Shout Out..

to all my school friends out there!

The class of 1992 has re-surfaced and it's great to be back in touch with you all.
I dedicate this photo to you : )


If you're ever in Boston, do get in touch. It would be great to meet over a coffee (or a martini) and laugh about our military-style bloomer checks!

Hugs to you all, N

P.S. I found this sweet bloomer pic here which I came across at this wonderful craft blog the dotted line.

Why Bloomers and Buns!?

Many of my closest friends and I attended the same school in India from the age of 4 to 15. Every single school day, year after year, from kindergarten to high school, I spent all day with the same girls. This level of continuity is astounding to many people (including my adult self), but we didn’t think much of it at the time. In fact, we didn’t stop to consider most things in our daily routine, same as most children everywhere.

As we got older (beyond the 5th grade), the strangeness and hilarity of our school experience became more and more apparent.

Here’s one example:
Our school was run by Jesuit nuns, but the student body was no more than 10% Christian. This led to such absurdities as mandatory praying for all students (Christian, yes, but also the Hindu, Muslim, atheist and Parsi students who made up our mixed classrooms). We recited the “Our Father” prayer every school day (not only in the morning, but also in the evening, just in case He hadn’t heard us all belting it out the first time).

Another classic requirement was that all students were clad in bloomers. Yep, bloomers. I know I need a photograph of these underthings because many people associate them with an extinct Victorian tradition, but believe me, they are thriving in convent schools in India.

So this brings me to…Bloomers and Buns ...NUNS!

I know this is a somewhat cryptic title, especially for a blog which is, for the most part, about home-cooked Indian food. Here I must acknowledge the contribution of my Brit cousins who introduced me (a bit late in the day) to the wonderful world of cockney rhyming slang.

So..bloomers, buns, nuns: all fantastic reminders of my school days which cover the two main subjects of the blog, home-cooked meals in a lunch box (dabba) we had at school, and memories of our crazy school days.

There are probably millions of women educated in India who had some variation of this strange and wonderful school experience.
Feel free to get in touch, share a recipe or story, correct me if you remember it differently, and enjoy!

Why the blog?

I started this blog to record recipes from my childhood – mostly home-cooked Punjabi food delivered to school in a 3-tier steel lunchbox. Our dabba-wala would bring our lunches from each of our homes on his bicycle and then take the empty boxes back every afternoon. An amazing luxury, but schools didn’t provide lunch, most households had either a parent or cook who stayed home, and it was considered healthier and cheaper to send children home-cooked lunches.

As an adult now living in the U.S., I cook several times a week, and started collecting recipes from family and friends (it’s rarely a convenient time to call India while in the midst of a dinner disaster here in Boston!).

I decided to start a blog to share these recipes with people who enjoy home-cooked Indian food. My memories of these school lunchboxes are mostly of food I’d find in my own, but we routinely traded lunch items, and some of these recipes have been contributed by my dear friends from school. Most of them are easy (if I can make them, so can you!), and not all of them are Indian (my French husband and life in Boston have greatly influenced what I eat), and I hope my photos will improve with time.
Enjoy!