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Just got back from a party to celebrate a wedding that will take place next week. Weddings in Punjab are a long series of parties, they’re a lot of fun, but they are also very tiring, especially when you have to drive two hours back and forth.

See you tomorrow.

A market near the farm. Rural shopping areas in Pakistan are noisy and crowded. The women are shopping for colorful bangles on the eve of the Eid feast.

Getting a mehndi tatoo in the same market.

To see another postcard from Pakistan, go here.

I have tasted fancy dishes and eaten at fine restaurants many times in my life. I have sampled the strange and unfamiliar. I have found fresh favorites and discovered new ingredients, but nothing tastes so delicious to me as the flatbread I ate as a child.

Tortillas de harina, a bread made out of wheat flour and enriched with eggs and butter, is by far the most popular meal in Honduras, where I grew up. The dough is shaped into a disc, a griddle is put on the stove, and the bread puckers up, little blisters fill with air and golden spots appear on the surface as if by magic.

It’s a simple, unpretentious, traditional meal, accompanied most often by refried beans and sour cream, and called a Baleada when it’s smeared and folded in half. The word baleada comes from the Spanish word for bullet, or bala, and I think it’s called that because the little bubbles and dark spots sort of look like bullet marks.

My mother, who is an excellent cook, makes the best tortillas. She grew up in a large family, and as the eldest daughter she learned to make them when she was twelve years old. Kneading the dough was her daily chore, and she’d get up early every morning to do it before she went to school. My mother’s tortillas are soft and rich, and nothing speaks to me of home more than the sight of a ball of dough resting on her kitchen counter.

One of the earliest memories I have is of making small tortillitas for my father when I was a young girl, in the little house in Belize, where we were living at the time. They were awful, I’m sure, burnt on the outside and uncooked on the inside, but I was proud of myself, and as eager to please as only children can be.

Today my daughter and I made these together. I gave her a bit of dough and, standing next to me, she played around with her ball as I worked the mix into a soft, pliable dough.

I don’t think my tortillas will ever be as good as my mother’s, for years I thought I had a heavy hand, but I’ve let go of my fear of failing and with regular practice I have improved. My daughter loves them. I hope they will be as cherished a part of her childhood as they were of mine.

My Mother’s Tortillas de Harina

Flour Tortillas

 2 cups flour

2 eggs

1 ½ teaspoon butter

1  ½ teaspoon vegetable shortening

1 pinch of salt

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ to ¾ cup water at room temperature

1) In a large wide bowl, sift the flour, the salt and the baking powder. Stir with a spoon to combine.

2) Make a well in the center and add the eggs, the butter and the shortening.

3) Dust your hands with flour and move your fingers to combine the ingredients.

4) Add water, a little bit at a time, and gather the mix until a dough begins to form. Here you can make adjustments if you need to. If the dough feels dry, add more water, a tablespoon at a time. If it doesn’t feel soft enough, add more fat, a little bit at time, until you get the right consistency.

5) Knead the dough on a floured surface. Stretch the dough away from you, using the heel of your hand. Bring the dough back towards you and turn it a little before you stretch again.

6) When the dough is soft, shiny and it is easier to knead, shape it into a log and divide it into small pieces, about 2 inches in size.

7) Gently knead each piece and shape into a ball. Place the balls back in the bowl and let them ’sleep’, as my mother says. Lay a damp cloth over the dough and leave it in a warm place for at least 15 minutes.

8) Women in Honduras flatten the tortillas in the palm of their hands, but that requires years of practice. I use a large zipper bag as my stretching surface because the dough doesn’t stick. Place the ball in the center of the plastic and use the tip of your fingers to flatten and stretch the dough, until you have a good size disc.

9) Place a flat griddle (a comal in Spanish) or a large non-stick frying pan over medium heat. Carefully peel the plastic with one hand as you hold the tortilla on the other.

10) Place the tortilla on the griddle and cook on one side for a minute or two. The bread will bubble up in places. Use a knife to turn it onto the other side, or your fingers, if you dare.

11) Using a cloth napkin gently press the tortilla to release some of the air trapped in the bubbles.

Your tortilla de harina is ready. Wrap it with cloth to keep it warm. Serve with refried beans and sour cream. I like queso fresco and scrambled eggs with it too.

The balls of dough keep well in the refrigerator for a day or two. Cover them with plastic wrap and lay them in a single layer inside an airtight container. 

The day has flown by me today. It’s very late and I have no energy to write, so this is really just a place holder post.

I’ll do better tomorrow…I hope.

I’ve been reading things like this article , and this one today, and as a result, I feel really depressed about the state of the world.

I could probably write a lot about what I’m thinking, but I won’t do it tonight.

FASHION WEEK IN KARACHI, day 4

Pakistani women love fashion. At least, the women that I know. Trips to shop for fabric, lace, buttons and other notions are a weekly chore, and the tailor’s bill and punctuality a constant subject of conversation.

I have in the past been exasperated and impatient with what I’ve judged to be a rather frivolous and pointless use of time, energy and resources, but lately I have had the chance to re-think my attitude. In the face of terrorist attacks in schools and markets, hatred for women, and the impudent march of the wicked, I have come to realize that all these things, the clothes, the shopping trips, the haggling with the salesman at the fabric shop and dealing with the tailor, are part of the life that women make for themselves with the cards that they have been dealt.

I have learned that just because the whole thing seems foreign to me, it does not make it less valuable to them, and as such, I should speak up against those who would take it away, who would make it disappear, who would make women disappear behind a curtain of shame and rid their life of beauty and joy.

And so, here’s to Fashion Week-Pakistan, which ended yesterday.

I finally saw this movie last night. I loved it. The clothes, the look, the setting, everything was beautiful. I’m surprised they filmed a lot of it in New York, finding that out made me really nostalgic for it, and I sighed with longing to the time when I lived there years ago.

I have never tried cooking French food and I don’t particularly wish to, except for a persistent desire to make my own puff pastry. I have more affinity for Italian food, with its bold, earthy flavors and simple, uncomplicated dishes, but I am in awe of Julia Child.

She was nearly fifty when her book was published, a full career behind her, and that gives me so much hope. I’ve spent the last five years as a stay-at-home mother, dedicating myself to my family, and sometimes I wonder if I will ever have the chance to build a career when I fear that my time is past.

I think Julia Child was such a remarkable, gifted woman, confident and full of life, and I’m so glad to know that she a had happy, fulfilling marriage to a man who saw her for the intelligent, vivacious woman that she was, and not an awkward, un-feminine misfit without any looks. Because, you know, even the ugliest man wants a pretty wife.

I had a great time, and I will definitely watch the movie again. My Life In France is going on my wish list too!

It’s very simple. I want everyone to have access to the same high-quality, timely medical care that currently only the well-off people can afford.

I have worked part-time for minimum wage to put myself through college. I know what it feels like to live without insurance, only I was lucky enough to be young and healthy at the time. I have been self-employed and I have bought my own insurance. I paid more than six-hundred dollars a month for coverage for me and my husband, and yet when I delivered my daughter by c-section, I still had a hospital bill that reached into the thousands because Blue Cross Blue Shield would only cover eighty percent of my approved expenses.

I want the people who get paid by the hour, the ones who don’t have fancy job titles and corner offices, the ones whose jobs don’t come with benefits and paid vacations, the ones who scramble every month to pay the bills and who can barely make it if they have an unexpected expense, to be able to have good health insurance that they can actually afford and to have the peace of mind that you get when you know your medical needs are being met.

Not everyone in America has a secure job and a stable home life that comes with a big house and an SUV parked in the driveway. It’s not a matter of being a grown-up or being lazy and stupid. It’s about a system that is basically unfair, that favors the few over the many.

It’s about a right that is more basic and more important than speaking your mind, or congregating in a place of worship, or joining a political party, because none of these things matter if you’re ill and can’t afford good medical care.

We had a party when my little girl turned five. She and I had a lot of fun making the invitation cards by hand, I cut and wrote them out, while she glued and came up with some ideas. The lady duck in the front is her own design, flower hat and all.

I love this cake! I first made it for my daughter’s fifth birthday party this past May, and since then it has become my favorite chocolate cake. It is soft, light, and very moist. It is also an unfussy cake, it doesn’t need icing, but it’s delicious with it too.

I found the original recipe in an old Good Housekeeping cookbook, but I have made several changes to it: once I only had a little bit of milk left so I used water instead, and another time I didn’t have caster sugar but I did have the powdered kind. Refined sugar is very expensive here in Pakistan, in comparison to the regular one, and that one is very grainy, with square little crystals that don’t dissolve very well, so I don’t use it for baking. The changes that I made out of necessity have improved the cake in my opinion, and now it’s the only way I make it.

Ingredients

2 cups flour

1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

2 cups icing sugar

1 cup  butter, softened at room temperature

4 eggs

1/3 cup milk

1 cup water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Method

In a medium bowl, sift the dry ingredients: the flour, the cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir to combine and set aside.

Mix the milk and the vanilla extract in a small bowl. Measure the water and set aside.

In a large bowl, beat the sugar and the butter, until well mixed. Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.

Add the flour mixture to the butter and eggs mixture, alternating with the liquids, making sure that you begin and end with the dry ingredients. Scrape down the sides the bowl, and keep beating until the batter is smooth.

Pour the mixture into a prepared pan. Bake at 350° for 30 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean.