Adding spice to life--'Extra' ordinary 'days'

I have to come to a very important decision. One night, every week would be a cuisine night. And the best part is I would not know which day it would be. Totally will be dictated by my mood. Or better to say, my and R's mood :) Adds that extra level of mystery..don't you think?

 You know this, like everything else, stems from my childhood. In our house we had very strict regimes. Not to say they were kind of bad or very restrictive. But strict, nonetheless. But the good thing was there was always a 'day' to break those routines. In very predictable ways...but a something out of ordinary of course. An extraordinary day..so to speak. For example Friday evenings when no school-home work. Sunday mornings for extended TV time. Wednesday school lunch would constitute a sandwich and not fruits and breads. So just very predictable ways on predictable days to break an equally predictable routine. It wasn't very restrictive. But...it was strict. And these little welcome changes, albeit not totally really changes, would amount to immense and totally unpredictable happiness for me and my sister. The joy of friday evenings were never the same...one was always better than the last; the TV time always brought together friends from neighborhood and the happiness that flowed was never the same; the lunch box always held its charm-- the fillings were different you see :)

But since this is a food blog, I will mention one such ' break day' which still lingers in my memory as fresh and fragrant as the aroma of the food I am talking of. So breakfast in our household used to be simple and a boring affair. Bread, eggs and milk. This might not sound boring or unusual to many of you, but to put things into perspective especially that of a ten year old--all other families in the neighborhood and those of my friends in school had varied and spiced up lovely breakfasts. Fries, Indian breads, curries etc. Bread clearly wasn't as great :( 

However, every Sunday morning..breakfast used to be different. It used to be semolina (something like couscous)-- cooked with milk, sugar, cardamom, bay leaves, raisins and cashew-- and served with deep fried Matzo-like things (spicier) and ginger tea. I cannot tell you ...how favorite that special meal was to me. And I cannot emphasize how awesome and fragrant it was. To this day, I have almost never woken up on a sunday morning when I haven't craved this food. Not one single sunday. And I have never made it :)

So that is kind of where I come from. And comes the need never to stick to routine and to break a non existant routine with unknown cuisne on one day..unfixed in time...

From now one..I will feature a cusine night...and let you know how great it all went. So far we have had Israeli, Mediterranean and ...today's featured Malayasian. Malaysian chicken noodle soup. Awesome. And thanks to three hungry tummies for such an excellent and simple recipe. By the way, I figured that if you did not have lemon grass at your disposal, the rind of lemon works great as a substitute :)

So, here is to breaking non existant rules and having extraordinary foodie days!

Happy eating and healthy living :)