Winter Vegetables

One of the things I love most about winter is the vegetables available. All the vegetables I love are available. Peas and cauliflower especially. Of course potatoes which are available all year round and which I cannot live without, being Irish to the core and practically reared on them.

I never ate radishes in Ireland but I like them now. They are lovely when you grate them and cook them in potato curry. You can make a great variety of stuffed parathas - my favourite food - in the winter. Stuff them with potato (of course), cauliflower, radishes - the list is endless.

What on earth am I talking about? I won't be going anywhere near a paratha anytime soon. At 47, I have been attacked by a severe case of middle aged spread. In order to return to my former svelte avatar, I must learn to eschew fried foods (like parathas) and embrace salads. No problem. Winter salads are just as delicious as summer salads. We may not have so many cucumbers, but yes, we have radish. Those root vegetables like carrots taste great in salads if you grate them and add a little vinegar or lemon juice.

So salads in winter it is, then. I can hardly wait! Really.

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Kipling Got it Wrong! Or Eastern and Western Culture - Reflections

What Is Culture?
I’m opening this blog post with a question. What is that elusive concept which is commonly known as ‘culture? Culture is way of life. How we live. What our values are. Our customs, attitudes and perceptions. And also, I suppose, how we express ourselves in art through, such as music, dance, theatre and cinema. It’s quite a comprehensive area and not too easy to define, really.

The Journey
I was born in what is commonly known as ‘the west’. I lived in Ireland for the first thirty years of my life. When I was thirty, I married my husband and came out to India to live here with him. That was the beginning of an interesting journey, which is still evolving. I must have had some east/west comparison stereotypes in my head. But in India, I found that the people I met had huge stereotypes in their heads about what they called ‘western culture’ and ‘western way of life’. Not long after I arrived in India, I was struck by the number of people who said things to me like ‘in the …

The Climate in my Hometown LBC Post

I am originally from Dublin in the Republic of Ireland. We have a maritime climate, neither too hot nor too cold. Cool, wet winters and warm summers. We get the odd freak weather condition, like several feet of snow, once in a while to make life interesting. Pretty ideal really.

Now I reside in Lucknow in north India. In the Indo-Gangetic plain. Cold dry winters, roasting hot summers and a humid rainy season. It seems like it's always too hot or too cold. Or too humid. Humidity is something I dread. It brings itching, rashes and all of that. Okay, too hot will work for me. So will too cold (although I hate dry cold, that's energy-sapping). But humidity is .......not at all good. And that's a euphemism if ever there was one,.

I wish to dedicate this post to my beloved and erudite rakhi brother Rummuser, who suggested this topic.

And thanks to freedigitalphotos.net for the above illustration, 'Paper Weather Icon Illustration' by SweetCrisis.

The Loose Blogging C…

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Five Ways Social Media Has Changed Our Lives

By Maria March 01, 2017

Has social media changed the way we live? You bet it has! I’ve been in India for 22 years and have visited home in Ireland maybe half-a-dozen times. The biggest challenge about this, for me, has always been coping with the difficulty of making contact with old friends and family. However, that’s all over now, thanks to Facebook. I check my phone every morning and read that uncle Ned in Dublin is furious over the biased referee in the boxing match or that my cousin Paula in Dublin went to see Take That in concert (or whoever!). I speak to my cousin Veronica in Scotland every few days thanks to WhatsApp. We haven’t spoken this frequently since we wrote to each other as kids. Social media has definitely changed our lives forever. I can think of at least five ways that social in which it has affected life as we know it.

Social media makes the world more accessible to us. This is a fact. The world is at your fingertips. Find out which of your friends and family are on Facebook and once you …

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