I am not a big fan of everyday tedious cooking but I love to cook. Contradictory as it may sound, I hate cooking tedious vegetables and lengthy protocols because between me and the husband, only half enters the pot. We eat everything from half baked paruppu to pachai kai gari, good only! So no cooking for almost smashed veggies. On an everyday basis our food consists mostly of dhal, roti, karis, simple sambhar rasam rice, grilled veggies, quinoa, pasta, wraps blah - all simply made, no extra spice/masala, cheese, bake or time to it. Thirty minutes straight, its done including the cleaning part. But atleast one or twice a week I get the cooking veri inside me. My husband has innumerable names for that mood and I cook kanda menikku. It peaks when there is external pressure, like my mom for a week was bugging me for not doing varalakshmi nombu properly (Yes the black sheep I am!). So I decided to go full fledged for Krishna's. I had this elaborate lay out for thattai and therati paal. Therati paal - my absolute favorite. Just the combination of milk solids and sugar can create this wonderful texture, like grated condensed milk all over. It also reminds me of all nice ocassions. Like my perima would always prepare this transfer it to a clean ever-silver dabba and hand it over to the samandhi family. That would be the single hand made thing amongst others on the plate. She claimed that it was the easiest thing to make and all you need is milk (It is not easy, it needs constant kelarification for hours but great results). It reminds me of cousins sitting around gossiping with sticky palms from the theratti paal. So the time I met my sister after she was pregnant, I made this for her. Yesterday for Krishnar, I decided to make it with half a gallon of milk. (Way too much, it took me four hours to make and probably forever to finish eating it). But while I was making it the aroma of milk filled the air, I had MS singing giridhara gopala in the background, with white baby feet in perfect imprint and the husband trying his best to thattify thattai for me. That second I felt a sense of belonging. This is the home I have created from everything imbibed in me for so long. For that minute alone I did not miss anyone.
PS: I wrote only about theratti paal because thatai became pooris for dinner, and that too after extensive trouble shooting from Chicago to Dallas. Really nice pooris though!
