Special Mom’s blog

We have a heat wave warning until this Friday. My maid who dropped in today and told me today’s warning was until 8 p.m. and it was going to be too hot. My younger son suggested I prepare a South Indian snack called vadaam. The snack needs the sun to get dried. 

I took my special one to the pool, and we had a hectic morning. He was all tired by 3 p.m., and I decided, Why not use my sun room to dry my vadaams? We have sun until 9 p.m. Usually, it just takes a few hours for the rice mix to dry. It was 3 p.m., and I decided I should do it in my sun room. Yes, it was hot, and I felt I should use the evening sun coming that way. My adventure started. My special one usually helps me, but today, after a few minutes, he abandoned me. My husband came to watch me, and when I started ordering him around, he told me he just wanted to give me company and disappeared. 

I had to complete the task on my own. As I made this snack, I remembered the vacation I spent in Kerala with my maternal grandparents. My mother’s grandmother came to live with us, and her sister joined us too for a few days. I remember them making jackfruit papads (wafers), and everything was made from scratch. The whole team of ladies talking and laughing in the process, and us children watching the same. Unlike that, I was checking my phone and doing the same. Life has changed.

I came inside, and my phone started giving me notifications. Yes, we had thunderstorm notifications, which were not mentioned anywhere! Or did I miss it? Within an hour, the sun disappeared, the storms set in, the temperatures dropped, and my sun room became a very cool room. 

Now my quarter-dried vadaams are out in the sunroom and have to stay there overnight. I think I might be the first person to have attempted something like this. I cannot bring them inside since our air conditioning is running overtime and it is even cooler inside the house. 

Indian birds and crows usually like these snacks, and I remember us covering them with nets and keeping black umbrellas near them. Unlike Indian birds, I am confident American birds have not experienced the same. I am hoping these remain safe and untouched until tomorrow morning. The weather is hot, and hopefully I can move them out to my yard in direct sunlight, and they will be dry. By the way, I was hoping to make one batch every day this week. But lesson learned: I am not going to depend on the weather forecast and am going to play it safe. I should be up early in the morning and use the morning sun. 

If you want to know what these vadaams are, I did write about them two years ago and made a blog post. You can check it out here.