindranath Tagore