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Lorna’s Gin-spiring Prompt #2 – Autumnal Food Memories #Ginspired

The lovely Lorna over at Gin & Lemonade With A Twist Blog has started a new writing prompt.

She hasn’t named her challenge, so I have Lorna’s Gin-spiring Prompt!

This week, we have the words: Fall/Autumnal Food Memory.

Okay, so this isn’t going to be a post filled with thoughts of pumpkins… I’m Indian, Punjabi, remember! But not only that, my life has a huge Kenyan influence on it too since my parents were both born and brought up there. Then they married and moved here to the UK.

Stands to reason that my childhood would be littered with a real smorgasbord of international influences!

My autumn food memory is Ugali and Saag.

What the heck is that?

Yup. I hear you.

Well, ugali is my Kenyan influence. It is a type of maize porridge, almost polenta-like, as maize is an easily available grain to most folk out there. It is mixed and cooked, sometimes steamed. My mum would turn it out, and cut wedges of it to put as an accompaniment to the saag.

Saag is the Punjabi element, a spinach dish, highly nutritious and rather like the sukumawiki that is in the picture below. Sukumawiki is the greens based curry that the Kenyans would eat with their ugali.

But I’m Punjabi so we would have saag.

I remember the nights mum would make this dish and it was a full-on eat-with-your-hands experience.

We would take a small piece of the ugali, and roll it into a ball, like you’d do with playdough. (There are times when playing with your food is allowed!) Then we’d depress our thumb into the middle to create an indentation. This was our spoon, or scoop, which we would dip into the saag, and then devour.

Roll, press, dip, eat – Repeat!

It was such a warming dish, great to eat in the cooler evenings… I never learned how to make it and doubt that my kid would even try it, but we loved it.

Some of my other family would have ugali with a chicken curry too, but for me that was sacrilege! It had to be saag!

Thinking about it now is making me really hungry. I wish my mum was closer so I could make a special request!

Google Image of Ugali and Sukumawiki

https://ginlemonade.com/2018/09/09/coffee-fall-vibes/

Lorna’s Gin-spiring Prompt #1 – Sepia Toned Fall Memories

The lovely Lorna over at Gin & Lemonade With A Twist Blog has started a new writing prompt.

She hasn’t named her challenge, so I have Lorna’s Gin-spiring Prompt!

This week, we have a photo;

And the words Sepia Toned Fall Memories.

Thinking of the autumn (sorry Lorna, fall is just too American for me! It’s gotta be autumn…) that is fast approaching, (but not yet, because the last official day of summer is not until Sunday 23rd September) the first thing that comes to mind is leaves.

Nowadays, the beautiful golden hues are still sighed over, and appreciated, but quickly followed by a harrumph and sighing, as we have to sweep up our nursery playground on a daily basis, to get rid of the huge piles of leaves that have accumulated, due to the trees shedding their loads, and boy, do they have a lot of leaves!

But going back many years, I can still recall the joy of walking in the park, the leaves crunching underfoot. I remember the pleasure we took in kicking the great mountains of leaves, painstakingly collected by the park keepers (no machines in those days so it was all manual) only for us youngsters to scatter them once again!

We used to have two great sycamore trees in the garden of the house where I grew up. I loved the ‘helicopter’ seeds that fell from there. I remember my brother and I collecting them, then climbing to the top of the slide we had, and flinging them from a height, to watch them spiralling down.

Then we got older, and the duty of raking the leaves that had littered the lawn became our duty. It was only then that I appreciated the hard work of my parents who would have been keeping this garden clear for us in the past and the park keepers. I felt a little sheepish, thinking how we moaned about raking the leaves in a standard back garden, yet they would collect the debris from the park, acres in area.

I still love the colours of autumn. It is truly my favourite season, that time when the evenings are drawing in, and you can sit, snuggled up on the sofa with your loved ones, or wrap up warm, and go for a stroll, hand in hand.

Not quite warm enough for tee shirts, but still not needing to look like the Michelin man because of the cold.

The perfect time.