Canada Food House Sitting travel

House Sitting Serendipity

by peterpecksen
Comments 6

As with pretty well everyone else in the world, our life is not quite heading the direction we had mapped out 12 months ago. On the plus side, for us we are fortunately still doing very well. Instead of housesitting gigs in Panama and Bonaire, we are now simply enjoying house sitting in Canada. And honestly, we could not be in a better place to work our way through this adventure called a pandemic.

As I have said many times in the past, there are many serendipities to house sitting. One of those is books. You enter into a strangers home and have access to their selection and taste in literature. This also extends to their tastes in cookbooks.

We found this book on the coffee table, and it is a jem. Written by Cindy Ryan it is the story of her experience in the slum of Saki Naka in Mumbai, India. Her story is a great read, however the best part is the very authentic recipes from the ladies who live and cook in the slums every day.

Karen and I decided to do some travelling from our new kitchen. We invited my sister, Jennifer, over and had a most wonderful evening enjoying the powerful flavours of Mumbai.

Getting the initial ingredients prepared.
Any time you prepare a recipe and it calls for spices by the tablespoon and 20 cloves of garlic you know you are in for a treat.
With the guidance from my sister we prepared Meena’s Chicken Curry and Champa’s Vegetable Curry.

The evening we spent making this meal really high-lighted the advantages of our current house sitting situation. We are able to experience house sitting in a fantastic home while still being able to see our family that we have seen precious little of in the last seven years of travelling. But we also are able to use food and cooking to travel to a new area of the world and broaden our horizons.

Of course what curry would be complete without chapati. This was my second attempt making chapati and with the guidance from Jenn, it was a wonderful success.
Using the skillet on the barbecue worked wonders. As well, it got us outside to enjoy the weather.
Dinner is served. Admittedly, next time we will cut back on the 4 tablespoons of Indian curry powder, however it was an exceptional meal. Made only better because of the company.

As we head into our second Canadian winter in a row we look forward to spending more time with family and continuing to travel via our culinary adventures.

Tags • • • • •

About peterpecksen

Welcome to our travel blog. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to say, "I'm out of here?" Well we did, and in 2013 we made it a reality. We sold or gave away all of our possessions other than what fit in our luggage and we set off on an endless adventure. Part of our goal is to share our experiences with others and hopefully provide some information, motivation, or just a moments escape. The general idea was to look for a place that would be ideal to settle down in. However in the meantime it is about experiencing life in different countries amongst different cultures and learning how to understand and appreciate each other. A large part of our time is spent housesitting which provides an excellent opportunity to experience more of the "normal" neighbourhoods as opposed to the tourist locales. Though we make sure to enjoy those as well. So through plenty of photographs and a running commentary come and share with us our life on the road.

pecksen.wordpress.com

6 comments on “House Sitting Serendipity”

  1. Aliya
    September 17, 2020

    Lovely food looks delicious

    Reply
  2. reshetylo@shaw.ca
    September 18, 2020

    Bet that put hair on your chest???

    Spicy???

    Paul Reshetylo

    GFID

    Four things you can’t recover: The stone…after the throw. The word…after it’s said. The occasion…after it’s missed. The time…after it’s gone.

    Reply
  3. Jonno
    September 20, 2020

    Looks like a wonderful time being had by all. Tough time for all housesitters at the moment, we’re really struggling to find any sits in the UK currently. Can’t see the situation changing soon either.

    Reply
    • peterpecksen
      September 20, 2020

      You are very right. We are incredibly fortunate that these current homeowners have asked us to stay on another year. Hopefully things will slowly be turning around by then.

      Reply

Leave a Reply

%d bloggers like this: