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Rhea Mitra Dalal

@euphorhea

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Being grown up
If you'd told my 10 year old self I'd be stopping excitedly at village markets to buy vegetables at some stage in my life, I think I would have been convinced you were quite out of your mind. And here I am today with my haul of vegetables from the market in Pezhari on the route back from Alibag, and from a couple of other spots on the highway where women sat with baskets or makeshift stalls selling veggies from the local farms.
@kurushdalal is going to make a Parsi mutton preparation called 'kakri ma gos' with that humongous cucumber you see me holding. The other veggies will be used up in chorchoris, jhols, bhajas, and whatnot through the week. We may even cook some other less frequently cooked Parsi dishes, let's see. The veggie-filled week is going to be delicious. I can't believe I'm excited about bhaaji-pala 😅
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Shopping, vegetables, farmers, women, local produce, Maharashtra, village markets by @euphorhea

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3 days ago

Self care
Living on one's own gets hard and sometimes it's difficult to get through the blues. On such days I usually turn to the kitchen. The planning, gathering of ingredients, prepping, and ultimately cooking food dish by dish brings me a calm that no other activity can match.
I also miss the food I eat at home, some of it the everyday preparations we cook at home and some of it stuff like that biryani I order all the way from Panvel or the chicken sandwiches we make at @katyskitchenmumbai . What I miss the most is variety in the vegetarian preparations and so I decided to get organised to cook stuff I miss on the weekend.
The weather in Gwalior today is just lovely! Cool and breezy, soft sunlight instead of the severe glare that has been the standard in these couple of months I've been here. This was even more motivation to spend some time in the kitchen today.
I cooked musur daal with randhuni, onion, and ghee, teen-meshali with borboti,begun, and sw potato tempered with panch phoron, jhinge aloo posto, and a regular Bengali style murgi'r jhol with potato, carrot, and green peas. I served myself on this pretty terracotta dinner set and enjoyed a very Bengali lunch today with hot rice to accompany everything I cooked. Now for a well earned bhaat ghoom!
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Ghar ka khana, Bengali food, cooking from scratch, comfort food, self care, living alone, Gwalior life taken in Gwalior by @euphorhea

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11 days ago

Pish Pash
This is one of the many delicious dishes that have been adopted into the vast universe of Bengali food. Originally an Anglo-Indian preparation, it is now a very common character on Bengali home menus. And why not?! It's an easy one-pot dish that's comforting and tasty - what's not to like?!
I've never had pish pash, never made it either. Though I'd heard about it from various cousins, somehow neither Moni nor Didin ever made it, and I never saw it at Jethima's table either. How strange that it never appeared on any table within my close family!
Anyway, I was a bit under the weather here in Gwalior last week and I was missing home and seeking comfort much more than usual. Cooking is always something I reach towards when I'm feeling blue but I wasn't up to doing anything that would require effort or even keen attention. I remembered pish pash and decided to read up recipes and see how it was done. It seemed so easy I couldn't resist giving it a shot. There are various versions of course - Pragyasundori Devi makes it without any veggies at all, while my blogger friends add a variety of them. Some say only ginger while others casually add ginger garlic paste. Most versions are made with chicken though I did see a recipe that used mutton. Some called for long grain basmati rice while others went with gobindo bhog. Some recipes were team butter while some were team ghee. But all the versions were united in cooking vegetables, meat, and rice together with minimal spices all dumped together into one pot and cooked till soft and porridge-y.
I made mine with chicken, vegetables, ginger, a stock cube, gobindo bhog rice, a few tej pata/Indian bay leaves and a stick of cinnamon. I think some coarse pepper would have been super but I was keeping it as light as possible for a very tender stomach. This thing, this pish pash, was so comforting and so good, I think I shed a tear or three.
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Bengali food, home cooking, comfort food, pishpash taken in Gwalior by @euphorhea

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16 days ago

Slow hobbies
Hobbies are things we do for fun and pleasure and God knows I have many! Cross stitch is one of my earliest, something I started trying approximately 40 years ago. I fell in love with embroidery but couldn't manage to do any without ending up with a tangled mess. Then I found cross stitch and I got obsessed. Eventually I also started doing needle point and that was the outer limit of my embroidery skills.
This piece is something I started when I was in college. Rows of random geometric patterns in random order and colours. I finished most of it within a year and then a couple of rows didn't fit correctly. And I avoided undoing those stitches. Here I am now, more than 20 years later, finally ready to deal with those wrongly done rows. Once they're dealt with I'll get on with completing this piece. I think I planned to make a cushion cover with it so that's what this will eventually become. Imagine taking 20+ years to embroider a cushion cover! I'm more focused on the pleasure of making it than on how long it's taking me. It's not going anywhere and neither (hopefully!) am I.
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Hobbies, cross stitch, work in progress by @euphorhea

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17 days ago

In my teens in the 80s.
We don't need AI when we've actually lived the 80s.
Here's the real deal. Shot on black and white film with an actual camera, not a digital photo changed with a black and white filter.
On a terrace in Kolkata hanging out with cousins one summer holiday 🙂
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80s, black and white photo by @euphorhea

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a month ago

It's your birthday today. The last time I saw you was on this day last year. You never celebrated willingly and I'd never met you on your birthday before. The only time I did turned out to be the last time I saw you.
Do you even know how much love you gave us? Your children, your cats and dogs, your girls at QoH, your friends, and me...
Soon it will be a whole year without you. A year without talking to you, telling you about the nitty gritties of my day and listening to the little details of yours, the cranky customers, the young girl travelling abroad to study, the bride, the corporate bigshot whose wardrobe you were designing... and me telling you about the latest order at Bundt-it Queen, the next pop up I was considering, the lunch I cooked, how the pui creeper is doing... A year without you. Did we ever even consider this was possible?
I have moved to Gwalior and I'm working with crockery. Can you imagine?!! After all our conversations about French brocante, and the latest episode of Chateau Diaries at Chateau Lalande and the vintage treasures there, here I am living that dream. But you aren't here and I can't share it with you.
The last thing you said to me as I left your house on your birthday was "I love you!" with your big fat smile on your face. Stupid me got all self conscious and I didn't say it back to you. But I know you knew. I love you Deepa. It's bloody hard living this life without you but I'm doing my best. I promise I am.
Happy birthday my Deepa ❤️
I will always wish you were here. by @euphorhea

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a month ago

A maachh'er jhol Sunday
I managed to find katla maach here in Gwalior! Got half a kilo which is obviously too much for me alone so I divided it into three portions to cook it in three different ways. I fried the whole lot and made two variations today and have saved a few pieces to be cooked later in the week.
@kurushdalal sent me some ingredients from home recently and among the panch phoron and posto were a few packets of Sunrise sorse powder. I made a classic Bengali sorse katla with the three peti (belly) pieces. And with a few of the back or gada pieces I made a thin, watery, supremely comforting jeere'r jhol with potato and cauliflower, spiced with just nigella seeds and cumin powder.
The cook sent me a surprise today - a dish of delicious pork!!! I had a little at lunch (couldn't resist 😋) and have saved the rest for dinner.
There is something about maachh'er jhol that tempts you into a second helping of bhaat which then leads to an hour of bhaat ghoom. Does a Sunday get any better?! 😀
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Fish curry, Bengali food, pork, life in Gwalior by @euphorhea

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a month ago

Settling in
In a few days it will be a month since I've moved to Gwalior, a huge change and so many adjustments. And a big part of settling in and feeling at home has been cooking for myself whenever I've had the time and energy. No matter how good the food is at a new place the craving for familiar flavours is intense, a longing for comfort and familiarity.
And it's not just about the food, I really love cooking. And I also love my own cooking, I'm my biggest fan! So far I've cooked simple fuss-free kheema, made my favourite peanut butter and marmalade toasts for breakfast, cooked chicken with a premix gravy pack (which turned out to be really delicious!) from Suhana, made a homely murgi'r jhol, and also made mangsho'r jhol today. And I also made dhansakh!
I miss home very keenly and I guess cooking my own ghar ka khana goes a long way in making the homesickness a little bearable. Hanging in there with my haata khunti (cooking utensils) 😅
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Life in Gwalior, cooking, grateful by @euphorhea

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2 months ago

July. What a month!
A big fat lunch at Shri Thakkar
A super short trip to Delhi and an evening at @seenattopbanana
Best people in Delhi ❤️ @rajan_sethi @tarannumsehgal
Lunch at Ling's to say bye bye Bombay for a while
Back on the road with @kurushdalal , this time heading to Gwalior
Interesting things we see on the road...
Breakfast in Gwalior, guests at the palace
And then Addu went back without me 😭
I have an office!
And I'm living my dream drowning in crockery 😍 taken in Jai Vilas Palace by @euphorhea

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2 months ago

Change
This week has been a string of changes and adjustments. A new city, new work, and living away from @kurushdalal ... it's been a mix of excitement and painful separation, so much anxiety and so many thrills. I thought I'm too old to be flipping my life upside down and wondered if I could actually do it. It's been fun settling in, adding tiny touches of home to my new home be it the beautiful handmade calendar @voramitali1106
sent or the Matryoshka dolls @neelmitra brought back from his travels, or even the dhoop stand I bought on my last visit to Kolkata.
Well, here I am, a week into working and adjusting and learning. Learning to adapt and to accept the stuff that is different. Learning that I do know what I'm doing as far as the work is concerned. And learning that K and I are going to adapt to this new normal for us.
Today I cooked a simple chicken jhol for my dinner and I finally felt that Gwalior is also home. There's nothing that is more grounding and reassuring to me than time spent in a kitchen cooking, whether for me or for others. I'm well and truly settled in 😀

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Life in Gwalior, new job, new life taken in Gwalior by @euphorhea

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2 months ago

Rath celebration in 1972
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Old photos, slides, childhood by @euphorhea

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3 months ago

Serendipity and dreams
@kurushdalal and I met @priyadarshini_raje_scindia at @seeti.movement 1 three years ago in Gwalior. That was my first glimpse of the crockery collection of the @jaivilaspalacemuseum , I got a mere peep and I was fascinated, thrilled, delighted, and awestruck, all at the same time looking at just one showcase. Then, a little more than a month ago we were in Gwalior again at the Scindia Kanya Vidyalaya for Dharohar, their annual inter-school fest with K as the chief guest and me as an honoured guest. This time PRS took me to see the crockery store of the museum. I think I was ready to pass out from the sheer joy of seeing cupboards upon cupboards of fine china, serveware, silverware, beautiful glassware, and all sorts of delightful accessories for the table.
We got talking about possibilities and before I knew it I was on board leading a project documenting, inventorying, tracing histories and putting together the stories of the hospitality of the Scindias of Gwalior.
I get my love for china from Moni and even more from Katy who always encouraged me to use the lovely pieces she had. And now I get to dive into the cupboards and trunks and chests of drawers and cartons and wherever the beautiful tableware is, in the museum stores and around the palace rooms and buildings. A dream project where I will be neck-deep in china and silverware.
Thank you for having faith in me, PRS ❤️🙏

Yes, I'm moving to Gwalior 😀
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New work, new life, SEETI Movement by @euphorhea

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3 months ago