Father's Day and peas roti.........

Today, for Father's Day, we are trying to make my dad's favorite food. He really likes good food and my mom does a good job at making everything he likes....especially his roti. Since roti is his favorite food, we decided to make his favorite kind of roti--Trini style! My mom suggested that I should make aloo roti (potato paratha) but I told her that it would be too much starch. Nan found some peas in the freezer and we decided on peas puri. I guess it is our favorite kind of roti.
First, you boil the peas until it is almost cooked, then you strain the water out of the peas and fry the peas with garlic, pepper, salt and whole geera (cumin seeds). After that, you grind the peas and stuff the dough with the peas and cook with some oil.......And that is much easier said than done!
Vin is Indian/Trini to the bone...and in addition to that, you can tell right away what part of Trinidad he comes from. The North. North Indians are known for putting potatoes in everything they cook. Vin was especially disturbed to find out that we ran out of aloo (potatoes). To me, this was hilarious. I said, "Look at dis indian, he cyah cook without aloo!" He laughed when Nan said that we were eating peas puri today. Obviously, he isn't crazy about peas like we are.
I remember when my family planted peas. It is something my grandparents did...for a living on a large scale. And in Trinidad, when the older people built big houses, it was built with "peas money" or "garden money." My dad says that his grandfather used to always say, "As long as people have to eat, gardening will always be needed." It's true. The old people worked hard....really damn hard and built mansion like houses that replaced mud huts with thatched rooves. My family house has six rooms and three kitchens! My dad and mom planted peas in our earlier days and i remember seeing the kitchen floor covered with heaps of peas while they weighed it out to be sold. Some of my favorite memories involve shelling peas at the kitchen table late at night with my parents, Vin and Nan. My dad often says how much easier the job would have been if they had the tools of today. I guess we have a lot of respect for peas..... for three generations after the indentureship ended, it was our cash crop.
I guess even when we have our own houses, there are two plants that will be guaranteed to be planted in them. One is the tulsi and the other will be a peas tree. At least one of both. and maybe a sugarcane root. We kinda like that a lot too. Well i better get back to grinding the peas. That's my job for today. I'll blog about how the roti tasted later on.

Okay...i've just finished cooking the rotis. Vin found aloo and was able to make a curry with sem (a broad, flat kind of peas---we had about 20 of them in a little ziploc bag in the fridge) and then nan made bhaji with coconut milk and she put one okra in it. that one okra transformed the entire dish into a callaloo. By the way, i should state, we had a habit of planting smaller plants in between the peas trees. one was okra, one was hot peppers, one was tomatoes, and the other was baigan (eggplant). so the one okra came from our tree outside, so did the sem. I guess the food was as natural as it can get. By the way, miracle gro is one really excellent product. it really produces miracles!!!! now my only problem is when we can eat the food. my aunt has invited us over to her house tonight (it's her 28th wedding anniversary) and if i eat at home i cannot eat at her house. she will be very very offended so i've decided to wait til tomorrow to eat our food...it will prevent me from hearing my aunt saying for the next six months that i dont like to eat at her house=0)