Tomatoes with dates and green chilli chutney

Tomatoes, Dates and Green chillies chutney.

Makes this delicious and easy chutney a great appetizer, the green chillies gives an extra punch of heat we Srilankans enjoy.

Please scroll down to Recipe time to avoid thoughts and life in general of Mama to the terrible four or you can read on..

The woes of the rainy season.

I’m a Pluviophile, no, it’s not a disease or something horrendous although I can’t blame you for thinking so, any word ending with a .phile tends to be.

But Pluviophile is a lovely word, it means I love rainy days,I find peace and comfort in it.

The gloom, dark skies, the need to stay indoors, not a fan of thunder and lightning but love the rain and to write the woes of my Pluviolove is surely unjust but write I must.

As I write these words, the Sun is finally out which makes me think I might have a love/ hate relationship, does that makes sense to you?

To me it does, here’s why.

There’s a leak on my roof, in fact, there’s about four or five of them, I blame the monkeys for it, their romps aside, they’ve managed to ruin a perfectly good roof.

They’ve been doing the Monkey dance over our heads and now there’s water dripping on us.

I can’t explain to you how it sounds when they jump from the trees to the roof but think of beating drums in an empty room, simulating echoes, furthermore, it’s no fun standing directly under those thumping feet,did I mention it’s a family?

I think the in-laws and grandkids have joined the dance as well.

We just might have to replace the roof. it’s raining now and my roof is leaking, focus on these words and imagine all the hassle that comes with it.

Pluviophiles shouldn’t have the ability to forecast rain by the aches in their bones, I’m not that old(young at heart is what I mean) but I can fairly predict a rainy day using my bones as feelers.

And whose idea was it to have off white floor tiles?

What were we thinking!,

We had the terrible three with four on the way when the house was built. why didn’t anyone warn us of white floors?

Four kids, running feet, flip flops everywhere, sand and mud with god knows what prints indoors.

That quote you come across saying rainy days are perfect days to cuddle up with a hot cup of chocolate and a good book is a LIE!

Rainy days is when you walk about the house, eternally wiping off muddy prints from your floors screaming at the kids asking them not to ride their bikes indoors and that’s another thing we wanted, a large open living room for the family but we were not thinking about the terrible four making it their playground when it rains, badminton, cricket to chasing after each other, they’ve done it all, especially when it rains.

Clothes, clothes everywhere, defies explanation because the kids are indoors but yet I’m sinking in clothes.

I want my kids to dance in the rain but I can’t let them because,

• Of people getting struck by lightning, I see on my Facebook feed.

• I can handle sick kids but can’t handle the drama when they need to take the meds, yes frown at me, think what you want but I have to do this four times and by the time I reach the fourth, madam fussy, it’s time for me to get some in me.

• I’ve learned the water cycle thrice, I’m not sure if the water gets filtered through the heavy clouds before raining down on us, does it? if it’s not, I’m imagining all the chemicals that gets sucked up into the clouds to fall back on us.

and now it’s raining again…..

Recipe time

Three days that’s how long this chutney lasted, it was spread on everything from Bread, Rotis, Rice, and biscuits.

The chillies didn’t bother anyone as there was enough sweetness to counter and the best part of it was I managed to cut down the sugar needed in the recipe by half when I substituted it with Dates.

My next batch will be with less Sugar than this one.

Please make sure to read the recipe at least once to avoid mistakes.

Ingredients

Ingredients mentioned below use standard measuring cups and spoon.

What you will need

2 kg of Tomatoes chopped (preferably the large ones)

1 cup dates deseeded

4-5 Green chillies

2 tablespoon of Ginger grated

3/4 cup of rice vinegar or any other vinegar you prefer

Salt to taste

1 tablespoon curry powder

1/2 a Cup of Water

1 tablespoon of chilli flecks

1 cup sugar

Method

Include the chopped Tomatoes in a pan.

Add the sliced green chillies, grated ginger and Vinegar, I’m choosing Rice vinegar but choose a Vinegar you prefer.

Include the deseeded dates.

Followed by Sugar and red chilli flecks. add a teaspoon of salt.

Mix all ingredients together, leave for five minutes.

On medium fire add 1/2 a cup of water and let it simmer until you reach the correct consistency, always make sure you have the taste balanced adding salt accordingly.