As  schoolgirls, my mother and her sisters, walking home from the  Convent at teatime, tried to guess what goodies their mother might have made that day. When oduputtu was on the menu, the guessing stopped well before they even got to the gate – the magical fragrance drifted up the kitchen chimney and down the hill, drawing them home in excited anticipation. Everyone knew it was oduputtu with honey for tea!

Of all the many creative ways that rice is transformed, I can’t think of any other that is quite so simple and yet so unusual.

Cooked in a shallow,  9″ – 10″ wide earthenware pan known as a “wodu” or “odu”, oduputtu is made from an unfermented rice batter, seasoned with salt. Sometimes a little fenugreek seed is ground along with the rice. So far, so simple. What really makes it unique, however, is the seasoning that is applied to the pan. No oil is used, but before the batter is poured, the pan is rubbed with a lump of resin, known as “banda” (bun-dah). This is the hardened exudate of the Indian Copal tree, Vateria indica. It releases a delicate fragrance but very little smoke.The resin vaporizes quickly, leaving barely discernible traces on the crisp base of the oduputtu, which takes on a subtle, elusive, fragrance that may as well be in the scented air.

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November the 11th is Remembrance day in Canada and many Commonwealth countries around the world, commemorating the signing of the armistice that ended  the First World War.  All over Canada, ceremonies mark the occasion and tributes paid to those soldiers who lost their lives in that, and other wars fought since. The Premier of British Columbia, Christy Clark, was in India recently, and visited the Delhi War Cemetery on Remembrance Day, laying a wreath to honour the dead, including 17 Canadians who are buried there.

Armistice day was observed in India before Independence in 1947. As my father recalls, a call to silence at 11 am on the 11th of November, was announced by a the sound of a single shot being fired at commemorative ceremonies, which were held all over the country, and not limited to military cantonments. There were millions of Indian soldiers, many of them Sikhs, who fought in the First and Second World Wars. One decorated Canadian soldier’s story came to light relatively recently, thanks to the efforts of a Sikh historian.

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Flying into Vancouver airport in late September, through October and early November, you’re likely to spot shimmering, deep red-pink swatches in the patchwork of farmland below. These colourful fields hold the last of the year’s big berry crops- cranberries.

Native to North America, and closely associated with the Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations of Canada and the US, cranberries are glowing symbols of the festive season. The shallow rooted evergreen shrubs are grown in sandy soil in marshy wetlands. British Columbia is the largest producer of cranberries in Canada, with most of the crop grown in the Fraser valley and some on Vancouver Island. In 2010, to celebrate the hosting of the  Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Cranberry farmers in the city of Richmond, B.C., donated 13 million (who counted?) cranberries to construct a colourful installation depicting the Olympic rings and the maple leaf and Olympic torch.

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If the chill of winter is just around the corner, then fall is determined to send us marching boldly on to meet it in a blaze of glory. Thanks to the late burst of summer in the Pacific Northwest this year, the trees are wearing some truly spectacular colours. As the days grow shorter, greyer, wetter, colder, we’re soaking in any colour and  sunshine we can get, like bears feasting ahead of the winter.

Speaking of feasting, Canada sensibly celebrates  the harvest with Thanksgiving in early October, leaving enough time to recoup before the countdown to the Christmas feasts begins. Unless of course, you’re also celebrating Dussehra, Diwali*, Eid, and let’s not forget that candy crazed holiday, Halloween!

The fragrance of fall has enduring notes of spice and sweetness. The air is scented with cinnamon, cocoa, pumpkin pie, butter tarts. Funny, how, as you walk around downtown Vancouver, the smell of coffee suddenly seems so much more pronounced and alluring, drawing you in out of the cold. And driving home, you just happen to follow a route that takes you past the store with the best samosas around.

The farmers market opened for the winter season last week, and the line-ups at the hot food vendors stalls were longer than ever.

Fall? Looks good, smells great!

*Diwali has a big presence in Vancouver, celebrated citywide in a week of cultural events to mark the occasion. Get a taste of it here. Diwali fireworks merge with those of the Halloween revelries and make for a festive atmosphere that’s second only to Christmas and the Chinese new year celebrations.

The first snowfall of the season dusted the mountains around Vancouver a week ago. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to signal that the glowing fall colours on the trees around will soon disappear. With the temperature dipping into single digits (celcius), this seems like a good time to introduce some meat onto the blog menu! I’ll begin with a simple chicken curry, which, like C Y Gopinath’s very simple rajma, takes very little to produce a deeply satisfying dish.

Visiting my grandparents in Coorg was an education in so many ways, not least in the “where does my food come from” department. Take chicken, for instance. For the generations brought up on sanitized, supermarket poultry of the broiler kind, it might be hard to imagine that there was a time when chicken could be a tough old bird, requiring long stewing or even pressure cooking to tenderize it. Harder still, to stomach the idea that one of the birds that was scratching around in the yard not long ago, pecking at grain that you had scattered for it, might be the main attraction at lunch or dinner the same day. Witnessing the dispatching and preparation of chickens wasn’t encouraged, which of course led the more curious to sneak a peek. I knew where my food came from.

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