An Introduction

I’m Tracy. I’m just a Kansas girl who’s, well…not in Kansas anymore. My husband Kyle’s business brought our family to the other side of the world and landed us in Kolkata, India. All sorts of challenges have come from moving to a new country, a HUGE city of 15 million (we don’t have that in Kansas), and especially bringing our two small children, Landon (3) and Layla (2) along with us. **Edit: we took a few month hiatus in America, then returned to India in May 2015 with a new baby, Mason!
It’s an adventure everyday.

When you think of India, you probably expect several challenges: navigating  the crazy traffic, communicating with a language barrier, and surviving the heat. But there’s been one challenge to overcome that I wasn’t really anticipating: cooking. 

I love to cook. I love to bake. But a lot of the essentials I used to do those things in America aren’t readily available in India.

Here’s the thing…I don’t love Indian food. I also don’t hate it. There are a handful of dishes that I really enjoy (give me a bowl full of naan any day, and no one can argue with luchi, aka fried bread). Call me a sheltered, spoiled small city girl, but I just like American food. I like eating it. I like cooking it. So this blog is not the place if you’re wanting to learn how to cook Indian food. This is about my journey of learning to create the “American” food I love with the ingredients available in India. It takes some creativity and a LOT more time than cooking in America, but I’ve come to enjoy it.

Here’s one thing you need to understand up front though. I’m not a foodie. I love food. But I’m not a foodie. I don’t have an adventurous enough palate to enjoy all the exquisite foods chefs make on the Food Network (although I love watching them create it). I cook and eat food that your everyday, average homemaker likes to cook and eat.

Another reason I’m not an official foodie: I don’t like seafood. The only fish I really eat is tilapia, and that’s about as least fishy of a fish as you get. I used to like shrimp, and then had a bad shrimp experience while pregnant with Landon and it’s been over ever since then. But I know there are a lot of great seafood recipes out there, just not here.

I also only like white meat in poultry. You’ll never see me cook something with anything other than a chicken breast (dark meat is just so slimy, ya know?) But I bet you could substitute chicken thighs in most of my recipes and just adjust the cooking time a bit.

One final disclaimer: I’m not a creative cook. I love cooking…from recipes. So although I’ll share lots of adapted-for-India recipes, I’ll always try to link back to the original recipe I referenced (which is usually from Pinterest. How did people cook before Pinterest?)

So that’s me, and that’s what this blog is all about. Hope you enjoy and get some good ideas!