Life after Annandale High: Fishing in India, and Other Events of the Past Week

May 4, 2014 – Fishing in India, and Other Events of the Past Week

I’ll start with a question: Why wasn’t Elliott thrilled when I brought home a freshly cooked meal yesterday afternoon? Answer: Because I was bringing him the three dishes I prepared in my Indian fish cooking class. Not surprisingly, he took one look at the Goan Fish Curry, Goan Fried Fish, and Tellicherry Pepper Prawns and decided that he’d have peanut butter on matzoh for lunch. Don’t worry, Elliott. You’ll have another chance to try these delicious specialties of southern India since I now have the recipes and I’ll be able to recreate them as soon as our kitchen is finished.

Some of the ingredients we used

The instructor for my cooking class, Devaki Das

Speaking of the kitchen, the work is progressing fairly well. The painting is finished, the recessed lights are in the ceiling, and most of the cabinets are in place. There have been a few unexpected issues that need to be addressed, but nothing major. The new appliances will arrive this coming week.

The kitchen at the end of Week 2

The weather has turned warm and spring-like, but instead of spending this beautiful Sunday afternoon outside, we stayed in the house to play the electric game. This is how it works: You start by turning on every single light and appliance in your house. If possible, plug nightlights into all unoccupied electrical wall outlets. Then, one at a time, you turn off the switches in the electrical control box. Each time you turn off a switch, you run around the house to see which lights and appliances went off. This game took us a couple of hours, after which I made a spreadsheet with all the information and drew up a diagram to go along with it. Now doesn’t that sound like fun?

Fortunately, some of our other recent activities have been a little more entertaining. For example, on Friday, we made a return visit to the PBS studios in Arlington. Elliott has become quite a celebrity there. Once again, we received an extremely warm welcome from the entire crew. On this particular occasion, we were thrilled to meet Gwen Ifill and to watch the taping of Washington Week in Review.