Assimilate or Salad Bowl?

Many of you are familiar with the debate as to whether people from another country should assimilate to the place they are living or continue with their own habits from home creating a salad bowl--different vegetables in the same bowl--. John and I had a very rich discussion about whether we are trying to assimilate or retain some of our "American" habits. Through the course of our day, we were able to come to some conclusions about our choices as we "live" in India for 6 months.

This morning I wanted to make pancakes for JJ and Ash, something we do on Saturdays or Sundays when we have time in the States. Finding all purpose flour is not easy in India. We could have bought King Arthur flour on Amazon India for $84 (I am not joking) (btw Amazon India has 1 day delivery and Prime is only $15) We opted for the Indian version of all purpose flour entitled Self Raising Superfine Flour (less than $1).  And I ventured into making pancakes with John's guidance of course. A very American thing to eat for breakfast. I thought to myself how hard could this be, I have made them 100 times in the States. At first it turned out to be doughy and goey and I was getting worried. I added some water and boom pancakes were made and they were delicious.

Yes. This is made in America. Could not find an Indian version:-(


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The kids rushed out the door to ride their bikes. And John and I did not know what to do with ourselves so we decided to plan for dinner. We decided on Keema (ground lamb with Indian spices) and puris (Indian puffed bread) since it looked like we would have a lot of time to make it. We looked up several recipes and then finally I was like  "I have made this dish 100 times too". We decided to just go with our intuition and headed to the grocery store for the ingredients. This also tasted amazing!

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So back to my original thought. Assimilate or Salad Bowl? I think we have chosen neither. I need to come up with a name that is in the middle. Do you have any good ideas? I wear Indian clothes out and address people appropriately in India, we are very kind and respectful to everyone. John makes tea for our cleaning people and we are very generous with the neighbourhood kids. We make a variety of foods at home and enjoy our Indian meals out. We do what is right and what our hearts feel rather than following a system that dictates what is right and wrong. We feel good about our actions and they are true to who we are and in the end, isn't that all that matters?

P.S.-I have shared a video of our Villa on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/brinda.tahiliani
I was unable to share it on this Blog b/c the file was too big. It is a complete walkthrough of our place if you are interested.






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