A smidgen to be smitten

“Look how sweetly he’s eating! എന്തൊ രു രസം !” my mother says as she puts a mushed up banana into our favourite baby’s mouth. She loves feeding people, especially when they’re eating happily. The baby in my arms goes through all sorts of movements to get to her hand, he dives, twists and pushes. 

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Four recipes make sense to me this way, I’d dive, twist and push for them. Unlike favourite baby, I never loved eating, and saw it as a chore. I’ve used this metaphor for love so many times that it feels familiar and sweet to use, but not stale. There’s not a lot of food I love like this, so I’m stingy with this love and I treat it with kindness. While thinking about writing for this piece, I wondered what made me find my family. The answer that first comes to mind is my favourite books; and the girls in them, but they feel like sisters, I didn’t have to look for them or find them. 

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Food has brought me closer to the finding part of the found family, that is always what I wanted these narratives of found family to be centred around. In a world that constantly prides itself on having found perfection, the perfect friend/resume/employment/skillset, the world doesn’t often talk about finding and making the friend/resume/skillset/employment. 

In that way, food is always a fully conscious process. No food stays constant throughout time. It moves in states— warm to cold, fresh to decaying, loving to bitter. 

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Writing this included conversations with people who are precious to me, an understanding of what food means to them, and how their relationship with food evolved with their families. 

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[MYSELF]- PAN ROLLS

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Pan rolls are a delicacy to be made the day before Ash Wednesday, one day before a 40-day period of fasting begins. They are sweet, rich, and uncomplicated. My memory of pan rolls resides in our older house. The kitchen opens into the hall. I sit at the corner farthest away from it, and yet the scent of roasted coconut and caramelized sugar travels smoothly. Pan rolls were a way to use up everything nice and rich before Lenten season started, put them all into thin pancakes and do away with that love for a little bit. 

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batter

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• 1/2 cup flour

• a few teaspoons of sugar

• 1 egg

• 1 cup milk

• vanilla essence

• 3 tbsp water

• butter

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filling 

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• 2 cups coconut 

• few teaspoons of sugar

• a little bit of grated nutmeg to taste