Baking The Baby

One of my most favorite persons in America gave me a huge basket of apples last week. She is my teacher. Yet another favorite person gave me the recipe for a traditional apple pie. She is my colleague. A third favorite person helped me make it. He is my friend Dan.

Those in India reading this, please say hello to Dan. He is one of the funniest, wittiest, nicest people this side of the Atlantic Ocean. Those in America reading this blog, please make Dan the president or something. Here he is in this picture with Manasi and me. No, I am not trying to strangle him!


Dan has already enriched my American experience in four significant ways:
First, he has taken me to a football (as these guys understand it) game. Although he made a valiant attempt to make me understand it, I couldn't. Blame it all on what I understand by football (Manchester United, Sir Alex, transfer market, English Premier League, so on and so forth...oh how I hate my brother!), and also on the decibel level around us which made normal human conversation nearly impossible. Thirdly, because it IS a weird game. Players wear funny helmets and shoulder pads so much so that they look like aliens made in the mould of Hercules. Every once in a while someone picks up an egg shaped ball and frantically runs with it. Or, he collapses or is made to fall down, and on him falls every other person in the field. Then suddenly the game stops and music starts blaring or there are commercials showing up on the giant screens. Or cheerleaders take over the whole field with their perfect smiles and bodies and gravity-defying stunts. It is at this point that everyone in the stands either starts dancing or chanting or screaming. The the music stops and game resumes. With all the running, falling, hitting etc intact and including obscene terms such as quarterback and touchdown. Touchdown! Is everyone getting the same images as I am?


Dan has taken me fishing. One particular Saturday evening, I went with him and his friends Nate and Andy to Spring Valley Reservoir to catch fish. So there I was, being one of the boys...drinking beer and learning: how to dig out the worm from its home, how to straighten the wiggly and won't-be-still-for-a-moment worm while I drove the end of the fishing rod into it so that it could serve as bait for the fish, and then how to cast a line on a spinning rod. Dan, Nate, Andy...expert fishermen all, and well, towering over me in their over six feet avatars. But that particular evening, guess who actually caught the fish? The only person to actually catch the fish and thereby give greater power to all novices in the world in the face of challenges posed by the experts? ME! I caught a Blue Gill. A beautiful, small little fish, but fish nevertheless! I had thus, taken the first step towards buying my own fishing trawler. For these men, since fishing is more of a sport than anything else, the idea is to catch fish just for the fun of it, and then gently extract the hook from its mouth and release it. Back to freedom.
My only regret of the evening? I wasn't carrying a camera since the trip was a spontaneous decision. Digging around the Net hasn't been particularly helpful. No picture, no words can describe the indescribable beauty of the Spring Valley Reservoir. The narrow path we walked on to reach the fishing site, the changing colors in the sky while the sun set, the mountain range and forest cover surrounding the lake, the pack of wolves in the distance as night closed in, and finally, the luminous, perfect moon that rose over the lake. It was sheer magic.
Here are two pictures that will give you an idea of the lake and the fish, the best I could do with help from Google images.



Dan's third contribution has been feeding me some real American junk food that I had not eaten previously. Corn dogs and curly fries -- both of which he made at home. (Incidentally Dan makes some of the world's finest cookies.) For more on corn dogs go here and the best way to describe curly fries would be curly French fries, just that the curlies are somewhat spicier.



And finally, Dan's fourth contribution has been supervising the creation of my first Apple Pie, which was quite alright for a first attempt. (Yes, I am hoping to be able to open my bakery soon enough.) I would open the oven door after every ten minutes or so (because I was so excited) and it was at one such moment that I said to Dan, "Aw...it is browning. Isn't this like watching your own baby grow?"
And he replied, "Yes, just that in this case we will be eating the baby. Manasi come out and see Sayantani baking her baby!"

While I dissolved into peals of laughter, Dan continued his diatribe on my cruel, uncivilized behavior as a mother.