Worldly Sweets

Top O' the mornin to ya. Thanks for all of your well wishes. Bear's father's condition has stabilized, but we still don't know what happened. But he's showing signs of improvement, so I'll take that for now.

To keep my mind busy, I've been reading a book a coworker lent to me called Born Confused. It's a young adult fiction book with a little romance thrown in, but I borrowed it, as my coworker thought I would enjoy it as might relate to some of the "not fitting into either culture" feeling of growing up bi-cultural. So far it's been entertaining. The best (or worst, depending how you look at it, hehe) is the description of the Indian food. You just suddenly start to crave it while reading.

Have you ever been so drawn into a description of some kind of food in a book that after awhile you just HAVE to have some? Well I've had Indian food numerous times and love it, but I had not tried any Indian sweets until this weekend.

There was a section in the book where the main character's mother prepares some little appetizers and sweets when they were entertaining some guests in the home and I was suddenly craving Gulab Jamun and didn't even know what one was, let alone what one tasted like.

Thankfully for me, I have a local Indian sweet shop that's a short drive away, so Bear and I made a little stop at Punjab Sweets. I had wanted to stop by for quite some time, but thanks to the book I was reading, it was the perfect opportunity.

There were so many different varieties of sweets, we figured the best way to go was to just grab a little bit of everything and just jump right in. There were ones made with pea flour,

many dipped in a sweet sugar syrup ("donut holes dipped in syrup" as Bear called one). Very different, but very similar all at the same time.

We enjoyed each little morsel, trying to identify what spices were incorporated in some of them. I highly recommend trying Indian sweets if you have the opportunity!

And then today, it's St. Patty's day. As someone with a little Irish heritage from my father's side of the family and to also incorporate my Japanese heritage alongside so that it doesn't feel left out today, I thought I'd so something wacky and make green tea cupcakes. A little green for the Irish, and some green tea thrown in for the Japanese. They have a strange hue of green (although I love that color), but they have just a small hint of green tea to them.

I topped them off with light green tinted cream cheese frosting and some green sugar sprinkles and off to work they will go with me.