Kale and Parsnip Huli

Today was one of those days when the baby naps for hours on your chest, and you go with it, cuddling him and accepting you're not going to get anything else done. We had friends over last night and babyfish hung out with all, head bobbing, looking from face to face. Even when he fed from behind a sheet, only his feet visible, he still managed to convey excitement. Between feeds he followed the action with big excited eyes until he conked out in my arms, and we put him to bed. All this just plumb tuckered him out.

Today as evening drew near, I mentally cataloged what we had in our recently repaired -- or should I say over-repaired -- fridge, which no longer heats our food, but rather freezes all the vegetables and fruit in the crisper. What could be done with few leaves of kale and inexplicably frozen parsnip, that could go with rice, and have some protein? Aha--huli!

And so periodically holding a sleepy baby who could bear his swing for only so long, I threw together the following in a giant cast-iron pot on the gas stove: a cup of red lentils, boiled with two cups of water, a teaspoon of turmeric and a teaspoon of oil.

(I then turned everything to low heat because babyfish was whimpering for a few minutes, knowing he needed attention even though he wasn't crying, as he's not a baby who cries easily).

I eventually returned just in time to stop the red lentils from burning, whisked them into a liquidy texture, and then heated up another splash of oil in a smaller cast iron pan. I roasted a teaspoon of mustard seeds, five torn up red chillies, and a teaspoon of cumin seeds. To this mix of spices I added a chopped onion and covered it all with a mismatched lid to let it soften.

I put babyfish down in a little bassinet with giraffes hanging above it, and his face transformed from the beginnings of distress ('whyyyyy are you putting me down?') to utter mesmerized absorption ('GIRAFFES') exactly 30 seconds before baby-daddy came home, who, luckily, unwinds by playing with babyfish. This meant I could add some chopped kale and defrosted parsnip chunks to the spices, stir them around for a while, then add the whole pan to the larger pot of boiled lentils.

To this large pot, I added a cup of diced tomato, two tablespoons of sambhar powder, a whole bunch of salt, and the defrosted pulpy juice of a whole frozen lemon to the pot, letting it boil for a while. When it was done, it was ridiculously delicious with rice.

We ate it watching Shekhar Kapur's 1983 art film Masoom. I enjoyed the campy delight of Shabana Azmi's perfect Delhi housewife performance--stunning long black shiny hair, constant makeup, lovely starched shalwar kameezes and perfectly tied saris, seamless attention to two little girls, doing her husband's tie at the breakfast table as he drinks his coffee, massaging his back at night as he reads a novel. Watching Shabana Azmi's achingly gorgeous housewife performance is like eating sugar--you enjoy it, but there are after-effects. The after-effect is, naturally, anxiety, anxiety also provoked by this list: 8 things your baby needs to thrive. I think we're doing all of it, but how do you ever know if you are doing it right, and enough? And could I have picked him up sooner instead of cooking? And do I use too much baby talk? And how come my hair is only silky from not having showered in far too long? In the South Asian context, it's ridiculous to pay too much attention to a baby. Responding immediately to his needs makes you a sucker, less of an adult. It takes work to follow your desires, to put the baby first, to enjoy his huge grins without reaching for a camera, to silence the older female voices in your head observing you cook, observing you turn off the stove, commenting on the moment right before and the moment right after the precise moment you reach out, turn off the swing, and pick him up into your arms. I am not Shabana Azmi, voices. Even Shabana Azmi isn't Shabana Azmi. No one has hair that silky in the middle of the night when you're up because your husband's illegitimate child has run away from your home, prompting you to realize your maternal affection now flows for him as well as for your own biological children, unless you simply haven't had time to shower.