Sweet no matter how you spell it.

family, food and cooking, , ,

This week I traveled to the Washington D.C. area to visit Kate and her family, including little “Raj” whom I’ve mentioned before, now almost 17 months old. I had attended his birth in India, but now they are living here in Arlington, Virginia for a while.

So far I’ve just been hanging out — the Indian nanny Kareena is here, too, and my first day I walked with her and Raj many blocks to a park where the little guy could play on the swings and in the sand pit. It was a lovely outing; that day the wind was howling and seemed to blow off the heat and humidity quite a bit.

 

Today we needed to do a big shopping trip, including to the Indian market, Kareena’s first stocking-up since they arrived. That was so much fun. We all kept adding to the baskets over the course of a half-hour at least, spicy snacks and unusual vegetables, the favorite brand of masala chai tea, mango chutney, chapati flour and besan flour, which is chickpea flour, or gram flour.

When I was in India I wrote home about a confection that is made with chickpea flour, pronounced ladoo and spelled in English like that or in many other ways, as I’m discovering: laddoo, laddu, and even ladu, as I saw it today.

This word is also an Indian nickname for the first-born son especially, and sometimes more generally a term of endearment: “Sweet.” Kareena uses it for my grandson all day long.

When I was on my way home from India in February of 2018 my plane was delayed four hours before it even left Mumbai; at 3:00 a.m. I was wandering the airport shops looking for some comfort food that wasn’t entirely simple carbs, and I found a snack that had chickpea flour in the ingredients, and ghee. That sounded wholesome enough 🙂 and it was the most splendid treat. One version was on the shelf in the market today, and when we arrived home and were putting all our purchases away I saw that Kareena had bought a package.

About a year ago I spent quite a while researching recipes to make my own besan ladoo, and I have a few pounds of the flour in my fridge that I bought even earlier for some other recipe. None of these facts should cause anyone to hope that Indian sweets will ever come out of my kitchen. I can easily live without that kind of goodie.

But the curlyhead that we call Raj or Ladoo, he came to us already delicious and sweet, and I can’t get enough of him.

14 thoughts on “Sweet no matter how you spell it.”

  2. Please excuse my ignorance, but is Kate’s husband Indian? Or were they just living there for work reasons? I’m glad you have them much nearer now. One of my stepsons and his family live in Severn, MD, which is pretty close to D.C. It would be fun to try some Indian recipes, but I’m not sure I could convince anyone else to eat what I produce, lol. Safe travels!

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  8. GretchenJoanna,
    Here I am again after a rather long hiatus of blog readings, and I love hearing you have been on the east coast, my birth state, visiting your family. My daughter lives very near Arlington and we will be traveling there this weekend to visit with her and my three year old grand-daughter…excited!
    All so “Sweet”!

    Liked by 1 person

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