good morning chai

My morning drink of choice is a glass of water. In the winter months, it’s a glass of water. When I am feeling the need to be extra healthy, it’s a glass of water and a green smoothie. I also load up on orange juice – a pregnancy craving that remains to this day – and every now and then, apple juice. But hot drinks? Not really my thing.

When I’m a guest in a friend’s house, I normally ask for water or when it’s cold, a mug of hot water. That request always receives a puzzled look. Holding something warm in my hands is a lovely feeling, but most hot drinks don’t charm me. Coffee and I are only friends if there is chocolate in it or lots of flavourings, but that’s fancy and so far I haven’t been able to do it at home (and right now Small One needs decaf). I drink tea – herbal – only because I feel like I have to. (There are some exceptions – I love Moroccan mint tea, and would drink it every day, all the time if I had a mint plant, but I have killed every mint plant I have ever owned. Digression.)

Chai tea is the famous Indian hot street drink, and given my Sri Lankan origins one might think I knew something about it. I did not. My sister and her friends in university introduced it to me when they started making chai tea on the stove in the evenings. This wasn’t the chai latte, mind you, the one you can get at Starbucks with warm milk and shots of chai syrup. No, this was milk warmed on the stove with real tea and lots of fresh spicy spices. Melbourne was a great place for good quality chai teas and lattes if you skipped them at Gloria Jeans and other chain-type places.

But one day I was introduced to a homemade chai concentrate recipe on the Pioneer Woman’s website no less. I’m not sure what a frontier woman in Oklahoma has going on with chai tea, which is perhaps an indication of how the western world has colonized this drink, but maybe it wasn’t her recipe to begin with. I found it on the Tasty Kitchen portion of her blog. The recipe is easy enough, but you will need some speciality spices. Do not take short cuts on the cardamoms and star anise, the cardamoms especially. It’s the essential chai spice, I would say. In fact – and I say this with zero research – I think chai tea, the kind sold on the streets of India, is made with masala spice and cardamoms and lots of sugar. Lots of sugar.

I doubled the recipe, which made for several bottles worth of concentrate, and I have been enjoying a mug here and there in the mornings. I left a few bottles in the fridge while we were away for three weeks, and the flavour intensified with time.   My water is still my first love, but the wonder of a steaming, spicy mug in my hands has been a winter morning pleasure of the past few weeks.

• Amazing Spiced Chai Concentrate   I followed this recipe, but I added more of the ingredients I know I like, so more cardamoms, more star anise, more ginger. I went easy on the honey because I could always add honey straight into the mug. One word about quantities – the most important thing for a tasty mug is the proportion of milk to concentrate. You want a lot of concentrate, so put that in first and add the milk slowly, tasting frequently to make sure you get the strength you want. This is the one downside of the recipe – you don’t get many mugs of chai for the amount of ingredients you have to use to make the concentrate. Maybe that’s because I like a strong-tasting mug of chai, but I would still say it is worth making once, to get a taste for the experience and then you would be able to tweak it in the future.

to hold in our hands

Small One nestles in my arms these Christmas evenings as we spend the last hours of his day cuddled on the couch, surrounded by glowing lights and listening to Christmas music. It’s my attempt to get some touch time with my now scrambling-everywhere little son. I’m not sure at what point my cuddly baby become an active boy. It happened in the past seven months, and a part of my mom heart is already breaking and it breaks a little bit more when I think about the long future we hopefully will have together as he grows from baby to boy to man.

Last Advent I was full of meditations about the coming of Jesus, and this one I have been full of Small One with a few small moments to catch my breath and think. It’s a different time, a different season. There has been too much inside to share in the past six months. I have been enjoying my little one and the sweetness of this stage of our life together.

Don’t get the wrong idea. He’s not cuddling close to me on these winter evenings watching me with glowing eyes. He sits in my lap with a few toys, ferociously going at them with his hands and mouth, his big eyes watching, watching, watching, studying everything and trying to figure out how this toy is working, and eventually when he is bored, he starts hitting it and squirming around. He throws himself against the couch, tries to pull up on the too-soft cushions, cries with frustration until I help him to his feet. Every now and then, he does turn around and look at me with a small smile on his face.

Me? I’m listening to Christmas music and crying into the back of Small One’s head, songs about the baby Jesus as I wonder how he could have been a baby, and did his mother cry as her baby became a boy who became a man?

Fragile fingers sent to heal us… tender brow prepared for thorns… tiny heart whose blood will save us… unto us is born.

Unto us a son was born. Unto us a child was given. People say that babies change everything, that you will never love someone like you love your own child and that you will never sleep again. I can hardly say that the transition to having a small one for me was the life-altering moment that people make it out to be. In many ways it has been the easiest of all the life transitions I have endured (and I do like to think of myself and my family as perennial life-transitioners). There are no answers for this only that somehow this small one was perfect for me, perfect for this time, perfect for my arms and my heart. He has been perfect to hold inside of me.

This is the small bridge for me to Jesus in this season of busyness of heart and spirit, in this time when the time isn’t always there to open my Bible or to breathe, but he is here in the work, he is here in the cooking, he is here in the playing and in the night waking. He is here, and as my heart grows to hold my Small One, Jesus is holding me, His small one.

And so for you, this Christmas season, here’s a little winter warmer that kept Husband and I cozy during one of our Christmas Cheer evenings. It’s apple cider with a warm twist.

• Christmas Cheer   apple juice (I used the unfiltered kind and think it’s better), cinnamon sticks, a few cloves, a few cardamoms, ginger powder (grated ginger would probably be better), a dash of maple syrup for sweetness and whiskey for warmth. For a liter of apple juice, I used two cinnamon sticks, five cloves and four or five cardamoms. I would grate a one centimeter piece of ginger into it in the future. The maple syrup is up to you based on how sweet you want it to be, and the quantity of whiskey is also up to you depending on how…warm… you want it to be.

drinking spring

It’s been a long, six-week absence from writing. I didn’t spend the winter in hibernation, swallowing down comfort foods and drinking hot chocolate. We had visitors every few weeks it seemed, which made for lots of talking, cooking, eating and walking but not a lot of energy for writing. What can I say, Small One has been consuming more of my physical and emotional reserves lately. When I started this blog, I made one small internal vow – I didn’t want blogging to get in the way of cooking and meal time, so if I don’t feel like taking a photo, I don’t take one, and there is no blog entry about beef stroganoff. The eating has been good this winter, the cooking continues to become more natural, and maybe one day writing will also be more of a normal part of my life.

In the mean time, spring seems to be seducing us in Geneva. The past few weeks have been sunny and even warm during the day. Today I was out in capris, running shoes, a t-shirt and fleece jacket. I wasn’t planning on inventing a spring drink, but at my last doctor’s appointment, I was slightly anemic. Enter the plan to get more iron into my diet without going overboard on red meat.

I have read about spinach smoothies and was intrigued by the idea, so I tried making one of my own with ingredients that sounded good to me. I now drink one every day. Today I am on my second. Husband was disturbed by the idea at first and told me nicely that he hoped I enjoy it, but it wasn’t going to become a part of his life. But even he was won over in the end. I think it has to do with three special ingredients. (Spinach is not one of them.)

• Spinach Smoothie put into a blender any combination of fruit that you like (warning: even a bit of banana goes a long way). Mine usually have strawberries and oranges. In this one (you can see it in the blender at the top) there is: spinach, strawberries, frozen berries – a cheaper alternative to fresh ones and orange juice. If you like it to be more like a juice with more liquid, just add more juice or water. Now for the three special ingredients that change everything – ginger, mint and honey. Be generous with the ginger and mint; it gives the smoothie life and a wonderful freshness. Half a lime has also been tasty with it. Lots of people put yogurt in smoothies, but I don’t in this one because calcium inhibits the absorption of iron, which is what I need from this smoothie (although the vitamins and minerals don’t hurt)
• Another warning: spinach smoothies tend to not look very appetising. The only reason why this one looks half decent is because of the frozen berries. Normally it’s a puke shade of brown.