Th prompt for this Saturday is ‘Spoonful’ as per Linda. You can check out the other posts by clicking here.

I have absolutely no idea what to write about to this prompt except for the dish I cooked today: Achari Gosht (Pickled lamb). My friend from Pakistan had introduced it to me and I loved the succulent pieces of lamb marinated in yoghurt and spices. I cooked it after twenty-three years, today! I remember the first time I cooked it and served it for lunch, everybody loved it. But on the same day, my older daughter, then two years old had to be hospitalized because she had high fever. For some reason, I didn’t cook the dish after that. So, obviously, I had to check the net for the recipe to make it today. It said, ‘A spoonful of cumin, fenugreek, mustard seeds and a 3/4 spoon of nigella (black cumin) seeds. Grind it into a fine powder, make a paste with lemon juice and fill slit green chillis with this mix. Separately, chop onions and fry, add a spoonfull of ginger-garlic paste and add the lamb pieces with yoghurt and the masala you made earlier. Let it cook. Once it’s done, add the marinated big green chillis and some tomato puree.’ The dish is super-easy to make and is absolutely delicious- it’s tangy and has a burst of flavours.

As I promised, I’m going to share my progress on the resolutions I made for the year. One of twelve months has come to an end and it’s only right to do it now.
This week, I managed to do just 1 painting on my sketch pad. The painting is inspired by a painting by Dorofeev Hudojnik. It appealed to me because of the play of light and shadow, the rusted nails, the lamp, the glass window itself and the view of the outside from the inside.
I’ve painted this using watercolours on 160 gsm watercolor paper.

I’m grateful for another productive week. I managed to keep my resolutions – no eating chocolate (I wish I hadn’t made it a resolution because dark chocolate is actually good for your health), exercising everyday, and reading. I’m on my 4th book for the year and every book I’ve read so far this year has been absolutely wonderful. Reviews for these 3 books are here.

I also managed to blog and paint regularly. These were my January paintings.

I sent a few poems out for publication. One got published. Two others have confirmed that it will be published over the next two months. One got rejected and I’m still waiting to hear from one. I need to send out a few more. I find it tough because each publication has its own rules and then a long waiting period. Patience is definitely a virtue that writers need to have and embarking on this writing journey has been one neverending lesson on patience.

I also connected with friends like I had resolved. It’s so easy to disconnect when I get comfortable behind my laptop or with my paintbrush. But, it’s important to stay connected. And in today’s day and age, with all the gadgets at our disposal, there’s really no excuse not to connect.

I took the first step and sent out a message to a bunch of school friends I hadn’t met for over a year and we met last Saturday. I met another close friend from college, a few days before that and I returned rejuvenated. It’s what gave me the energy to reach out to the other girls. Thanks to Whatsapp, I managed to get in touch with two of my friends to whom I hadn’t spoken for over 6 months – one in Canada and the other in Australia. We had a video call and the six months faded away.
I was supposed to meet another friend who’s here. We were close in year 11 and 12, but then life happened. But then she fell ill and we couldn’t meet. So, that’s that.

I have just one door for Thursday Doors, this week. It’s the door of the cafe’ I met my college friend at. I forgot to take a picture of the other cafe’ we went to.

The FOTD for today, is this Shell ginger plant in my apartment block. I took a picture of these flowers and used Google finder to identify the plant.

That’s all from my side this week. Wishing all of you a lovely month.

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