El Supermercado

#217

Or ‘le supermarché’, if you will.

We have a WFM aka Whole Foods Market, which is two blocks away, and is 30000 sq. ft. huge! We’ve only been there a couple of times now and have to combat decision fatigue every time we visit the store, though it’s getting into a more auto-pilot mode if it’s a repeat ingredient. From the super long aisles to the varied assortment of each type of item to the categories of different items (fresh produce vs processed vs frozen veg) to the self-checkout mechanism - this place warranted at least an hour’s worth of time even if our list only had a handful of items in it. 

The various departments in this massive store included - grocery and produce (fresh fruits and veggies), processed aisles for pureed tomato, soups, and sauces, frozen food (cooked stuff like frozen pizzas, frozen Mac ’n’ cheese, frozen burritos), frozen vegetables (in chopped format), several compartments in the refrigerator for different kinds of cheese, bakery and dairy items (separate compartment for vegan dairy products), cold (fizzy) drinks, and more. There were also body care items, beer and wine aisles, cereal aisle, meat and seafood, vitamin supplements and protein powders, and more!

A lot of the time went in figuring out which of the obscure-sounding regular items were the closest to Indian vegetables. For instance, there were red, white, and yellow onions - all bigger than the ones we get at home (see image for size comparison) - the red ones are the ones that resemble the purple-ish onions we get in India, while yellow onions are a tad sweeter, and white is mainly used for soup (like French onion soup). Similarly with tomatoes, you had tomatoes on the vine (more expensive, but also contained higher water content so probably had to be juiced and used), organic tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes (one of the largest varieties), cherry tomatoes, slicer tomatoes, and the Roma tomatoes, which is what we identified as the best alternative for our Desi naatu thakkali (tomatoes that are just the right amount of sweet and sour, whether they feature on a sandwich or in a gravy veg or in rasam/sambar). Lemons were as big as oranges, and of course, the corresponding lemon squeezer were bigger too. The Indian lemons are known as limes here, are greener, sourer, and more expensive.

Buying frozen, pre-washed and pre-chopped veggies in order to save time while cooking during weekdays was a good piece of advice we got. It indeed was helpful as I was able to make sambar rice and other similar one-pot dishes with veggies and rice in under 15-20 minutes. The only caveat is remembering to keep the frozen veggies out to defrost for at least 10-12 minutes. 

After 2-3 trips to WFM, we behaved like slightly seasoned shoppers, managing to pick the right kinds of fruits, veggies and dairy from the lot. Yogurt with 1% milk fat in a green container, as opposed to the orange, seemed like the closest to Indian curd, did not try making curd from milk yet due to the subzero average daily temperatures. With the colors, we could also relate to the green vs orange packets we use to get from the milkman, green meaning lower fat or cream content than the orange (blue -> green -> orange -> brown, order of lowest to highest cream percentage).

Another thing we had to newly learn apart from the above was the art of scanning to bill each item, paying for it, and efficiently packing it in bags (each bag costs 8 cents, so we started carrying our own reusable bags). In the self-checkout kiosk, scanning the barcode for labelled items got easier but for fruits and veggies, we had to weigh them on a scale after selecting the right item. It was slightly trickier initially because we kept going back to the aisle to figure out whether the avocados we added to our cart were medium hass, large hass, or organic medium or large hass avocados - each priced differently! Self help is usually the best help, but sometimes we had to ask for assistance, especially when we were blocking the line behind us trying to fumble with things for the first time.

All in all, it felt like a good experience actually going in-person to the supermarket and handpicking each item after 2+ years of ordering everything online via Swiggy’s Instamart. The bonus was an additional ~2-3k steps per visit!    

Gum Wall

#216 

We visited the Pike Place Market recently, which is one of the main tourist attraction spots in Seattle. In one corner, we entered an alley known as the Gum Wall. Inspired by the Bubblegum Alley in California, this brick wall covered in used chewing gum was unintentionally created in the 1990s. Downtowners (and others) would come and “decorate” the wall with their colorful, bubblelicious chiclets!

In 2009, this place was listed as one of the top 5 germiest tourist attractions in the world. In 2015, the Pike Place cleaning authorities spent 100+ hours to clean 1000+ kgs of gum, but people covered the wall almost immediately post the cleanup. As you can see in the photo, might make for a good photo and attraction but might be best to visit there with a mask and get out of there as quickly as possible. 

In conclusion - Ewww! 

Kitchen Attempts

#215

Faced with a new kitchen layout since day 1 - daunting but not so daunting. I was excited to try my hand at cooking in a new country with different produce and ingredients. Thanks to a colleague who helped us with an initial lot of Indian items like turmeric, tempering ingredients (mustard seeds, cumin seeds), ghee (clarified butter), tur dal (TIL it’s called ‘pigeon peas’ in English), basmati rice, sesame oil, tamarind, dosa batter, and shredded coconut, we were able to make home food for a few days such as sambar rice, mixed vegetable with gravy, rasam, and tomato onion dal. Going to the supermarket (there’s a WFM aka Whole Foods Market a block away) was also an equally time-consuming task due to the sheer number of choices of every single thing, but let me save that for a different post.

Initial days, it took me almost an hour to figure out what pots and pans to use to cook (we had limited cookware at first) for which item, where to cook each item (there was a grill oven, a microwave oven, the stovetop - gas, not electric, thankfully, and an electric rice cooker), and how long things would take (good to keep enough buffer in case things don't work out or take way longer, which they do most of the time). So, the first day, it took around 50 minutes to cook 1 mixed vegetable, rice, and dal but two days later, I was able to make mixed vegetable, rice, dal, and rasam in under 30 minutes. I went with the same menu to get accustomed to making the same thing in lesser time. 

Apart from the new appliances and veggies, the knifes were slightly different too - sharper, but sturdier. Felt like I was in a Masterchef kitchen operating the cutlery. I was also able to make decent small-ish dosas using a pan (due to lack of tawa/flat pan). We were able to enjoy yummy dosas (see above image) for breakfast for a week with home made molagapodi (aka gunpowder, a dry-spiced powder made from mixed dals and chilies).

Overall, it is slightly different to cooking in India because of more appliances to help with simultaneous prep and more space in this house, but like I said earlier, it takes longer to cook despite the parallelization, probably due to the cold weather.

P.S. I had titled this post ‘kitchen struggles’ but thought of renaming to a more positive word to give myself motivation to keep trying. Experimenting is fun!

Sirens Galore

#214

One of the things we had to get accustomed to here (apart from pretty much everything else) was the sound of sirens every 30 to 60 minutes. Be it an ambulance, a police vehicle, or a firetruck, involving one of what they call the PD (Police Department), FD (Fire Department), or MR (Medical Response). They all have similar-sounding alarms. 

At first, you become conscious to every siren but over time, habituation kicks in. Habituation, in psychology, is defined as “growing accustomed to a situation or stimulus, thereby diminishing its effectiveness”, or a more technical definition: "habituation is the reduction of a behavioral response to a stimulus after repeated presentations of that stimulus". Even while WFH, people in meetings are used to it by now.

One of my colleagues mentioned that people from the lake front migrated to the interiors during the pandemic, which led to the Downtown area becoming more unsafe in the recent times, perhaps why we hear more frequent sirens nowadays despite staying southwest of that area. 

Fun fact: most sirens have a one-mile radius, but some louder sirens can be heard from two miles away!

Random note:

The washing machine here sings for a while when it’s over. Probably its way of showing happiness for having completed its job! :) 

Stay safe!

Sleepy in Seattle

#213

After several nights of contemplation, and a year of trying to get a work permit to work in the US, we’ve finally made it! Made the move from a 35 degree Celsius (95 degree F), sunny city to a 50 degree Fahrenheit (10 degree Celsius), rainy, gloomy one. Battling few days of jet lag, “midnights” literally “became my afternoons”[2]. Though the entire day looks and feels pretty much the same, we needed to get our sleep times fixed and start working from Monday onwards.

Almost everything’s different - from the size of the dishes to their flavors (yes I’m gonna type in American spelling from now on) to the water to the spellings to the weather to the way people greet each other to the culture and diversity to the prices to the socket type to the driving direction to the metric system and several other things! There are fun parts and there are challenging parts. How to have fun while tackling the challenging parts is the main objective.

In our first week, we tried Mexican cuisine at Chipotle, Thai at Thai Ginger, Italian at Tutta Bella, Pizza at Zeek’s, and a vegan salad at Evergreens. No matter what, Chipotle will always rank #1, in terms of the price, portion, and flavor, probably because of its similarity to Indian cuisine (rice, beans, spices and sauces, spice level, and veggies). We're averaging 10,000 steps a day just by walking to different places - as long as you have your woolen gear on, good shoes, and the will and proclivity to walk, you will enjoy exploring the city. We shopped at Target and WFM (Whole Foods Market), spending the first thirty minutes in bewilderment of new kinds of things like rainbow carrots and new types of fruits and veggies, and the latter thirty fumbling with self-checkout. Well, there's a first time for everything, and following John 16:24 ("Ask, and you shall receive"), we have asked for help, and promptly received useful assistance and gotten by.

Week 1 verdict: so far so good. Accomplished quite a number of things related to house and work setup, meeting a number of people, and purchasing winter wear. Looking forward to a more productive Week 2.

Notes:

1. The title references Sleepless in Seattle, a rom-com movie starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan

2. “Midnights become my afternoons” - 2nd line in Taylor Swift’s song ‘Anti-Hero’ from her latest album Midnights