Wednesday, January 19, 2011

I Love THEM Sooooooo Much!

If you give a kid markers and a sheet of white paper and tell him to draw what his life is like, you will always be amazed at what he thinks about it.  Brody drew a picture of the sun first.  He said he likes to play outside when it's hot (he gets that honest from his mom).  The rectangle is our house with a little triangle for the roof.  To the right is Ryan, then me, and Brody below us.  I'm not sure why we have such long legs.  The four legged creature is Maggie the dog beside our mailbox.  To the left of the drawing is an electrical box and a tree with some grass .  The best part of his drawing is the two potato looking things at the bottom below the house.  Brody said, "That's my baby brothers coming from India.  I love them soooooo much!"  That's right folks, Brody believes we're getting twins.  I tried to explain that twins are rare in India, and we don't get to pick if the baby is a boy or a girl.  Of course, Brody assured me that he will be getting two babies.  What really blesses my heart is to hear him say, "I love them sooooo much!" 

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Chai While We Wait

It's a new year with all new possibilities!  Our home study is complete.  We're hoping to have the rest of our paperwork complete in the next couple of weeks.  Our goal is to be on the waiting list in February.  I'm so excited!  It nice to know we've done everything on our part that we can do and all there is left to do is wait. 

Waiting...well, that's not one of the easiest things in the world to do.  To fill up time we continue to prepare our family for the child to come, and we try to learn about Indian heritage.  Our neighbors Chad and Dawn gave us a wonderful Indian cookbook for Christmas.  It's packed full of all kinds of information.  We've really enjoyed reading through it.  One of my new favorite things is chai tea.  Chai is Hindi for "tea," so adding the word tea after chai, as is so often seen in coffee and tea houses in the country, is redundant.  So I'll just say I really enjoy drinking chai.  I'll share a favorite chai with you, and maybe you can drink chai along with us while we wait. 

Darjeeling Tea with Cardamom

2 cups water
1/4 cup loose Darjeeling tea leaves or 5 tea bags black tea
2 cups whole or 2% milk
1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom
2 whole cloves, crushed
2 to 4 black peppercorns, crushed
Pinch of ground cinnamon
1/4 cup cup sweetened condensed milk or 4 teaspoons sugar

1. Heat water to a rapid boil in 2-quart saucepan over medium-high heat, reduce heat to low.  Add tea leaves, simmer 2 to 4 minutes to blend flavors.  (If using tea bags, remove and discard.)
2. Stir in remaining ingredients except sweetened condensed milk.  Heat to boiling, take care not to let milk boil over.
3. Stir in condensed milk. Strain tea into cups.

Recipe by: Raghavan Iyer