Inspiration?

So what is a 30 something mom to do? Between juggling a 22 month old, a husband, a home and baby number 2 on the way--the day is busy enough as it is. But since leaving my job as a psychotherapist for a large UK based charity, I miss the stimulation of work life and not to mention the banter with work colleagues. Dont get me wrong I am very happy that I left my job, but something is amiss. I need to go back to where the heart is...

When my daughter started weaning I started a project. Projects get me very excited as there is determination and focus. This project began unknowingly by first speaking with my mom 'what did you give us when you started weaning?', to speaking to other Indian moms and finally trawling through various websites to find Indian recipes to give to my daughter. However, here there was a dead end. The most popular baby recipe book in London is the famous Annabel Karmel's. It's packed with great recipes, however they are Western recipes. And I wanted to get my daughter to start sampling spices, and our exotic vegetables from the start. So we started with steamed pears with clove and cinnamon to butternut squash with roasted cumin puree to a basic chicken curry when she was 9 months. Not only was this a culinary journey, I was interested in the healing properties in our spices. They say a one year old on average gets sick upto 10 times a year! The cold, damp weather in London was not on our side either.

Other Desi moms around me seemed nervous about offering Indian food, spices and would rather cook seperately for their children. They did complain that the food they were giving was limited to pasta and baked beans and found their kids often fussy about trying new flavours.

So this is where the inspiration comes from--my wonderful daughter and other Indian moms, who like me are average cooks but want to give their children simple cooked meals with our rich and flavourful spices.