The Great Dough Debacle
A bowl of dosa dough (with instructions) happened to come by our way...thanks to N's mom. The batter like dough was transferred to a bigger bowl, covered with cling wrap and placed inside the draft less confines of the oven. We hovered around the oven impatiently, waiting for the dough to grow all nice and puffy. In our mother hen of a state, we might have even cooed at it. While the domestic diva within was delighted at the prospect of turning out crispy-on-the-oustide-but-soft-on-the-inside dosai's, we were even more delighted when the dough made us proud by puffing up to fill the bowl. We were ecstatic and in that fit of euphoria we...
turned on the oven to make a batch of cornbread*. And before we knew it, our dough had turned into this:
Yep...a ginormous, baked idli. Baked all the way through.
Tch! tch! an idli is still perfectly delightful, you say. When life gives you lemons make lemonade, you say.
Not so, dear people, remember that cling wrap that we covered the bowl with. Let's just say that nothing much remained of it after being subjected to 375 F for 30 minutes and melty cling wrap does not feature on our top ten list of favourite foods. And even though our giant baked idli tasted awesome (we did try a little bit), good sense prevailed and into the trash it went. On the positive side (we do believe in the whole lemons turning to lemonade thingy) the cornbread was delicious. Yay! Trader Joe's cornbread mix doctored with chipotle pepper and grated cheese.
Labels: Food
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One of the many surprises was the lack of mosquitoes throughout the park given that August is peak mosquito season in DC and this was a marsh. Apparently dragonflies prey on mosquito larvae and help eliminate them. 
During the interpretive tour we smelled the lotus (hints of spice and fennel), learnt a little more about cattails and wild rice and finally saw the "other" lily ponds. Since the lily has many natural pods, it is first bred in separate ponds behind the Visitors Center and then introduced into the main ponds. The lilies were clearly our favourites with their fascinating colors and even more fascinating names. 
