Happy Blessed Rainy Day

Today is Blessed Rainy Day in Bhutan or Thure, a nationally observed holiday that marks the end of the monsoon (or rainy season) and the beginning of the fall. For farmer ( which according to most statistic would describe most Bhutanese) it means the growing season is behind them and the harvest is not very far away.

On Thure all natural water  is considered holy and everyone is encouraged to take an outdoor bath in order to cleanse themselves of their accumulated bad karma. Some people will leave a bucket out to gather rain overnight and then bathe with it in the morning. 

Its also an important family holiday and when I taught in the east of Bhutan, where the holiday is considered particularly important, many of my students made a huge effort to travel home for the day.  As it is with many family holidays sharing a meal is an important part of the celebration. Many families will start the day with a bowl or two or three of rice porridge or Thup is particularly important 

My sister's inlaws ( who are easterns) invited us to join them for  breakfast which of course turned into a regular feast. 

As with many visits in Bhutan  the meal started off with sweet milk tea and biscuits  ....

 quickly followed by steaming bowls of thup...

I ate three bowl full of the rice porridge  before realizing that another rice dish, shamdey ( a mixture of rice, butter, meat, eggs and sometimes a little spring onion) was waiting to be served!

This time with a little suja or butter tea....

At the end of the meal my sister's father-in-law insisted that my brother, Sonny, join him in celebrating the day with a glass or ara or home brewed alcohol. 

Another reason to raise a glass? This post mark an anniversary for this blog! One year ago one of my very first posts was about Blessed Rain Day and the thub we ate!

Painted cakes

 

I recently had a birthday. The best part of a birthday in our family is that my sister, Tshomin bakes a cake and then she or her artist boyfriend ( MadHatter) paints the cake. Yes you read that right, they paint the cake! They use an ordinary paint brush and food coloring to produce the most personalized and beautiful cakes. 

For example below is the birthday cheese cake Tshomin made for me last week, decorated with a lady bird and a plastic  panda -- both family nicknames for me. 

The inspiration for making these painted cakes comes from Cake and Empire a blog by a grad school friend of mine who is a talented cake maker as well as an archaeologist. The blog is a wonderful archive of some of the most creative and ambitious cakes she  has made. Amazingly enough her cakes almost always taste as good as they look! 

 Above is my all time favorite painted cake  baked by Tshomin and painted by MadHatter right before I left for my dissertation fieldwork. It depicts me as the Fool in my deck of tarot cards. So let me tell you about the Fool card . The Fool is off on a journey, she has her little pack on her back and she has her head up to the sun in anticipation of adventure. There is a naivete and vulnerable openness that is going to allow her to learn from her experiences. See how she is so busy looking up towards the open sky that she doesn't see the cliff? That both a caution ( watch where you are going fool!) but also an encouragement to take that leap into the unknown. Its hard to imagine a more apt card for the start of fieldwork--- this leap into the unknown, the decision to make yourself vulnerable in order to learn.  A sweet reminder to stay open to all the possibilities (and exciting risks)  that the fieldwork offered.