On the Joy of Being a Hero

A couple of Snake Stories
and a delicious recipe for Red Velvet Cookies (sans red food coloring)

A few days ago, my husband and I were with some friends in the parking lot of a restaurant when we saw a small well dressed group of people looking excitedly at the ground. We got closer and saw they were looking at a tiny snake and were concerned that either a bird would get it or it would get run over by a car.

As they were debating about how to rescue it, one of the men pulled a pair of pliers out of his pocket and bent to pick it up to, presumably, move it to safety. I couldn’t believe my eyes! How could picking up a snake of maybe 12-14 inches with a pair of pliers be a good thing?

Who carries around a pair of pliers in their pockets, anyway?
“Maybe he’s a dentist?” my husband asked hopefully.
What is this? The 14th century? Do dentists whip out pliers at the street corner when someone complains of a toothache and then quickly yank their tooth out?

But I digress. I watched in horror as the pliers neared the beautiful creature though I appreciate the sentiment of trying to safely move an animal without getting yourself killed.

“That’s a sharp-tailed snake,” I said, and swept it up with a pair of fingers, walked over to the side of the road and put it in a hedge.

“Look at you, picking up the snake,” one of the ladies in the group said, half admiringly. I realized I should have thought about this and come up with a better way of not outshining the gentleman who was trying to do a good deed. What if he was on a first date and trying to impress the woman? But I wasn’t really thinking, and sharp-tailed snakes are somewhat common where we live.

For some time now, I have had this dream of sweeping in and rescuing a screaming crowd from a snake attack. As a librarian, oft have I had to step in and break up fights, eject library villains, deflect miscreants, and so on. But most of these incidents just leave a nasty taste behind and rarely result in any glory. So I guess I keep hoping for that big moment on the spotlight.But since I am not particularly athletic, I can’t see myself outrunning a purse snatcher, diving into cold water to rescue a drowning lad, or prying a person out of the jaws of a crocodile (though I know now, you go for the nose, not the eyes). A snake just seems a manageable fiend, especially since I have had so much experience with them, and since there are so many people that are terrified of them.

My husband has always been a big fan of snakes. He is constantly picking up snakes and bringing them in the house. When the children were little he would let them touch snakes so often, that I was actually a little concerned that here, in California in rattlesnake country, the kids would not have any healthy fear of even venomous snakes and could get bitten.

But our children are both safely grown up now and fully understand, respect, and actually like snakes (well maybe our daughter more than our son). Over the years we have had many fun experiences with snakes, but some stories stick with me better than others.

Once when our children’s elementary school was having a picnic at a park, a large snake was spotted in the grass nearby. It was a snake about 4 or 5 feet long. Panic ensued and children, parents and teachers started screaming and climbing up on benches and tables. My husband did not hesitate. He leapt over a table, picked up the snake (which he recognized as not venomous), swung it around over his head like Indiana Jones (this I am just imaging), and tossed it into the bushes. He had saved the day!

I, unfortunately, was not at this picnic, but for the rest of the year, I heard about this swashbuckling rescue over and over again. It was wonderful for the children! And for me too.

I want to be that kind of hero too. After my parking lot snake incident was over, I was kind of disappointed at having lost my chance at derring-do.

Adoring crowds after the incident – 0
Number of videos of me rescuing the snake – 0
Number of videos of me disposing of a snake with my bare-hands that got posted on social media – 0
Number of opportunities to bask in glory missed – 1

However, I did my heroic deed today – by trying to invent a good recipe for Red Velvet Cake that does not use that awful artificial red food coloring. For people who are allergic, or detest, the red food color, I think I could be a hero.

As always – my cooking is about healthy options. I used roasted beets for the red color as beets turn a gorgeous deep red when they are roasted. Wrap the beets individually in foil and roast in an 375° oven for 40-60 minutes depending on the size of the beets. When they cool a little, rub the outer skins off and then mash or blend in a blender to get a smooth deep red paste.

My cookies are not the electric red of store bought Red Velvet Cakes, they are a dull red, but they are definitely much more delicious. The cookies have slight cake-like texture.

Since I always cook with a diabetes diet in mind, I used very little frosting on the cookies.

Please credit me and/or my blog, if you share/publish/use this recipe. Thanks!

RED VELVET COOKIES

Ingredients
1/2 cup roasted and finely mashed red beets (2 large or 3-4 small red beets)
1 tablespoon cornstarch

1 1/4 cup unbleached white flour
2/3 cup whole wheat flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder – unsweetened
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 1/4 cup sugar
2 eggs

1 tsp pure vanilla

Cream Cheese frosting
Blend together:
4 ounces cream cheese (1/2 packet)
1/4 cup unsalted butter – pre-softened (1/2 stick)
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp pure vanilla

Crushed walnuts (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350°.
Grease your cookie sheets.

Stir together the mashed roasted beets and cornstarch.

Sift together the flours, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt.

Beat the butter and sugar until light.
Add the eggs and continue to beat till pale yellow and light.
Add the beets and beat for a few seconds till just mixed in.
Mix in the dry ingredients and then spoon into 1 inch balls on the greased baking sheets.

Cookies1

Bake for 18-20 minutes.

Cookies2

Cool and decorate with cream cheese frosting and sprinkle crushed walnuts on the top (optional).

Frosting1

Please credit me and/or my blog, if you share/publish/use this recipe. Thanks!

What key ingredient did you leave out of the recipe this time?

When we were growing up we rarely ate out at restaurants. There were many reasons for this. We often lived in rural areas miles from towns and with no restaurants nearby; we weren’t terribly rich; but most important of all, my mother was an amazing and creative cook who could make any prepared foods we purchased, much better at home.

This was long before the days of the internet and recipes usually came out of women’s magazines. I don’t remember my mother clipping recipes and don’t think my mother had eaten at any non-Indian restaurant till her early middle-age. But she had this amazing capacity for presenting a beautiful and delicious version of any dish she had heard or read about. Sweet and sour pork. Pasta dishes. Donuts. Bread pudding. Trifle. You name it.

Living so far from big cities, we also didn’t have a lot of the ingredients that exotic dishes called for, but my mother had improvisation down to a fine art. She was endlessly creative in what she fed us and put on the dinner table. And I was amazed as I grew up and began to travel to realize how authentic her flavors were.

My sisters and I often ask my mother for recipes and we have a standing joke among us that she will always withhold a key ingredient so no one can make a dish as well as she can. But I realize the problem is not that she doesn’t tell us all the ingredients, but it’s that people who don’t use written recipes depend on their intuition, smell, sight and taste when cooking, as well as making adjustments as they go along.

I too, tend to be a creative cook, and love to experiment with new recipes. When I eat something new and interesting, I must try to recreate it. If I eat something, and don’t like it, I’ll try to find a way to make it better. And I also endlessly create new recipes.

Caramel Custard was one dessert my mother made very regularly, and alternated it with another version that is like a bread pudding. We had these desserts at least once a month as we were growing up, and for me are a big nostalgia inducer.

When I first moved to the US in the early 1980’s, I remember calling my mother and asking her for her bread pudding recipe. I didn’t really like the bread-y American version. Here is what she said. “One cup milk. One egg. One slice of bread. Sugar. And a pinch of salt.” Then she added, “If you don’t use bread, use 2 eggs, and adjust everything to taste.”

I went on to make Caramel Custard one of my favorite and signature dishes. I discovered also over the years that there is a Mexican version called “flan”.

One adjustment I made to my mother’s Bread Pudding/Caramel Custard recipe, was to make a version with orange juice instead of milk. I had been fascinated by the big jugs of real orange juice that were in every American grocery store, and would enthusiastically buy them, and look for ways to use them up.

This Orange Flan or Orange Caramel Custard is one my favorite inventions from almost 30 years ago. It is light and delicious, and I usually make individual flans so they are a small and refreshing dessert. This is also really easy to prepare as I never bother separating yolks or all those other steps that custards call for. Just mix it all up. 😊

So, as I say to my own daughter and son-in-law (and anyone else who uses one of my recipes), use my recipe, but “Adjust to taste.” **

Jayanti’s Orange Flan (Orange Caramel Custard)

Makes 6-8 small flans or one large flan.

For the Caramel
1/3 cup granulated white sugar
1 tsp unsalted butter

Place the sugar in a heavy bottomed pan over low heat, gently shaking the pan until the sugar is melted and turning light brown. Turn off the heat and divide the caramel into the 6-oz oven-safe bowls or a 6-cup baking dish.
Let it cool for 10 minutes. The caramel should harden. Gently butter the baking dishes. Don’t worry if the caramel cracks. Set aside.

Ingredients for the flan/custard
2 cups pulp-free, unsweetened orange juice
4 eggs
A pinch of salt
½ cup sugar (or adjust to taste)
I inch cube ginger grated and juice separated from the fiber through a tea strainer (or ½ tsp powdered cinnamon)
A pinch of cayenne pepper (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Take a large oven-safe pan that is at least 1½ inches deep and that can accommodate the ramekins or the baking dish, and fill it with ½ inch of water. Set aside.

Beat the eggs well with the sugar.
Add the orange juice, pinch of salt, ginger juice (or cinnamon), and cayenne pepper (if used).
Blend well and divide between the prepared bowls/ramekins or baking dish.
Carefully place the flan dishes in the water and move into the pre-heated oven.

Bake for 25-30 minutes.
Check the flan after 25 minutes. Custard should shake a little but be set.
Take the flans out of the oven. Cool to room temperature and then refrigerate covered for at least 3 hours.

To unmold, run a sharp knife along the wall of the dish. Tap gently so the flan shakes loose, place a serving plate/bowl on top of the dish and invert quickly. The flan should slide out easily.

You don’t need to add any topping, but if you must, crème fraiche goes well with it.

Enjoy!

**Also, please credit me/my blog if you reference this recipe in your own work.

If Pumpkins come, can Soup be far behind?

You have heard me talk about how hard it is for me to throw away any food. It is even harder to discard any vegetables that we’ve grown ourselves.

I have to stop by the plants in our small homemade greenhouse before I leave for work each morning, and have to check on the vegetables as soon as I walk in the house after work. These are typically grown from seed sprouted at home and watered with rainwater we collect ourselves during winter.

Most people carry around pictures of their children; my phone’s memory is full of pictures of my vegetables taken from various angles and reflecting their various moods. It is easy for me to see the terror on people’s faces as I wax eloquent about my okra or Manganji peppers or my oddly shaped carrots and start reaching for my phone, but that has never stopped me.

So you can see why it might be hard for me to throw away anything that has grown in our garden. But given the limited space in our freezer and my refusal to can vegetables, we can get a bit harried sometimes as vegetables come at us faster than we and our friends can eat.

Compounding our challenge, we can’t even get rid of the volunteer plants our dedicated composting produces. We have been getting volunteer pumpkins in our garden every year, and this year we got some amazingly large pumpkins in our garden. I have been stretching my creativity and, among my various creations, came up with this easy and delicious pumpkin soup hat even uses the carrot greens that I never knew could taste so good.

So here you go: the recipe for my totally yummy
Roasted Pumpkin Soup with Carrot Greens Pesto

Ingredients:
– 3 ½ to 4 cups of peeled, seeded pumpkin or butternut squash or acorn squash cut into 1 inch cubes
– 1/2 white onion cut into quarters separated
– 1 large yellow/orange/red bell pepper (or 3-4 sweet peppers) seeded and cut into ¼ inch pieces (Use yellow, read or orange, rather than green, to preserve the integrity of the color of the soup)
– 2-3 cloves garlic roughly chopped
– ¼ cup light olive oil
– 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
– Salt to taste
– Sugar to taste
– 2 cups milk (vegan substitutions okay)

– Carrot greens pesto
– Heavy cream (vegan substitutions okay)
– Carrot leaves for garnish

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 375F degrees.
Toss the pumpkin cubes, onion, bell pepper, and garlic in olive oil and spread on an oiled baking tray. Bake for 25-35 minutes or until the squash starts getting soft and just lightly brown and caramelized on the edges.
Take the tray out of the oven and cover with foil and let sit so the cubes continue to cook in the steam under the cover. Let cool till easy enough to handle. (Can be prepared in advance.)
Blend squash with the roasted pumpkin mixture in a blender (or food processor) until smooth and no lumps remain. Return to soup pot.
Add 2 cups of milk. Mix well and heat on medium heat. Add salt to taste (Flavor will come from the pesto and the soup should not be too salty). You may need to add some sugar depending on how ripe the pumpkin/sugar is.
Serve in individual bowls. Gently add 1 TBS of carrot greens pesto (see below) followed by 2 TBS heavy cream in the center of each bowl and garnish with the tops of carrot greens.

Carrot Greens Pesto
(A delicious and healthy use of those carrot greens).

Ingredients:

2 cups roughly chopped carrot greens with the thicker stalks removed
½ cup basil leaves
1 large clove garlic
2 TBS pine nuts and/or walnut pieces
2 TBS lemon juice
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper
¼ tsp red chili flakes (or skip if a milder pesto is preferred)

Preparation:
Blend together until smooth.

If you plan to use this pesto with pasta, you can add 2 TBS Parmesan cheese while blending.

Repurposing those Ornamental Pumpkins into Pumpkin Bread Pudding

I have talked about this before, the difficulty I have throwing anything away. I have been gradually weaning myself away from my attachment to clothes I will never wear again, toys that my children loved (but I probably loved more) which will be completely obsolete when and if I ever have grandchildren, and books that are worn out and dog eared.

But food is a whole different matter.

I still find myself forcing that last piece of food down rather than scrapping it. I find it hard to appreciate a finely carved Jack-o-lantern. All I can think about is the fact that a big huge pumpkin will go uneaten! Carved pumpkins start rotting and growing fungus almost immediately, so putting them to any reuse beyond composting is not an option.

So this year I was very pleased with myself when I hit upon the idea of cooking with the ornamental miniature pumpkins I always buy around Halloween. This idea struck me when I ordered pumpkin bread pudding at a restaurant a few weeks ago. I dislike pie crusts, so eating pumpkin pie (or any pie) in public is usually an ordeal for me. I love the filling but have to agonize over wasting the crust and being seen as a boor and wasting food, or eating the crust and risking gagging in public and insulting the chef.

My mother used to make bread pudding very regularly when we were growing up and it has a very special place in my heart.The bread pudding at the restaurant that day was delicious, so making pumpkin bread pudding was my perfect Thanksgiving alternative. Plus, I had saved all these bread crusts I had cut off the bread when I served stuffed grilled sandwiches a few weeks back. I had planned to make them into breadcrumbs, but this was even better.

Once I had decided that I was going to repurpose my ornamental pumpkins after Halloween, I consciously chose the larger ornamental pumpkins for my decorations.

The smaller ones might work, but I suspect that it would be so much work getting any flesh out of them, that they are best consigned to the compost heap. The good news is that our compost heap has been giving us so many volunteer squashes and pumpkins that we have been well supplied with food from that pile all through this fall.

So here is a delicious pumpkin bread pudding I made with ornamental pumpkins and leftover bread crusts and heels.

Pumpkin Bread Pudding

1 cup cooked mashed pumpkin (you can use the canned variety)
3 eggs lightly beaten
1 cup pure heavy cream
½ cup milk
½ cup sugar
A generous pinch of salt
½ tsp ginger
½ tsp Cardamom powder
½ tsp Cinnamon powder
¼ tsp ground cloves

5-6 cups cubed white bread crusts and heels, or cubed heavy bread like sour dough
¼ cup chopped dates (optional)
3 oz melted butter

Preheat the oven to 350°.

Gently mix the bread cubes (and dates if used) with the butter in a 9 or 10 inch rectangle oven proof dish and spread them out. Don’t press the cubes down too firmly. You want some pieces sticking up for a beautiful look and some crisp pieces for texture.

Blend the rest of the ingredients together well and pour over the bread making sure you get some of the mixture on the cubes, even those sticking up.

Bake in the center of the oven for 35-40 minutes or till the top is golden and an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Serve warm or at room temperature with unsweetened or very lightly sweetened whipped cream.

Cooking your pumpkins.

Preheat the oven to 375°.

Cut the pumpkins in half and scrape out the seeds and any fibrous bits clinging to the inside.

Place the pumpkins cut side up in a pan with ½” of water. Cook for 10 minutes and then flip the pumpkins over. Cook for another 15 minutes or until the pumpkins begin to look translucent and cooked.

Take the pumpkins out and let them drain for about 5 minutes.

Scrape the flesh out of the pumpkin shells with a teaspoon.

If you leave about 1/8-1/6” of pumpkin flesh in the shells you have beautiful bowls to serve a pumpkin soup in. But you may need to use pruning shears to clip the pumpkin stems prior to cooking so they stay flat.

Enjoy the fine art of living the good life!

Sharing good times and recipes

Having common interests is not so much the basis of a successful relationship as having things you do and enjoy together. For my spouse and me, travel and food are among the things we enjoy sharing the most. We will pretty much go anywhere and try most any food – cooking it or eating it – as a couple. And though I know I can sometimes get a little competitive in my cooking (if my husband cooks something I usually cook and does better than I would!), cooking is one of the most relaxing activities for me.

I also always challenge myself to take common recipes and to make as healthy a version of them as I can by reducing fats and adding whole grains, vegetables, etc. Usually keeping my son’s Type 1 diabetes in mind.

So when I heard my sister Ranjana raving about my sister Nandini’s “Shrimp with Kaffir Lime Leaves”, I had to find out more. Nandini is an amazing cook, and cooks really fast too. She often cooks unusual and complicated Indian dishes that are completely beyond me. But this recipe sounded easy and quick, which, for me, is how cooking should be, if at all possible. Plus I adore the smell of kaffir lime leaves in food.

My husband and I were planning a quick trip to visit our son at the university where he is a PhD student. I always carry food when we visit our children, and listening to Nandini describing the recipe to me over the phone, it sounded as if we had all the necessary ingredients at home and I decided to try this recipe out. We also had all kinds of squashes and chili peppers growing in our garden. I love cooking Thai pumpkin curry so I decided to merge the recipe and our home grown vegetables.Needless to say, our son, who usually sees us arriving with cookies and other dry comestibles, was extremely pleased when I handed the container of fragrant food to him.

I am sure most Thai people would object to my calling this a Thai recipe, but I think the look and taste were close enough that I will call it

“Thai Style Pumpkin Curry with Shrimp”

Ingredients:

2 lbs shrimp cleaned, washed and drained
2 ½ – 3 cups peeled cubed pumpkin, butternut or acorn squash
¾ -1 cup red, yellow or orange bell pepper cut into ½” slices
½ cup sweet onion cut into ½” slices
3 cloves garlic finely grated
2 tsp salt divided or to taste
2-3 tsp brown sugar or to taste
½ -1 tsp red pepper
½ tsp turmeric powder
10-12 Kaffir lime leaves
2-3 thick chili peppers seeded and sliced lengthwise – jalapeño or serrano
1 can 14 oz coconut milk (unsweetened)
3 oz (1/2 small can) tomato paste
3 TBS canola oil or some other vegetable/peanut oil

Add the garlic, red pepper, turmeric and 1 tsp salt to the shrimp. Mix well and set aside.

Mix the coconut milk and tomato paste well together. Set aside

Bring 1 cup of water to boil in a sauce pan. Add the pumpkin and 3-4 TBS of the coconut-tomato paste. Stir well and bring back to a boil. Cover and cook on medium heat for about 5 minutes till the pumpkin is barely cooked but not soft. Set aside.

Heat the oil on high heat in a large flat bottomed nonstick pan.
Add the shrimp and sauté on high till the shrimp turns opaque and starts getting golden along the edges.
Add the onion and bell pepper and continue to stir and sauté for about 2 minutes.
Reduce heat to medium.
Add the coconut milk-tomato mixture, the chili pepper slices, and the pumpkin in its sauce to the pan.
Add the sugar (if used) and the remaining alt and stir well. Bring back to a boil.
Cover and cook on medium heat for another 5-6 minutes or till the vegetables are cooked but not soggy. Stir occasionally and make sure it is not sticking to the bottom or burning. Add a little water if necessary.
Add the kaffir lime leaves, stir and take off from the heat. Cover and let sit for about 5 minutes before serving.

Delicious!

Everyone has a burkini story. Sort of…

Hijab

As a family we love to travel and experience new and different cultures. By that same token, we have also hosted several high school students from several different countries, and are active volunteers in supporting the local chapter of one of the larger high school student exchange programs. So when I was invited to participate in a retreat for some college students from Pakistan, I took the opportunity happily.

Now the organization that was organizing this retreat was a different one from the one we volunteer at, but I knew that it was a non-profit with State Department affiliation and I felt pretty confident that I knew what to expect.

So my first surprise at the event was when I heard a local staff member remark very disapprovingly about one of our local university student volunteers: “Can you believe how she is dressed? We told them not to wear spaghetti straps.”

Well! Here we are in California, in a hall full of some 200 people sweltering in the heat, and you are complaining about a young woman who is tearing around helping people, because she is dressed for the weather and really not immodestly by local standards?

“Oh well,” I thought to myself. “If they had given the volunteers a dress code in advance, I suppose it’s okay to complain. But certainly no one had sent me any such guidelines. And, incidentally, I don’t see anyone complaining about all the young male volunteers running around in shorts.”

I soon began to feel really hot in that hall myself and took off the light sweater I had been wearing. About 5 minutes later an officious sounding woman bustled over to me and said: “We are requesting that all women keep their shoulders covered,” and tried to hand me a shawl.

I was dumbfounded! I’m a slightly overweight middle-aged woman with a prominent birthmark on the back on my shoulder. I never wear spaghetti straps!

True. I was wearing a sleeveless blouse, but the armholes were cut magyar style so,they actually covered the tops of my shoulders. Of course, I was not about to make a scene there. I politely refused the shawl and just put my sweater back on.

“But what about the young men wandering around in shorts?” I wanted to ask. “What about the lone young Pakistani woman, who is wearing a tank top and whom you are publicly shaming by making all the invitees and volunteers cover up? (This girl later talked with me passionately about her desire to create a nonprofit back in Pakistan that would support women who want to be different and would encourage them to express themselves as they wish, so they would not have to always conform to repressive standards. Shouldn’t we have been setting a better example for her?)

“What is wrong with us dressing to American standards at a simple non-religious event for students who are here to learn about American culture?” I wanted to ask. “Oh, and by the way, if you have a dress code, maybe you should have told me about it when you were inviting me to participate.” But of course, I wasn’t about to make a scene. Which is precisely why people get away with being jerks and imposing their false moral standards on others.

But this was just par for the course at that event.

Earlier in the day while having lunch someone began to tell a story about one of the hijab wearing students. This young woman was placed at a university in the South and one weekend her dorm roommate invited her to go home and stay overnight with her family. On reaching the house, the girls were greeted by the American girl’s mother who was surprised to see a hijab clad person on her doorstep. She immediately balked at letting her enter the house.

How could she know if this was a girl or a boy under the hijab, the mother demanded to know. So while the two girls stood there in absolute shock and humiliation, the mother insisted on inspecting the visitor’s passport. On being satisfied at the gender she then insisted on checking the girl’s suitcase for bombs. Only on satisfying herself that there were no bombs in the bag would she agree to let the visitor stay at their house.

While all of us listening to this story were about to express our horror at this treatment, the lady who was telling the story continued on, describing how traumatized this young lady was and how she had been crying and sharing this story with her group. “But I told her,” she said, “Not to feel bad. Everyone has to put up with treatment like this some time or other. I told her how when I was younger I used to be quite overweight and people were always making remarks about it. Then I lost weight, and now people make remarks about how I am such a high maintenance person because I always like to be nicely dressed and like to do my nails.”

This lady’s words may not have been exactly these, but that was the gist of the story.

I was so appalled at her response to the experience of the young hijab wearer that my ears and face were buzzing with the blood that rushed to my head. I couldn’t believe that this woman who was, incidentally, absolutely gorgeous to look at, that this woman would equate her weight issues, would trivialize the trauma of having your gender challenged and your luggage checked in a friend’s house, with a “Me too” story of this sort.

I looked around the table and everyone was looking completely aghast or acutely uncomfortable (I’m guessing the uncomfortable ones avoiding everyone’s eyes had already heard this story before) that this was the level of support and empathy we were offering a visitor to our country.

I finally broke the silence by saying quite mildly, “I don’t think the two things are the same,” and left.

I was a visitor too at that event, and had to behave as, I have no doubt, the poor hijab wearing girl had to also. Did she stay the weekend, I wondered. Would she have had the means of leaving on her own if she did not want to stay? Was her overall experience in the US a good one or did she leave with that experience imprinted forever in her mind? And the poor daughter of that mother! What kind of relationship would she ever have with her mother again? And, though civil discourse must always be the norm, I really must remember never let an opportunity to protest unfair treatment pass me by.

Good food is a vital part of the good life.

Good food is a vital part of the good life – What are parents of diabetic children to do?

One challenge that faces all parents of Type 1 Diabetics is how to feed your kids in a way that balances nutrition and taste. Of course, this is always a challenge for parents, particularly if you have fussy eaters at home. We were among the lucky: our children were always gracious about trying new things and eating everything with the rest of the family at home or when we went out, no matter how unusual the dishes were.

So when our son was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes (T1D), or Juvenile Diabetes or Insulin Dependent Diabetes, it was a shock for us on many levels. The first shock we received was right in the ER as our doctor shared the diagnosis with us. Our 5-year old daughter, who was also in the room, was the first one to comment . She very matter-of-factly and with great seriousness said, “He will have to eat snacks regularly now.” We all looked at her in amazement. “You are right,” said our doctor. “He will have to eat snacks regularly through the day to maintain even blood-sugar levels.” We didn’t even know she knew what diabetes was! It turns out one of her classmates also had juvenile diabetes.

Frankly, till that point I had had very little interest in diabetes, and only thought of it as a disease that some people got later in life or sometimes due to poor eating habits. So when our son was taken ill and hospitalized it was an eye-opening and highly traumatic week for the entire family. But more about that experience another day.

We had to learn very quickly about checking blood sugar levels, administering insulin, and “counting carbs.” Carbohydrates became our draconian taskmaster. The confusing instructions the doctors at Stanford had given us didn’t help one bit. Maybe they were trying to simplify things for parents, but all their talk of “choices” and serving sizes, and about balancing fast-acting and slow-acting insulin with the recommended amounts of insulin with carbohydrate intake and exercise, had us reeling.

I remember with deep chagrin that first meal we gave our son when he came home from the hospital. We forced him to down this ridiculous amount of Kraft macaroni and cheese because it was on the doctors’ list of carbohydrates that were premeasured and met the recommended carbohydrate intake to balance the insulin plan the doctors had charted out for him. He gamely ate it all. As I said, our children were always good and polite eaters.

I realize that this was wrong on so many levels, not the least being the fact that this was a boy with a very sophisticated palate who rarely ate boxed macaroni and cheese at home, and definitely not when he was feeling crummy or definitely not as a celebration on coming home alive after a close call with serious ketoacidosis.

As time went by, we became adept at measuring carbohydrate content and balancing fast-acting carbs and slow-acting carbs. Nowadays nutritionists talk about the glycemic index, which I like better. We became very good at weighing the amount of food our son was eating and adjusting the amount of insulin he was taking, as opposed to using recommended serving sizes, or reading labels and forcing food into him to match food intake with a preplanned insulin amount. (This is an oversimplified description of the process, but basically we changed how we focused on managing the balancing act.)

Since we cook a lot at home, after we returned from that fateful trip to the emergency room and hospital, we gradually became very good at monitoring the carbohydrate content of the ingredients we use. Carbs, we realized, were almost everywhere, not just in sweet foods. We became aware of the importance of protein and fiber in balancing carb content and slowing their absorption. We also made ourselves the promise that we were not going force our son into giving up all the delicious foods we were so fond of cooking and eating. We would find a way to make them more compatible with his diet, make them delicious, and the whole family would continue to eat the same foods together as we had always done.

To this day, even though our son is no longer living at home, we continue to make “healthy”versions of everything we eat at home. We use whole grain and high fiber choices. We reduce the added sugar. We add proteins and nuts to many of our standard recipes. We use healthy fats. Almost always with excellent results.

My now grown up daughter’s husband often teases me about my touting my preparations as “healthy”, but they are, in my not so humble opinion, always healthier, or less unhealthy, than the version you would get elsewhere. So I think it is fair to call them healthy.

Here then is my recipe for a cookie that is based on one I found on the Werther’s site. I experimented with it and have come up with this cookie, which I admit is high in sugar ( you can use a sugar substitute if you wish), but it is an example of the delicious and “healthy” cookies I love to invent. Your challenge is to stay within a healthy serving size!

20160814_163943

Jayanti’s Sweet and Salty Butterscotch Cookies

Ingredients
1½ cups all-purpose unbleached flour
1½ cups whole wheat flour (you can adjust the ratio using more whole wheat and less white flour. I also often replace ¼ cup flour with wheat germ, or replace 1/8 cup with flaxseed, etc.)
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1 cup unsalted butter (at room temperature)
2 eggs (at room temperature)
1½ cup light brown sugar (Feel free to use a sugar substitute of you prefer)
1½ teaspoon pure vanilla
45-50 Werther’s hard candies or 9-10 oz (250 gms) of any hard butterscotch candy including sugarfree varieties, roughly crushed (I unwrap the candies and place them in a plastic bag, and use a meat tenderizer mallet very easily and effectively, without powdering the candies too much.)
1 cup dry-roasted, lightly salted peanuts roughly crushed

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 F.
Prepare 2 baking trays by lining them with parchment paper. You need the parchment so the candy does not stick to the baking trays.
Sift together the flours, baking powder, and salt.
Beat the butter and brown sugar together. When light in color and texture, add the vanilla and eggs and continue beating till light and creamy.

20160811_181440

Add the flour mixture and mix gently.
Add the crushed candy and peanuts. At this point the dough can get pretty stiff so I treat the dough like a bread dough and mix it with my hand, but being careful not to over mix.
Gently roll the dough into rough 1½ inch balls and distribute them on the parchment lined trays. You should have 40-45 cookie balls.
Dough

Bake for 15-18 minutes depending on how brown and firm you want the cookies. (You may wish to switch tray positions after about 12 minutes to get more uniformly baked cookies.)
Cool and serve. They are delicious!

20160811_192133

The cookies will be crisp the first day, and get a little softer over the next couple of days. But they continue to be delicious.

Efficiency is the enemy of weight loss

Week 47
135.5

Efficiency is the enemy of weight loss
or
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree

Though Thanksgiving is a holiday that is built almost entirely around food, and though I love to eat, somehow Thanksgiving food has always been less than thrilling for me.
Turkey? I’ll pass, thank you.
Dressing/stuffing? What’s the point?
Pumpkin pie? Just the filling please.
Mushy sweet potatoes? Okay. I’ll concede that’s pretty good.
Green bean casserole? Don’t ever feed an Indian blandly cooked vegetables.

Actually food flavors are always taken up a notch in our family (and that includes my in-laws), so I can’t really complain. We always have fun pushing ourselves to make the food taste more interesting. My mother-in-law makes a great dressing, but we hadn’t had it in a couple years, so this year I decided I would try my hand at it.

One of the ingredients of dressing is dry (but not stale!) bread. So on the assumption that lightly toasted bread would be a good option, off to work I went using the toaster-oven to dry out some bread.

I was getting the next batch of bread ready for the oven, when I heard my daughter ask incredulously, “Do you have the bread on top of the oven?”

“Well it’s really hot on the top and I thought it would save time” I mumbled. (And more importantly, “Why waste the heat?” I said in my head.)

“We do have a toaster also, you know,” pointed out my ever practical daughter.

Very true. I moved across the kitchen and tried to fit three slices of toast into the one (large) slice toaster slot.

And suddenly, the realization. I am turning into my father!

IMG_20151127_171309848
Breakfast in our house while growing up almost always included toast. And my father was always in charge of the toast. My father, who never met a broken toaster he couldn’t fix with a bit of wire or piece of scrap metal. No neighbor or relative was ever allowed to throw away a broken toaster. Give him a few hours and my father would have it working like new. And at breakfast time my father would have our toaster humming and popping out toast at a rate worthy of a Guinness Record.

At breakfast time my mother was in charge of the porridge, the half-boiled eggs, the sliced fruit and cheese, and buttering the toast. My father made the toast. He cut up the slices of bread so the slot that was supposed to accommodate one (large) slice of bread would be filled with one and a half slices next to each other, and additional half slices balanced on top so no heat was wasted and so that the largest number of pieces of toast were delivered warm to the table at the same time. A pretty good system actually.

When I was in the 5th grade my father went out of town for a work study course. “Work study” nowadays refers to a semester of practical work related to your college major. In those days, it was the expression used for efficiency.

Back in the sixties, India was still recovering from colonial rule and there was much effort to prove Indians could do just as well as, or better than, the British. All kinds of innovative programs were being tried out. The training program my father was attending was a military program, and being the military, they didn’t do anything in half measures. It was a three-month course! Who on earth does a three-month course in efficiency?

Maybe it was just an opportunity for a wonderful holiday getaway for the bright stars of the Indian civil service. Or, more likely, for the organizers, since the class was held in the beautiful Himalayan foothills in a town called Mussourie. (Only near the Himalayas would you say that a place at an altitude of over 6,000 feet is in the “foothills”. But I digress.)

The Indian government was working hard to improve standards all around and my father left my mom in charge of the household, the four girls, the dog, the cows, the chickens, the garden, and the household help, and went off for this work study/efficiency class. The course was followed by a practicum at a munitions factory in Dehradun, another gorgeous resort town in the foothills. He came home three months later with three beautiful traditional dancing dolls for my sisters, and a cute wooden bobble headed doll for me that I immediately named Little Eva. He also brought home a whole set of newfangled ideas.

Suddenly, my father, who in the past had spent almost every minute at home with his nose in a book (he rereads Moby Dick about once every other year), was keeping a close eye on what we were doing at home with the exacting fastidiousness of the nuns in my school.

Clearing the table after dinner? Make sure you pile as much as you can together so you don’t have to make three trips. Waiting for the water to boil for a cup of tea? Do something while you are waiting. Always use the shortest route and most productive path! Minimize the effort required to do a job. Park as close as you can to your destination. Don’t ever go from one spot to the next empty handed. And so it went. To this day, almost 50 years later, my father will catch one of us doing something inefficiently and say, “Work study, my dear. Work study.”

Perhaps these exhortations struck a chord with me more than anyone else at home, but I took them to heart. This efficiency goal got pretty well ingrained into me. Maybe it appealed to my innate laziness, or my ADD which my daughter often points out, but I became an expert at minimizing the energy used for any job. I am completely adept at picking things up with my toes so I don’t have to bend. A pencil, a book, dirty laundry. I can slip my shoes off, pick them both up and place them on the top shelf of the shoe rack in one fluid motion using just my toes with monkey-like grace.

I also find it almost impossible to sit still and wait. Waiting for food to warm up in the microwave, even for a minute or two can be agony. At work, I always time my coffee cup refills with the need to go to the bathroom so I don’t have to wait and watch the water drip into my mug. Before a party, I will pop something under the broiler to brown, and rather than just stand there for just the 3 minutes it takes, I feel obliged to run and check my e-mail, or start unloading the dishwasher. Often with very bad results.

As a new immigrant early in the 1980s, I was struck by how devoid the streets and roads in the US were of people walking. Every once in a while, I would see someone running, seemingly aimlessly. I asked my more seasoned immigrant husband why they were running. “They’re jogging,” he said. “”Where to?” I asked in all my irritating innocence.

I soon came to understand that jogging was a form of exercise. I understood, but didn’t quite understand it. In India, sometimes you ran on the playing field. But generally when you ran, you were trying to catch a bus or escaped poultry. When you ran, you were running from an angry dog or a charging bull. When you ran, you were trying to escape a sudden cloudburst of pouring rain. Why would anyone need to just run for exercise, and then jump in the car to go 5 blocks to go to the store to pick up some eggs?

But I when in Rome….

Soon, I was walking nowhere if I could drive. I took the elevator when there were perfectly good stairs around. While I can’t normally stand still, I would get on an escalator and just stand there instead of continuing to climb them while moving. This worked well for the first 25 years. But suddenly menopause and cellulite began to creep into my life. I watched the needle climb on the bathroom scale. I had been a steady 100 lbs. from my teenage years through my children’s teenage years, with a couple of swings upwards during my two pregnancies.

Now suddenly my weight was no longer my weight, but that of some chubby visitor to my house. But I still am not about to take up some aimless jogging. I have decided to use the opportunities that daily life presents; with the exception of vacuuming — because I am culturally unable to vacuum. Feminist or no, in our house vacuuming is a man’s job. Or rather, the job of the person who grew up with vacuum cleaners around him from his childhood.

But truly. As someone serious about losing weight, I have missed some great opportunities to keep moving and exercising in the house.

At some point, I had become 150% of my earlier weight. I was a woman and a half! Expressed like that, it gave me some real incentive to try to improve.

With a little conscious effort, I can walk 2-3 miles a day just doing my everyday work So here are some tips to myself:

– Stop trying to park in the spot closest to the store. The problem is, I can hardly help myself. If I park far away from the entrance at the grocery store, I find myself strategically parking the car near the cart return. But that’s okay I suppose – because I always make a point of returning carts to the cart corral. No free range carts in parking lots because of me, ever.

– Use the networked printer at work, so I have to walk to retrieve my printouts.

– At home, I remind myself that it is a good thing to bring the fresh laundry up the stairs in two or three trips, instead of piling the clean clothes and linen so high that I can’t see where I am going.

– And stop berating myself for somethings I will never be able to change. It will always be hard to sit still and watch TV or a movie at home. I feel obliged to be doing something while I watch – ironing, cutting vegetables, cooking, sorting through junk mail. Anything. But that’s okay. It fits neatly with my health-without-too-much-effort plan.

– And best of all, I make a point of always bending down to pick up my shoes when putting them away. This may mean distancing myself from my simian ancestors and a certain loss of prehensile skills with my toes, but it is helping with the weight loss goal.

So. Sorry, dad. There are some times, when I am going to occasionally be inefficient and ignore that childhood mantra that pops up in my head every so often, “Work study, my dear. Work study.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sometimes living the good life makes it really hard to live the good life

Week 6:
141.5 lbs

As early as the second week of this project I had added some new goals to my list. One of them was to go through the letters of the alphabet reading classics. This would be living the “good’ life in every sense of the word. I have always loved reading classics so no great hardship for me this.

Yet, nothing irks me so much as people assuming that as a librarian I must read all the time, and that I became a librarian because I love to read. Nothing could be further from the truth. I do love to read. But I am not a great reader.

I read in fits and starts. If I like book, I will go through it rapidly, choosing to read it over a host of other options of things to do and definitely over slogging over unfinished chores. If I can’t find a book I like, which is a lot of the time, I will reread old books. I will never finish a book I don’t like. I can think of no bigger waste of time (unless there is some compelling reason like it was assigned for a class or assigned by my book club group. And in the latter case, many of us will give up after a valiant attempt if we don’t care for the month’s selection.)

But, at any rate, I did not become a librarian because I love books.

When I first came to the US, I definitely was under the assumption that my husband and I would be traveling around the world for a while and then would return to India to settle there. How wrong I was. Here, little children, is one of the 55 reasons I can give you why you should not marry your high school sweetheart after years of being apart and only communicating through letters. You really don’t know each other at all. Of course, thanks to the advent of the internet, social media, texting and Skype, I don’t suppose anyone will ever be in this situation again. Now we know people we have never met face to face so well, that we could be miles and countries apart, without being able to tell the difference. Unless Russia decides to chop through the underwater internet cables, and then I suppose all bets are off.

But, at any rate, I did not become a librarian because I love books.

I was in the US and, being Indian, the obvious assumption was that I would not pass up this opportunity to get a degree from some hallowed institution. In those days, having a degree in English literature (instead of an engineering degree) was already a big strike against me in Silicon Valley.

I sat down and seriously thought about my educational options for a few minutes and narrowed it down to two choices: Journalism and Library Science, both of which were degrees that were available to me at the local university.

Pros:
Journalism – I loved to write and had a degree in English
Library Science – I was terrified of being in a new country and perhaps being in a library meant I could be in a quiet corner somewhere cataloging books and not having to talk with anyone.

Cons:
Journalism – I might end up as a reporter having to run around all over the place, driving on the wrong side of the road, talking to people I didn’t know or understand.
Library Science – I didn’t know the first thing about libraries in the US. (It wasn’t until much later I realized just how wrong even my meager my impressions of libraries in the US were.)

I began to agonize about my choices. At this same time, just a few months after my move to the US, my husband and I were already getting on each other’s newlywed nerves. He was a brilliant engineer and usually a pretty nice guy. I was a supposedly smart woman, but terrified of everything around me. There was nothing I could do to make him proud of me. For me, winning the approval of people around me was all I had ever wanted.

After one very fun evening visiting with some of his friends we had come home and had just parked the car and walked in the house, when he turned to me and said, “When we go out, if you can’t talk properly, just don’t talk.” I was so shocked I didn’t know what to say. I knew I had this singsong way of speaking that irritated him, but it wasn’t a choice I had made and no one had ever held me responsible for it before. Well, there had been one incident, but more about that later.

Growing up we sisters had never fought with each other and I could not recall hearing my parents argue. I had never learned how to deal with disagreement or adversarial situations or arguments, simply because I had never needed to. I had been a debater in college, but that was different. It was never personal.

So I looked at my husband in stupefaction. I should have picked up a book and chucked it at his head and asked him what the hell he expected of me. I should have asked him if he was drunk or high or both. I could have started a full-fledged fight when we could have aired our feelings and laughed it off. I suppose I could have done all kinds of things to save my marriage. But instead, I just shut down. I was done trying to please him.

The next morning, we were discussing my choices for college. He made some remark about how there was more prestige in becoming a journalist. Boom. And just like that, my choice was made. Librarianship it would be.

Childish? Yes, of course. It could have ended very badly for me. But as it turned out, despite my complete misconceptions of what libraries really are about in the US, there couldn’t have been a better career for me.

So back to reading. And back to a year of living the good life.

I would read a classic novel every 2 weeks (doable) – preferably one I have not read before. But I gave myself some leeway in this. I also tried to stay with shorter novels to make it easier to reach my goal. 26 books. One year. Perfect.

Here is the somewhat ambitious list I made for myself:

A – Adam Bede (George Eliot)
B- Bride of Lammermoor (Walter Scott)
C- Cakes and Ale (W. Somerset Maugham)
D- Dubliners (James Joyce)
E- Ecce Homo (Nietzsche)
F- Far from the Madding Crowd (Thomas Hardy)
G- The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
H- Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)
I- Indiana (George Sands)
J- Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
K – Kim (Rudyard Kipling)
L – The Land that Time Forgot (Edgar Rice Burroughs) – only 82 pages – Yay!!!
M – Main Street (Sinclair Lewis
N – A Nancy Drew book (Carolyn Keene) – since I have never read any of them
O – Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway)
P – A Perfect Spy (John Le Carre)
Q – The Quiet American (Graham Greene)
R – Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier)
S – The Sun also Rises (Hemingway)
T – A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)
V – The Victim (Saul Bellow)
W – Walden (Henry David Thoreau)
X – Xala (Ousmane Sembene) (This was a hard letter of the alphabet)
Y – The Yearling (Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings)
Z – Zen in the Art of Archery (Eugen Herrigel)

Needless to say, 5 weeks later and I have already fallen behind on my reading project. I had placed a hold on Adam Bede and lost a week waiting for it. Oh what an excruciating book! My policy is to never finish a book I don’t like. But here was a book from my list. Did I have to finish the book?

I realized two things too late.
First – I don’t have to read the books in alphabetical order. So even if I force myself to finish a book from this list that I don’t like (and the jury is still out on this), I can put it off to the end. So much time lost. Sigh.
Second – I can download the book free from Project Gutenberg and many other places. No need to wait for my library to send it to me. Hah! I am actually an excellent reference librarian. I would never have made this mistake while helping a library patron. I would have encouraged them to find options so they didn’t have to wait.
And third – Yes, this is in addition to the two things. I also realized that you can look for most classics on your Nook or Kindle. Just sort by price and you will find the free copies at the top of the list.

So here’s my final decision. I will read through my list as the mood takes me or when I can find the books instead of in strictly alphabetical order. I may also switch books in and out of the list if the mood so takes me. I’ sorry Adam Bede. You may have to go.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Notes:
Project Gutenberg is a great source for downloading free books without violating copyright laws. http://www.gutenberg.org.

Now in week 46, I am sorry to say that thanks to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, many of these Public Domain projects may be negatively impacted.

Also as an aside: Deciding on your choice of career when you are a new immigrant suffering from culture shock is like grocery shopping on an empty stomach. It’s a bad idea. Don’t do it.

Is overeating a bigger waste than throwing away the extra food?

Week 35 135 lbs

I’ve got to stop wasting food! I can’t believe how much food we throw away. Green vegetables and herbs are constantly turning into mush in our crisper drawers. Bananas turn into black colored fruit fly magnets. Rice and yogurt become cultivation labs for brightly colored molds and bacteria.

I recently read that ⅖ of all food grown in the US is wasted.*

Growing up in India, we never wasted food. Since we always ate foods that were freshly prepared, my mother cooked in precise amounts and served us our meals. We ate what we were served. Everything that was cooked was finished at the table and leftovers typically went to the extended household help or to the poor people that were always nearby.

It still is very hard for me to throw away any food that has been cooked and/or brought to the table. This makes losing weight a challenge, as most foods I prepare can’t be cooked in number-of-people-to- be-served times serving-size quantities like, say, hamburgers or hot dogs. So I find myself eating all the leftovers.

My aunt once said to me, “Don’t you think overeating is a bigger waste than throwing the extras away?” I was shocked to hear her say that. But as I began to rationalize all the repercussions of overeating — obesity, high cholesterol, diabetes, and the cost of managing those ill-effects — this began to make sense. Yet, emotionally I cannot adjust my eating habits based on this logic. This means, I have to simply do a better job with my shopping and cooking quantities.

I will stop buying food just because it catches my eye or because it is new. As I have said before, I never a saw a new item in the store that I could simply walk by. Of course, this isn’t all bad, because it has meant our kids will eat almost anything – or at least try almost anything at least one. And both our children have grown up to be complete foodies.

Our daughter Nisha recently texted me: “I feel like eating liver!!!!!” Not because she felt like trying liver, but because she genuinely loves eating liver and hadn’t eaten it fora while. Apparently, it is not a common occurrence for children to send their mothers this message in the middle of the morning. Who knew?

As I have mentioned before, this desire to try any new and interesting looking food combined that with my difficulty asking for help can have less than happy results like the persimmon incident when my throat almost closed up on me and my tongue felt like it was coated in the worst way for the rest of the day. Needless to say, I couldn’t ask anyone about it and couldn’t admit to being stupid, so I just spent the rest of the day hoping I wouldn’t die, or worse, that I wouldn’t get explosive diarrhea.

This was in the pre-internet days. Now, I try my best to look up all new fruit and vegetables before I actually ingest them.

One of my favorite fruits is one that I discovered after I moved to the US — the nectarine.

I love nectarines and usually cannot buy them in moderation. I bought 10 huge and beautiful looking nectarines at the farmers market the other day. The lady at the stall offered us a taste but neither Nisha nor I wanted to be bothered with that extra step. As you might expect, they turned out to be so sour that Nisha made some very dramatic shudders and grimaces. But that girl is so graceful can make any move look beautifully elegant.

My talent is that I can turn any fruit into an amazingly delicious and, usually, healthy dish.

So here is my recipe for a healthy-ish Nectarine Crisp.

Recipe:

Preheat oven to 350 F
Lightly butter a 9 X 7 pan

Mix together:
6 large or 8 medium firm nectarines stoned and roughly sliced
2 TBS white sugar (can substitute Splenda)
1tsp cinnamon
Grated rind of 1 lemon

Pour into a lightly greased pan.

Mix together till it resembles fine bread crumbs:
½ cup softened butter
1 cup white whole wheat flour
1 cup brown sugar (can substitute 1/2 of this with 1/2 cup brown Splenda)
1 tsp cinnamon powder

Sprinkle the mixture over the nectarines.

Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

Serve at room temperature with whipped cream (the real stuff) or vanilla bean ice-cream (not the French kind – which though delicious just does not quite go with the refreshing flavor of this tart dessert).

This Crisp does not keep well as the crispy crust turns soggy after 6 hours or so.
But, in truth, Nectarine Sog tastes pretty incredible too.

Some other ways we waste less food these days:
– Freeze leftovers when we can
-Compost all leftovers that we can

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Notes:
*https://www.nrdc.org/food/files/wasted-food-ip.pdf

fineartgoodlife

The Fine Art of Living the Good Life