28 August 2007: Nanu Kannada kalliute dene.

Tonight after my Kannada lesson (during which I recited the story of our picnic the other day!) Dr. Srivalli and I made chapattis. Well, mostly she made and I watched. First she took chopped onions and potatoes and I think a green chili and mixed them with water in a blender. She had me chop onions and baby eggplant, which she fried in oil in a pot. She added the onion/potato mixture to the eggplant to make a sambar. Turmeric, hing (I think) and some other spice, a bit of salt, and I think some sugar at the end seasoned the stew. For the chapattis, she mixed wheat flour and a touch of salt in a food processor with water to form a dough. She had me make balls of about 2 inches in diameter, which she flattened a bit, folded in half, applied some oil, and folded in half again. She then rolled these out to a thin 8” circle, and fried them in a heated skillet until they started puffing. When I turned the chapatti over, I was to add a teaspoonful of oil around the edges. Voila! Simple, quick and delicious! We enjoyed our dinner over Kannada soap operas. The main one we watched kind of looked like a Kannada version of General Hospital. During the commercial breaks, we switched to a Hindi soap opera, featuring excellent crisis music and dramatic close up shots of people in a fire which had evidently broken out at a party – there were balloons everywhere. I finished my meal with one of those orange Indian sweets. I’m almost afraid to ask what makes it that color!