youyemyae scribbles...

Ganesha Chaturthi 2010

2011-01-22T21:31:00.000+05:30

This is a post that has been sitting as a draft since months. I had forgotten to upload the pictures and today put in some time to search for the 4 month old picture in the backup folders. So here is our Ganesha V2010, Finally! At-least before the 2011 chaturthi :-)

Each of us have a hobby that eventually grows on you, one such is making an eco-friendly Ganesha all by ourselves at home. Even though it is an yearly once occasion, I look forward to it so much. Our debut with making the Ganesha started last year while in Israel. Our last year's Ganesha was more raw and we had our own worries how he would dry and stick and stay in shape. This time we managed to give him a better looking slim face and a custom made umbrella. We managed to give shape to the elephant God in less than 30 mins just after hour morning coffee on chaturthi. We quickly (h)air dried him and he was all ready for the pooja much ahead of us in time.

Quick Broccoli Pachdi ~ Raita

2011-01-21T15:12:00.002+05:30

1 Cup Curd/Yoghurt
10-15 cooked Broccoli florets
[To cook them, you could either microwave them for a few minutes or cook in boiling water. Make sure you dont over cook them, else they lose their crunchiness.]
3 table spoons of one of these powders/podi
[MTR chutney podi/ Paruppu podi/ Mom made-Home made Idli Milagai podi].

Mix them all in a bowl and ta-da !!

Detox @ home

2011-01-21T14:59:00.002+05:30

Some mint and basil leaves in water makes one of the best detox fluids made at home. This is with the greens. Try an other traditional one, famously called the Oma/Ova or Ajwain water. Boil drinking water, as it starts to boil toss in a spoon of ajwain. To it, other Indian condiments that can be added are Fennel, Fenugreek, Cumin to name a few.

Quick dinner with Quinoa

2011-01-20T14:53:00.001+05:30

Wash the quinoa (preferably in a tea stainer) and cook it in a sauce pan, Quinoa : Water = 1:3. Toss in some spices if you like, I added garlic chives and a couple of basil leaves. Fry the onion and garlic pods in home made ghee or any healthy oil and keep them aside (do not mix with spinach else they will lose the crunch). Stir-fry the spinach separately, add salt and just serve all one on top of the other when u eat.

Happy start...disciplined start!

2011-01-07T11:30:00.006+05:30

On 30Dec last year, when I got my wisdom tooth extracted surgically - many of my friends asked me the same question, "why now ?" when the new year is just around the corner. None of them basically appreciated the fact that I was in pain during the new year's eve when the whole world was "happily partying". I could hardly smile or speak or relish any goodies. We had a quiet, literally "quiet" as we welcomed the new year at home with lil A's grand parents. The eve and the whole day we sat, talked, played, watched a bit of TV read cricket and made a quick temple visit. This was fun too. We had more of a very disciplined start to our everyday life. Extraction of wisdom tooth does impart a lot of discipline around the household inadvertently. Here are a few,

1. Eat less and eat right!
What with the mouth opening not more than 5 mm, I was fully on liquid diet for 5 days. Breakfast was a warm porridge (traditional wheat or ragi kanji) followed by a glass of chill strawberry or banana (skimmed) milk shake. Lunch was a bowl of soup and well boiled vegetables. Dinner used to be mashed spinach + yoghurt or dhal + yoghurt. It was an out and out no-carb or less-carb diet.
2. More water~fluid intake
3. Say NO to snacks!
Since I could hardly bite, it was a no cookies, no biscotti, no beard (read peanut butter, jam, nutella), no to krishna sweets, no murukku, no thattai.... no nothing week!
4. Better dental hygiene
Brushing twice a day is good. But rinsing~flossing after every meal is even better. I had to keep the stitches clean and germ free. In our spoon-fork-meal plan, I dont think any/many of us have the habit of walking up to the wash basin and rinse and floss after our brunch & lunch sessions. We probably do with a glass of water and say the purpose is solved.
5. No to hot coffee, hot meals...

I could not sip in anything hot. Moreover, eating or drinking hot stuff is definitely bad for the food pipe and even the stomach. So I got to a mode where i was only having a moderately hot tea and coffee.

6. Learnt to walk slowly

I could not run or even jog because the slightest jerk would hurt my jaw. And there wasn't much to do at home too. So AA and I would go on those "dampathi sametha" slow walks after every meal.

7. Slow eating and eating in small portions
I had automatically switched to a small dessert spoon and hence the portions for every bite/gulp reduced. And in order to chew and even avoid the food getting to the weak-wrong-left side, I had to constantly keep and swallow the food slowly from the safe-right side.
8. As a result, the younger one was finishing his meal
Lil A always needs company at the dining table till he finishes his meal. At least one of us should have our plates non-empty till the time he finishes, else he would get up too saying his tummy's full. But this past week, he finished his meal much ahead of me.
9. Guaranteed weight loss of 3-4 pounds in 1 week!
Obviously, if one follows all of 1-7 steps what else could be the result ?
10. Younger one becomes less dependent and more disciplined
I was hearing less of "Amma, come here" or most of the times Amma got replaced by Appa or Paati or Thatha. It was a big no to his monkey tricks - uppu mootais - somersaults on my tummy.
11. House gets cleaned up
Since my mom was around, she pretty much took care of the food business and AA was on his year end 10 day vacation, so my dad and he were keeping lil A engaged all through his Xmas vacation. And I was free enough to clear some long pending jobs of disposing old stuff - shredding mails and papers. Winter cleaning of the wardrobes, clear pending laundry and many more.
12. A good break to the voice cords
13. Last but not the least
What a relief ! Got rid of that nasty wisdom tooth of a size of a cashew nut that had grown like a crescent into my jaw bones and perpendicular to the other teeth and giving me an unbearable pain at least twice in a year.

After experiencing all the above goodies, do you really think I would want to go back to that - let us say, not-so-undisciplined life ? I know I am still young to break these rules and pamper myself and my tummy once in a while ;-) But the fact is for most of us it is what they call the starting trouble. Once into the groove, there's no looking back. After this 1 whole week, I feel my stomach muscles have shrunk and I dont think I can over eat or drink a steaming hot coffee or I feel guilty to go pick a danish cookie from that box.

Happy 2011!

Evil mom in me strikes

2010-09-16T21:29:00.001+05:30

Once in a while we have these ups and downs in our kid's eating behavior. That is when I have to really really come up with a new dish. Believe me, it is quite a challenge! I'm sure all the moms with a 2+ age group at home will empathize with me. Moms always wish for their infants to grow faster so they could fed all the external delicacies of the world. It always remains a wish if the child is not a great eater. It is times like these your child went back to those infant days, where, all it ate/drank was mother's milk and would just quietly go back to sleep with that satisfied look, smile and tummy!

Here's something that became a huge hit last week at home. Mint + Carrot Chapaties or Parathas, how ever you want to christen it. We named it colorful Parathas. While you prepare the dough,
-> to the flour (2 cups),
-> add a whole big carrot in grated form,
-> chop a cup of mint leaves or spinach or Methi (Fenugreek) leaves or any greens that you want your child to eat, but doesn't eat otherwise ;-)
-> a pinch of salt

Now, mix all and make the dough. When you actually start making the breads, spread it out evenly, apply a thin layer of ghee (melted butter), this adds to the softness if you plan to send it as a snack packed in your kid's bag. Fold it from all sides and again press/ spread it out. If using a chapathi maker, it does both the pressing and cooking job. If doing it manually, heat the frying and make sure the paratha well cooked in both sides.

If eating immediately, it tastes great with butter. If packing as a nutritious snack, apply some ketchup & roll-it-up.

If Salman c(kh)an, you think Rajni C(k)ant ??

2010-09-15T10:09:00.000+05:30

A friend had posted this video on facebook and more than the trailer I enjoyed her comment - "please don't forget to leave your brain at home to enjoy fully!" How very true!

To me it looks like a "serios" comedy version of Jim Carrey's "The Mask". As all the crazy fans always say, what has Rajni not attempted or what is it that Rajni Can't ?

There's only one thing I can appreciate about this whole Endhiran thing, that Big B and Rajni are of the same generation more or less the same age, but this super star still thinks, acts & does things young and even gets to romance the former's daughter-in-law.

Right now the question is, If Salman C(kh)an rule the Box office with his dubakooru Dabangg, you think Rajni C(k)ant do so with Endhiran ?

6 PM IST : Then & Now

2010-09-14T21:16:00.000+05:30

Then - We were taught to open the front (main) door and light the vilakku (lamp) @6pm.
Now - I'm teaching my son to SHUT all the doors and windows and switch on the mosquito repellent @6pm.

Duh!

Tamil heroes

2010-09-11T15:16:00.000+05:30

Impressive video and I hope the right message reaches all...

That complete south Indian...

2010-09-03T10:30:00.002+05:30

What triggered this post is the below song Jagadoddharana by Bombay Jaysahri in Carnatic-fusion form.

Yesterday being Janmashtamai, I took to hearing some krithis on Krsna. A friend on facebook had posted this Jagadodharan by B'bay Jayashri, as I heard her "Madhukara Manikyana.." in the anupallavi - the thought struck me. It is actually "Magugala Manikyana" meaning "gem among children" [Manikyam = Gem, Magu = child in Kannada]. What I do not understand is, when they render such a wonderful composition of Sri Purandara Dasa, wouldn't they take that extra care to not to alter the meaning/essence of the song. On the other hand Madhukara is honey bee in Sanskrit. It is still an excellent rendition by her, if only the pronunciation, meaning were taken care of. I'm still biased - when it comes to devotional songs, it is MS Subbulakshmi or M L Vasantha Kumari or Bala Murali Krishna who bring in the correct pronunciation, there by the meaning, their understanding of the composition helps them in bringing out the correct emotion.

As I had these running through my mind - there was an other parallel track of thoughts - if I should say,

1. I'm Lucky
2. I'm blessed
3. Or just thank my parents
for having given me the opportunity to learn to read/write/speak all the Carnatic languages - Sanskrit, Telugu and Kannada apart from Tamil and Malayalam that flows in the blood and six years of music from the land of Annamayya and Purandara Dasa. Not only am I able to appreciate the music and the meaning of the compositions by our saints but today am in a position to even point out such linguistic mistakes (!!!)

Photoscape

2010-07-28T21:38:00.001+05:30

While I searched for a suitable tool to get the copyright signature on our photographs, came across a many including the very simple water mark by Picasa up-loader. One such free tool that served the purpose is the Photoscape. Not very complicated, easy to edit and draw signatures on images. Even though I'm yet to figure out the font which provides the copyright symbol, for now, I am quite satisfied by drawing it using Lucida calligraphy font. For a free download, try http://www.photoscape.org/ps/main/download.php

Bitter gourd Kosumbari

2010-07-13T09:46:00.007+05:30

On the way back from Coorg, we pit-stopped at Kamat Lokaruchi (on Mysore road) for lunch. We are all fans of bitter gourds at home and any new dish made out of it, we welcome with open hands/mouth :-) Here's one I learnt from them - a kosumbari (pachadi) made with bitter gourd.

1 long or 2 small bitter gourds, chopped into lean, equally sized pieces.

(some senior citizens at home say that we should not cook bitter gourds in odd numbers, one of those "dont know why?" facts)

small and equal quanities of mustard, urad and channa dhal, pinch of Asafoetida for the seasoning.

pinch of turmeric

3 tsp of your favorite sambhar powder (home made/mom made/ MTR or 777)

salt to taste.

pinch of red chilli powder.

1 bowl of curd/yogurt or thick buttermilk

1 large onion, chopped.
some Coriander and curry leaves, chopped.

In a pan or kadai, heat some oil, add the seasoning essentials. To this, add the chopped bitter gourd. To make the dish even faster - just before adding it to the pan, one can steam cook the chopped vegetable (make sure it doesn't get soggy) for 5 mins like idli or toss it in boiling water for 5 mins and drain it well or even cook in the microwave for 10 minutes. You need to wait till it gets deeply fried and becomes crunchy chunks. Add the salt, turmeric and sambhar powder and mix well. Allow it to cool.

In the meantime, take a bowl of thick buttermilk or curd, add the chopped onions and the greens. To this curd, add a pinch of salt and a pinch of red chilli powder. Once the fried bitter-gourd comes to room temperature, add to the curd and mix well.

This is a great substitute for Raita and a yummy side dish for Methi parathas or even plain roti. I have a feeling it will go well with coconut rice aka thengai sadam.

End of Mango season, so what ?

2010-07-13T08:46:00.003+05:30

We still have these yummilicious ones...

a Melony-stalactite

Jordan makes a debut in Bollywood

2010-05-29T22:19:00.009+05:30

One week after landing here, for the first time I get control of the remote and switched to something other than Cartoon Network. 2 channels up, it is Channel [V] and guess what ? I am greeted by the lovely videos/photographs of Jordan through this recent Pooja Bhat's movie, Kajraare starring Himesh and a Pak girl, Mona Liza. Who cares about the star cast, but at least for the sake of nostalgia of our Jordan trip, i think I'll try to watch this movie.

Kudos to Pooja Bhat. Its a beautiful country - must see! Indian passport holders do not require a visa to Jordan. It is visa on entry since November 2009. So, if you are looking for an exotic/historic/adventure filled vacation - Jordan is also an option :-)

Locations in the order of appearance -

0:00 Mt. Nebo near Madaba, the Moses memorial from where Moses spotted the promised land, Israel.

0:10 - Amphitheatre in Jarash

0:20 - Red Sea, Aqaba

0:28 - the Siq in Petra

0:48 - Jarash, Roman remains, main street columns

1:25 - Deserts of Wadi Rum

0:00 - Wadi rum, red colored sand in the deserts

0:25 - Karak Castle

0:40 - Jarash, the amphitheatre

0:45 - Petra , The treasury

1:22 - The Siq in Petra

Quick Carrot Halwa

2010-04-27T18:43:00.007+05:30

3pm to 4pm in the afternoons is when the snack alarm in his tummy usually rings. And today it had a special desserty appetite. He was 18 months old, when the word "Mi Mi" came into existence. We used to give him fruits, sweets and cakes and some exotic cookies saying "yummy yummy". And even more was the influence of the famous Wiggles number "Fruits salad, yummy yummy"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB4MNu6W9sg

So, he comes to me saying, "Amma, edanum Mi Mi venum", meaning he wants something yummy yummy. I ask him if he wanted to eat sliced carrots dipping them in honey or sugar. He suggests back to me, "that Mi Mi you make with carrots, can you make that now ?" So 20 minutes and he had it in his hands. At the time when there are emails floating around asking people not to make use of a microwave, I'm putting up a quick recipe for a microwaved carrot halwa. This recipe comes from a cook book. I gifted a microwave to my MIL in 2005 and she mentioned to me about this recipe that she discovered in the cook book that came with it. Never had i had the chance to try it and have always been doing the traditional grating carrots and cook on stove method. It has taken me 5 long years to try it :-).

8-10 large carrots

100 ml milk

1 cup sugar

1 tsp ghee or melted butter

To garnish : 10 black currants (or) golden raisins (and) 10 almonds (or/and) Cashews, pinch of Cardamom powder or sprinkle some of their seeds.

Cut the carrots in random order, we need not grate them. Transfer the pieces into a blender/mixer, add the sugar on top and add the milk at one go or depending on the efficiency of the blender you could add little by little. Blend well. Transfer this carrot juice into a thick microwave safe container. Place the bowl in the microwave and let it cook for 15 minutes. Bring it out, add the ghee and all the items that you wish to garnish with, mix well and put it in for 5 more minutes.

Zeh Hakol, yummy yummy warm carrot halwa is ready to be served. If you have the habit of stocking ice creams, relish the warm carrot halwa with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

For the love of baking...

2010-04-06T19:33:00.005+05:30

Fruit and Nut Loaf - No added Sucre

In the midst of cleaning and clearing the kitchen before we vacate the house I get carried away by these left over chunks of walnuts, almonds, black currants, dates, apricots and dried plums. I wanted to get rid of them so I can claim I cleared a shelf in the kitchen today! But how ? It is impossible for me to just eat all of those dry fruits at at that very moment in order to get rid of those bottles. A also calls out, "amma pashikaradu, edanum snack kudu" meaning "mom am hungry, give me a snack". I didn't want to do anything elaborate. So tried something like a fruit and nut bread with no sugar, no eggs, no vanilla extract, no butter, no milk. Just simplified plain whole wheat bread with dry fruits and nuts in it.

I used,

2 tsp instant yeast

50 ml lukewarm water

3 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

less than 1 tsp of cinnamon powder

a bowl or 2 full cups of mixed dry fruits and nuts (i used walnuts, almonds, black currants, dates, apricots and dried plums)

Preheat oven to 175 deg C.

In a huge bowl, prepare the yeast by beating it well with lukewarm water for approx 5 minutes. Add the flour and baking powder, cinnamon powder and salt - make a dough by adding water occasionally. Keep it aside by covering it with a damp cloth of about 1 hour. The dough would have risen to a certain level. Now add the bowl of dry fruits and nuts and mix well into the dough. This can be allowed to rise too by leaving aside for few hours. But i was running out of time and so placed the dough in two 10in*4in aluminium baking sheets. Just grease the sheets with butter before placing the dough in order to get that non-stick feel.

Bake for 40 minutes or until the usual tooth prick coming out dry test succeeds. Cool the loaves for a while before cutting. This is a yummy tea time loaf or a healthy morning breakfast since it has no added fat like butter or milk or oil or eggs and no sugar - the dry fruits act as the sweeteners.

Broccoli Dosa

2010-04-06T18:38:00.006+05:30

This belongs to the subset of the evil mom's recipes. Thankfully we are in a stage - point of life where I still get to decide and dictate what he should be eating. And I do not think this will go on forever, but as long as I'm in power why not utilize the chances.

After making some stir fried vegetables salad for us,I had some broccoli shoots left behind. I used only the florets in the salad and had a major portion of the stem/stalk left behind. I had not thought of anything for little one's dinner that night. If I was to show him a full bowl of vegetables like ours, no way he was going to oblige and his tumbly would still remain rumbly. Just when i thought I would make him a couple of dosas, i hit upon the idea of broccoli dosa.

Quickly microwaved the broccoli shoots, put them in the blender they turned into a fine paste. Added it to equal portion of the dosa batter and a little salt and voila - brocolli dosa mix was ready.

To start from scratch - (makes approx. 15 dosas)

Soak 1 & 1/2 cup rice and 1/4 cup urad dhal for 3 hours in water

2 cups of finely washed broccoli shoots or florets or the stalk cut into pieces

salt to taste

1 small green chilli (optional)

When it is about time to grind the soaked items, microwave the broccoli for about 7-8 minutes. Add water periodically and grind the rice and the lentil first for a couple of seconds and when the rice is all almost half broken, add the broccoli and grind well until the batter consistency is reached. If you wish to add a little flavor, toss a chilli into the blender.

Heat a pan, pour a ladle of batter at a time to get thin crispy dosas or a little more than that to make thick Adai like dosas which can be enjoyed with butter or ghee + sugar combo by your little ones.

Whole Wheat Bread - II

2010-03-20T15:02:00.006+05:30

Just realized this note did not get posted since i had typed "<" for less than and it had failed saying invalid html.

This is a continuation of Whole wheat bread - I

I wanted to bake only 1 loaf of bread for starters. I reduced the quantities of the ingredients to nearly half of what was on the video.

2 tsp instant yeast

1 inch square butter, melt and allow to cool

4 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup luke warm water

less than 1/2 cup milk

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

1 towel

bread knife

wooden board

bread pan or aluminium container

2 bowls , 1 small and 1 large, [large to the extent that when u put the flour in, it should be half the bowl. A larger bowl than this will let the dough lose its moisture quickly and the dough might not rise properly. I did this mistake of leaving the dough in an extra large container.]

Coming back to the procedure, as mentioned earlier, i do not have a table top mixer, but aren't we all Indian women champs in making the chapati/roti dough by hand ?

First step, to activate the yeast, i pretty much followed from the the video. In the smaller bowl put the 2 tsp of yeast and add the about 50 ml lukewarm water and stir well with a spoon/spatula for about 5 mins until and a little after you get the fermenting yeast smell. Leave this undisturbed for about 10 minutes. Add the milk and butter and stir well for 5 minutes.

In the larger bowl, take the 4 cups of flour and add salt and sugar. You may want to go happily sit down on the floor and let the hands do some hard work, if not do it your own way. Pour in the yeast+milk+butter mixture. Start playing with the dough, knead it well. People with tendinitis watch out, you do not want to strain your wrists or other arm joints. Add water occasionally, you may want to keep doing this for at least 20 minutes of it is by hand and get it to a consistency where the dough is really really soft and does not stick to the sides of the container and even to your palm. An easier way is to make a ball out of the dough and keep throwing it into the vessel with forcefully. It is a great stress buster if you are thinking of someone you wish to smack ;-). Again check if the dough is exactly half the level of the bowl, if not you may want to move to such a container. Wet a kitchen towel and cover the bowl slightly touching the dough. You are on your own for the next 2 hours for this has to remain undisturbed for the yeast to act and let it rise.

When you are back, the dough should have risen, if not double the amount, at least 1/4th above the original height :-). This was what had happened to me, as mentioned earlier i made the mistake of leaving it in a larger bowl. The dampness of the cloth never reached the dough and it lost its own moisture too. Never mind, get the dough out and knead it on a wooden cutting board. I used my wooden chapathi rolling board for this purpose. Sprinkle some flour on the board in order that the dough doesn't stick.

If you have a bread pan, shape your dough into a similar shape and decorate it with a plait/braid. Refer to the videos in the earlier post for this. I didn't have a bread pan either, so used an aluminium container. Grease the container with a little butter before putting in the dough. Leave the dough again undisturbed for 2 more hours. Cover it with a damp cloth. This is when i achieved maximum rise. Since i had kept in an aluminium container, the corners weren't thick enough and it kind of lost its shape. Never mind, i still managed to bake it.

Set the oven to 175C. Leave the dough in for about 40 minutes. Check after 30 minutes, color matters, you do not want it to become dark brown already. I had to give it an extra 5 minutes, since my dough was still rising when i placed it in the oven. So it took a total 45 minutes for me. Bring it out and allow it to cool. Once cooled, cut it into loaves and enjoy. Else, giving a day to this wheat bread actually helped. The insides had become really soft due to the presence of butter and milk. I didn't use the toaster since it was too fragile, hence used the tava/non-stick pan to heat it, applied butter on either side and it was yumm! Total satisfaction guaranteed!

Whole Wheat Bread - I

2010-03-20T13:51:00.006+05:30

Since the time i landed in this holy land i have been wanting to learn to make all varieties of bread that these folks make. The breads are amazing, best of all i have had in my life ! But very very rarely do people make breads at home these days. The ones who make, follow a long procedure of dealing with the flour and dough for over 24 hours. I usually do not prefer these overnight waiting preparations - simply because i forget to soak or refrigerate or should i say i lack patience to wait for that long. I feel like when i start a dish it should just be done in a few hours before i hit the sack. Pita breads were easy so i make them quite often. But my wish of baking a whole loaf of wheat bread remained unsatisfied.

I started googling, there were too many options :-). Spent a good amount of time in browsing through the Expert Village videos on YouTube. The irritating part was the videos had enough information but they were not numbered in chronological order. They were just randomly available. So i had to spend a considerable amount of time in putting them in order before i watched from the beginning - ingredients part to the end - slicing part.

Though the videos are informative, even more annoying part of the videos are that fellow, Brandon Sarkis introducing himself at the beginning of each of those not too long but extremely short clips (3 minutes maximum). But my aim was to make that whole wheat bread happen, so i tried maximum to ignore those introductions.

Here's the actual order of the videos by Expert village on how to make whole wheat bread at home :

Equipments - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bylG2Ro9BRE&NR=1

Ingredients - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md754oPwblQ&feature=related

Activating yeast - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md754oPwblQ&feature=related

Adding Flour - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CokGSkEjDUo&feature=channel

Knead Dough - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXO4hpH8IFQ&NR=1

Grease bowl - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMTLbVyVUps&NR=1

Dough rising - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz1uIo4dBmU&NR=1

work with dough - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs3grZEyZac&feature=channel

Split the loaf - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoZHy-VsMJA&NR=1

shape the loaf - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RIUHVFvabQ&feature=related

braid the bread - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_AM_GRIaXk&feature=related

Baking - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ9gBFT_X6g&NR=1

Cool the bread - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIU2exNa-_4&feature=related

Slice - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyjWP21L934&feature=channel

I do not have a table top mixer, so altered the steps here and there to my convenience. My next post has the detailed method on how i made my whole wheat bread.

My braided beauty awaits...

2010-03-18T21:31:00.003+05:30

Fresh home made whole wheat bread is happening...

Thats my son's neglected white board i tried to put to use in the kitchen.

To all those Tomato lovers (II)...

2010-03-18T19:46:00.003+05:30

The tomato thokku or the pickle is the easiest pickle that could be made at home. As far as i have read and heard, no two women use the same mode of preparation of this thokku. I learnt this from my mom. I altered a few steps here and there to my convenience. My sister does it altogether differently with chat masala and more. My cousin, a die hard Hyderabadi does it by sun drying the tomatoes for a week.

After i extracted the puree yesterday, they got converted into this irresistible thokku. A great spread on quick spice sandwiches or for roti/puri/pita with raita, side dish for kichdies and obviously tastes best with the world's best satvik food - thayir sadam aka the curd rice.

Ingredients to make 400gm of thokku,

20 large tomatoes

20 small dry red chillies/ 15 if long

5 tsp fenugreek seeds powder

3 tsp mustard seeds

5 tsp salt

1 tsp turmeric powder

2 tsp cumin powder

2 tsp coriander powder

2-3 pinches asafoetida

5 cloves garlic finely chopped (optional)

1 in ginger finely chopped (optional)

10 tsp cooking oil

Wash and clean the tomatoes in running water. Extract the tomato puree like this. Or alternatively, this is what my mom does - boil a pot of water, turn off flame and leave the tomatoes in the hot water for 10 mins. Remove them from water and peel their skin off. Now grind the skinless tomatoes into a fine paste. Few folks do not bother about the skin and would quickly grind tomatoes in to a paste soon after they wash it. Few skip the grinding part and would toss the tomatoes just by slicing them into 4-5 pieces each. Like i said earlier, no two women seem to follow the same method :-).

Heat 5 tsp of oil in a wok. Add the mustard seeds, let it splutter. Add the dry fenugreek seeds powder and toss them for a couple of seconds. Add the asafoetida and the dry red chillies and toss until the chillies turn from red to shiny brown. Now pour in the tomato puree and allow it to boil. This is a messy fluid that would paint your kitchen red. So bring the heat/flame to low to avoid that extra work of extra rubbing/cleaning of the counters. The puree from 20 tomatoes nearly took 2 hours on low flame to get reduced to the desired consistency i.e 1/4th of its original quantity. Occasionally keep stirring the mix. In between you could get a whole lot of chores done from laundry to clothes pressing to other dinner preparations or even a quick 30 min aerobics work out. Somewhere when it thickness to 1/2 the original quantity, add the salt and all the spice powder and 2 tsp of oil and stir.

When it comes closer to 1/4th, stay close, add the remaining oil and stir frequently. By now the color would have become closer to maroon and the consistency is more or less a thick shiny paste. Serve hot/warm if your meal is ready. Or allow to cool and store/refrigerate in glass or porcelain or plastic container avoid using stainless steel for pickles or for any dish that has high chilly+salt quotient.

Optional : At the end, fry the finely chopped garlic and ginger pieces to golden brown in oil and add to the thick paste/thokku and mix well.

To all those Tomato lovers (I)...

2010-03-17T22:15:00.005+05:30

Do you see a grater there ? Oh, yes you do!

This is a great way of making tomato puree without the help of a blender. I learnt this from Vardit while i was teaching her some Indian recipes. This comes in very handy even for the simple south Indian rasam especially when you have a little imp at home who picks and complains, "amma, tholu (skin)". Clean the tomatoes, cut each of them into 2 halves, place the flesh side of the tomato on the grater and grate till you see the thin skin and all the pulp is gone underneath.

We could do the same for most dishes like dhal makhani, lentil soup, rasam, masal that we make for puri, chutney, thokku, pickles - the list is endless even when the tomatoes are skinless.

Stuffed Vine/Grape Leaves

2010-03-16T01:10:00.003+05:30

Stuffed Vine Leaves or the Dolma is a total Mediterranean dish famous from Greece to Turkey to Israel. This is actually quite simple to make and has no standard recipe - at least that is what I figured out after asking many a women here and browsing through recipes on the net. This dish is mostly done with meat, without it a great veggie dish.

Main ingredients would be vine leaves, rice, lemon and some mint, rest is all extra and the more you add the more flavor you get.

Ingredients that I made use of,

1 cup rice

20 vine leaves soaked in salt water/ Fresh leave can also be made use of but they have to be boiled well before using.

2 lemons

2 onions, cut into tiny pieces

1 cup peas

1 cup corn

2 carrots - grated

3 cloves garlic, cut into tiny pieces

2 green chillies

some mint leaves

salt to taste

4 tsp olive oil

1. Allow the cup of rice to cook well.

2. Soak the vine leaves in hot water for 15-20 mins in order to get rid of the salt.

3. In a wok, heat olive oil and saute the onions & garlic until golden brown. This preparation was unplanned so i didn't think about any other vegetable and ended up using some frozen peas and frozen corn and added the grated carrots. When they are cooked, add salt and squeeze a full lemon's juice onto the vegetables.

4. Check if the rice is cooked, if so, add the rice on top of the vegetables and mix well. This forms the filling. This is a great vegetable pulav or a veggie lemon rice (whatever you want to name it) for the little ones since there is no chilli factor in it. Especially for the kids who love the tangy lemon taste, this is a great meal.

5. Pull out the vine leaves from the water, just dry them for a couple of seconds in order that the water drips off and spread them out on a sheet or a plate.

6. Take a spoon full of the mixed rice and place it in the middle of the leaf. Cover it from the bottom and the 2 sides and start rolling it upwards till the tip of the leaf. Watch this video for an alternate preparation with meat and on how to roll the leaves too.

7. When all the leaves are stuffed, place then a sauce pan and cover the leaves with a plate that goes into the vessel. This is done to prevent the leaves from expanding/get unrolled when they get cooked. Fill the sauce pan with water until above the plate.

8. Cut a lemon into 4 pieces and the chillies into 2 halves each and some mint leaves -> drop them into the sauce pan. Add a tsp of salt too.

9. Place a lid on the sauce pan and allow it to cook for 15 mins.

10. Open up and serve hot or cool and store with the syrup in the refrigerator and use as a snack on a later day.

Folks who possess idli plates can skip steps 7 through 9 and can steam cook the stuffed leaves for 30-40 minutes. Make the syrup separately and soak the cooked leaves in the syrup for 30 minutes.

Tangy Tomato Dosa

2010-03-10T15:24:00.008+05:30

In a land where there is no Urad dhal, this dosa comes in handy. Not that we are surviving without urad dhal at all. We managed to bring a kilo or 2 during our last home trip and i'm just being a little thrifty in using since we have couple of months to go before we return. I found this recipe on a friend's blog and altered it a little.

The below quantity of ingredients make 15 dosas of 6 inch diameter each.

1 & 1/2 cup rice

1/4 cup urad dhal

1/4 cup red lentils

2 tsp fenugreek seeds

Wash them well and soak them separately for 2-3 hours.

1 long green chilli

1 inch tamarind or 1 tsp of tamarind juice

2 tsp salt

2 small tomatoes

Grind the above with the well soaked rice and lentils and fenugreek to the usual batter consistency.

One would easily mistake the batter to thick strawberry milk shake;). Heat a pan, pour the batter one ladle at a time - use butter or ghee or oil of your choice around the dosa. Best had with chutney or sambhar, but we had an appetite for milagai podi and the little one enjoyed his tangy tomato dosa by dipping it in yogurt.

Minty minty spaghetti

2010-03-09T16:11:00.005+05:30

Yes, I'm obsessed with mint.

Little A wanted spaghetti for dinner last night. So while he assisted me in cooking the spaghetti, I worked on making the sauce. His way of assisting me is to count the spaghetti sticks and drop them into the boiling water in the saucepan at his own pace.

Cook the spaghetti noodles al dente.

1 cup fresh mint leaves

1 green chilli

salt to taste ( i added 2 tsp for the given quantity)

1 garlic clove

1/4 cup of water

Grind the above and keep aside.

(portions for 300 gm noodles, good enough for 3 people)

1 big onion

1 big tomato

1/2 red pepper

1/2 green pepper

1/2 yellow pepper

Chop the above vegetables into not so tiny - not too big pieces. Heat 2 tsp of olive oil and toss all the vegetables together. Keep stirring on low flame. Remember not to give too much heat else the tomatoes get soggy with their juice. The vegetables should just taste lightly grilled. In the meantime, heat pan or wok with 3 tsp of olive oil, add the cooked spaghetti noodles and mix well until all the oil is taken by noodles. Add the grilled vegetables and pour the mint paste. Mix well, serve hot and enjoy the minty minty spaghetti.

Poppy seed filling for Oznei Haman

2010-03-09T15:52:00.003+05:30

Ingredients to make the poppy seed filling for the Oznei Haman or Hamantashchen -

1 cup poppy seeds
1 cup milk
1/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp. butter

less than 1/4 cup raisins

1/4 cup bread crumbs

1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

Dry saute the poppy seeds a little and powder them. In a sauce pan, add all the above ingredients and keep stirring them occasionally until you get a thick paste that does not stick to the sides of the pan. Allow to cool and start filling.

Broccoli Paruppu Usuli

2010-03-08T17:20:00.006+05:30

Banana flower paruppu usuli is said to be the mother of all paruppu usuli. This lentil paste side dish has become a mandatory item in the menu of most weddings these days. My mom used to make paruppu usili during our summer breaks or when ever we had our relatives come over - long list from paati to cousins and we had a crowd of about 10+ at home. My grandma used to say that earlier days, they used to buy vegetables just enough for the family, when unexpected guests arrive in order to bring the vegetable/curry to required extra quantity during lunch they used to make paruppu usuli. Paruppu usulies are traditionally done with any vegetable from the beans family like green beans, avarakkai (broad), kotha varangai (cluster) etc. They are everyone's favorite as far as i know, i have never heard someone disliking it. Kids love it too, especially little A loves it too for the reason that it tastes like Vada.

Broccoli has been a vegetable that i mostly use in our stir fried salads or mushroom-broccoli salad. I have never made or cooked (should i say) an indian curry or side dish out of it. When AA's aunt and family visited us last month, we made a little snack with broccoli. Just microwave the shoots for 5 minutes and dip it a little in olive oil and simultaneously in (idli) milagai podi. Its a nice crunchy-karam desi appetizer for all. When the talk was about broccoli, AA's aunt happened to mention that she makes paruppu usuli with them. I had been wanting to try it since we all love brocolli and we all love paruppu usuli too.

To make the lentil mix (usuli) we need,

1/2 cup of channa dhal

1/2 cup of toor dhal or Masoor dhal (red lentil)

Soak them both separately for 30 minutes.

Drain well and grind them both by adding,

4 red chillies

some curry leaves

pinch of turmeric powder

pinch of asafoetida (hing)

salt to taste

Add very little water only if required, the paste should be thick just the way we grind for paruppu vada. Once the paste is ready, steam cook it for 10-15 minutes just the way we steam cook idli. It should cook till the time when you put in a tooth prick it should come out clean. Once done, allow it to cool.

Cut the Broccoli into tiny shoots and wash them well. Microwave them for not more than 10 mins or just steam them over boiling water for 10 minutes. We do not have to essentially cook them soft. The broccoli shoots should stay a little hard and crunchy.

When the lentil paste and shoots are ready, heat a wok or tava. Add,

2 tsp oil

Saute some mustard seeds, urad dhal and pinch of hing for tadka

3 red chillies

curry leaves

Stir fry briefly and add the broccoli shoots and crumble the lentil paste over it. Mix them well and leave the wok closed with a lid on low flame for a couple of minutes so the crumbs and broccoli blend well. Voila, broccoli paruppu usuli is ready to be had with rasam rice or the world famous satvik food - yummy bagala bath/curd rice/dadhyonnam. I fry it for a little bit longer since we love eating it as a starter or appetizer :-).

Oznei Haman

2010-03-03T20:17:00.011+05:30

Oznei Haman (meaning Haman's ears) or Haman Taschen are the triangular shaped Purim delicacy of Israel. Purim is celebrated on a full moon day according to the lunar calendar followed by the Jews. It occurs any time between mid Feb to mid March. Surprisingly it coincides with Masi Magam of Tamil Calendar and Holi. Anyways, Purim marks the celebration of the victory over the enemy, Haman. Its a kid's affair like the Halloween in the US.

Thanks to Ora who gave me the method of preparation.

We require,

2 eggs

2 cups all purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 & 1/2 cup of sugar

a pinch of salt

vanilla or rose essence

2 spoons baking powder

any filling - chocolate/dates spread/poppy seeds/marmalade/strawberry jam. I used chocolate in some and dates spread in a few. Traditionally it is made with poppy seed filling.

Preheat the oven to 180 degress.

Beat the eggs. Pour in the sugar, baking powder, the essence, pinch of salt and mix well. Add the flour and mix well. Spread the dough out and use a cookie cutter to make small circles or alternately just use your palm (grease your palm with olive oil or melted butter for it may stick) to spread out a lemon sized dough. Fill a small amount of chocolate and fold it in the form of a triangle.

That's it, make as many as you can. With the above quantity of ingredients I made 25 of the sizes in the picture. Place them on a cookie sheet or aluminium foil and bake for not more than 10 minutes.

Best had with a cup of chai :-)

You've got (other's) email

2010-02-25T13:50:00.007+05:30

We all know Gmail is buggy. But, does the Gmail team say its a feature ? Are we not glad about the fact that they have accepted it and even provided us with the required justification - http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10313#

Well, am talking about this one bug of first.last@ being treated as firstlast@. Since the time we have owned a gmail id, we have been many a times equally annoyed and entertained by messages. To some i politely reply back saying that its not 'me' who they are looking for. There are few sensible brains out there who immediately apologize and carry on with their conversation with the right person,thankfully, not including me there after. But, there are the rest - who in spite of all the gentle reminders keep annoying us.

Resume - These are the most common ones. Does it make me happy that there are many a HR personnels and recruiters by my name ? No, thank you not one bit. Because these folks sending out their resumes - the biggest blunder from their side - they do not make a proper note of the email-id of the person they speak to or the one who asks for their data. For example, if they spoke to someone by name Adya, they figure out all possible ways of writing the name and then send their resume out to,

adya@gmail

adyaa@gmail

adhya@gmail

adyah@gmail

and whatever they can come up with. Given a chance, I definitely do not want to recruit them!

If this is the story of the job hunting-laid back group who email not just one person but many by the same name, there are these well established and educated folks holding responsible positions, making the same blunder. A mail from someone in Dept of ECE, Wayne State Univ. And the irony, this mail is received by my Mr. Phd :-p

"Hope your GRE preparation is progressing smoothly.Scoring high in the verbal section requires lot of hard work.Make sure that u complete atleast 1 word list per day along with a decent practice of RC.You should be finishing RC in a couple of days,after which you need to start with Sentence completion and subsequently Analogies.ALL THE BEST.Study well"

A tutor from NIIT sends a mail out to the pupil, "Dear Axxx, Your java class starts on 13/12/09 10.00am.we are not able to reach you through phone. Regards, Jxxxxx NIIT SALEM"

These are human blunders. The Gmail bug [adyah==adya.h errors]has made us receive umpteen number of passport copies, source code from software professionals. A s/w engineer emails us thus, "Mr xxx, How r u? how was the life, I am fine, I have on doubt please clarify. I have one geodatabase is having 4 lakhs polygons. I want export to shapefile is it possible or not. we tried but not get it." Oh, Yes, "How was life ?" is the apt question if the person reading this died of verbal crucifixion.

A hilarious mail conversation that we shared with our parents and the whole family had a good laugh. I blame not the affectionate mother but the son, who should have sent them a test mail or written his email address in a diary or a safe place for his parents. This is from a mother to her son who has just set foot in US of A for his graduate studies. This fellow, looking at the tone of the email, has been talking to them on and off since his landing but looks he really hasnt written any email to them and has only conveyed verbally his email address to them. The 1st mail from the mother goes thus,

" hi

thank u for ur greetings

how do u feel there?

are u getting enough water(tap) water to drink?

what did u cook today

what are u doing for washing clothes?

ur room mates are daiictians or from other college/

i think they are from UP.

what is ur daily routine there?

take care and eat regularly,and eat healthy food.

yesterday was ganesh chathurthi. did u remember?

for taking bath do u get hot water?

is geyser there?wi

will u come for g talk or skype today at 8pm like yesterday?

bye then

rest in next mail

amma &appa"

This is a perfectly normal email from a mother whose son has for the first time is staying away from their watchful eyes and in a different continent. We were reminded of all those questions our parents and even our friends's parents asking us about Pilani, which is very much within India. I remember my friends parents even used to sympathize with mine for i was studying in a desert leaving behind all the luxuries of a college in Erode or Coimbatore. Need we say about the first time US traveller's parents ? My Mr. was a little apprehensive about replying back to this email saying "I am not the A you are looking for" which is usually the response or in this case, something like "I am not your son...". He feared, what if the parents panicked that their son has disowned them just hours after landing in America ??

So silence prevails and we do not respond at all and looks like their biological son too never emailed them. 1-2-3-4 days gone, 5th day, we receive an other email from the mom,

"Hope u will get on well there.everyday at least u send one mail sothat u r alright-we can assume.Keep contact always. amma"

In the meantime, the mom had also sent out a gtalk invite. Neither did we reject nor accepted it. But our Mr. was feeling sorry for this affectionate mother whose son never bothered to call or email them. He also wanted to convey and make her understand that all the while she had been emailing not her son, but, someone else by the same name and spelling too. So, he bravely accepts the chat invite to put an end to the pseudo mom-pseudo son connection - make her understand and to some extent have control over the emotions of the mom at run time as they chat.

It was a lazy saturday afternoon, a ting-ping sound alert, a message appears on his gtak.

Mom: hi. laptop vangiyacha?

Mr.: hello

Mom: hi (again)

(takes a look at Mr's profile pic on gtalk)

Mom:"what photo? un face madiri illai"

This was ultimate - we laughed our guts out, blaming that irresponsible son and empathizing with the mom's feelings. We shared this dialogue thats it, the whole family was in a roller coaster of laughter for almost 1 hour. Of all the questions about the geyser, hot water, remembering to take bath - this photo-face thing topped the list!

We resume ourselves and now was the moment, Mr. gathers guts to type 'the' line - "my name is first name last name." And then the unutterable yet had to be uttered at this point. "i am not your son." We were imagining all sorts of drama like the mom having a stroke or high palpitation due to this heart breaking message from a son. There was a long pause for 3 minutes, which seemed really long at that moment for us, we didnt know about their end. The very response of my name is.. should have conveyed the message, but just to make sure she was alive and to break the ice Mr. typed, "i think you got the wrong email address. " Yet again a pause, and the last we heard from her was, "Oh. sorry."

When 60 year olds behave like 6 year olds...

2010-02-24T21:51:00.007+05:30

Mail 1: "My 3 BHK flat at yyy zzz is available for rent. Expected rent is 17k (negotiable)."

Response : "Kutta kamina haramka......"

The authenticity of the message is still not known. The mail says its been sent from a blackberry or we do not know if its one of those geeks playing around with some pop mails. God knows whats the enmity between the 60 yr old man from whose id the mail seems to have been originated from and the actual person who sent it.

Thats the story from the rental side. Lets hear the selling side,

Person 1 : "My house nnnn in yyyzzz is ready for sale" something like that.

First response on this thread,

Person 2 :"Have you done any interior? How much are you quoting for this? If you can answer these two questions it would be nice."

Person 1 : "YES, Flat includes modular kitchen and modular ward robes (3 in no), have done customization and electrical fittings. Ready to move Flat, all these works costed me around 4 Lakhs Total price I am expecting is 70 L (including customization cost) + registration

If you don't require modular ward robes, we can take them out"

OK, this has justified his pricing enough. Now comes the actual drama -

Person 2 : "I think the running rate in yyy zzz is not more than 60 for a flat of that size. Any bargaining possible?"

Bargaining ?? Is that the term you use when you speak real estate and when you speak in lacs ? I thought bargaining or haggling applied to 'kathirikkai, vendai kai vyaparam' meaning eggplant and okra business.

And in a community there are always some silent observers whereas some are not -

Person 3 : "I know from a broker that a yyy zzz flat sold for 66 lakhs with out wood work or electrical fittings. 70 is fair price with wood work and electical fittings... any way good luck with bargaining.. . "

Now, we do not know if this person really heard it from a broker or if he is just trying to press the point that whatever Person 1 is quoting is right so he could do so too when it comes to selling his flat. And why the good luck, who is he trying to wish here ? Who is going lose and who's going to gain in this bargaining act ? And again bargaining strikes! Hmph!

Our man looks like being in a great hurry to get rid of the property and returns thus,

Person 1: "My quote is 66 L (including all deposits) with out customization cost. This is running price, no much bargaining pls"

This reminds of a famous Koundamani-Senthil comedy from movie "Ulathai allitha", where the said comedian or villian goes, "Tempo ellam vechu kadathirken pa, konjum pottu kudupa" meaning he kidnapped using a tempo so he's kind of trying to bargain for a higher price.

One must remember that all this so called 'bargaining' is happening in public i.e reply-all mode. Looks like the bargaining bit helped after all, that he came down to 66 from 70 in just 2 email exchanges. A funnier aspect of this whole conversation is, we do not know if the person selling the property is really aware of the fact that the person trying to bargain is only yet an other property owner in the same community and was only trying to ask the rates for GK purposes and is not really interested in buying. Or may be that person was gathering pointers to sell their own or just to check the extent of possible bargaining. Unlike yesterday's passive (shy) 30 year olds ( 3 year olds), these are the nosy citizens who cannot just ignore messages that are meant for prospective tenants and buyer and NOT for them. They just feel like the ice-breakers and have to have a say in every mail thread. I'm only reminded of those inquisitive 6 year olds in their 1st or 2nd grades. When the teacher asks the class a question, all of them go in chorus, "Me, me, me", "I know it, i know it" instead of quietly raising their hands and letting the teacher choose a pupil to answer.

When 30 year olds behave like 3 year old...

2010-02-23T14:31:00.007+05:30

"Kalyanam panni paar, veettai katti paar" meaning perform a wedding and see, build a house and see is not a faltu (something like worthless) statement after all. The difficulty in organizing a wedding by the bride's father is matched to the difficulty in building a house. The wedding part, once the marriage is performed the parents can be rest assured the girl is in safe hands and they take good care of her and vice versa. But when it comes to the house, a flat in our case, its a life long tragedy of putting up with few jug-heads. The book, Bonsai Manager clearly states that the politics in running a company of the size of Tata (s) is far less than the politics of running an apartment society. This is so very true!

When you buy an apartment, you dont want to be left behind on some important news and notices about Khata transfer, Service Tax and many more - things that require all of the clients to stand together to fight against the builder or the government. So we subscribe ourselves to the e groups or the common floor community mailing list and all those on earth. For once i acted wisely and subscribed with my mail id that i retired a few years ago. Retired as in I dont use it for mailing/ stay-in-touch purposes but for other uses like e-cards, e-shopping registration, e- reservation etc. I make it a point to check it once in a month or so. I happened to browse through it today and noticed many many funny yet annoying instances. But, looking at the amazing emails, looks like i will be checking that inbox more often - a great way of entertainment!

Corporate mailing rule1 : Do not subscribe your official id to any kind of social networking sites or e groups.

Do we adhere to these rules, NO, NEVER. First thing we do as we receive our mail id at work, email all our folks and send a note asking them to add this new-official-mail-id to all the existing groups. Put the same mail id on Orkut or Facebook or Twitter, simple because they are banned at our workplace and we will remain clueless what our friends are up to when we are at our desks just pretending to work. And the need to be updated with all/any kind of news the very nanosecond the sender clicks send.

Corporate mailing rule2: Never do a Reply-all, unless your message is of public interest or one that requires wider audience and opinions.

No and never adhere to this rule too, even if its the same message they are trying to propagate, they reply-all saying, " Please do not reply-all" instead of just sending it to the sender alone.

The next hilarious bunch of mails i noticed are the ones announcing the availability of the flat for rent or sale. Of the 40 minutes i spent in reading through the 75 odd emails, i noticed 30+ friends of the current occupants wanting to rent a flat, 5+ friends wanting to buy, 20+ owners wanting to rent out , 4+ owners wanting to sell. Note that these gentlemen and ladies sending our mails asking "if any flat is available for..." are not doing so for themselves but for their friends who are trying to move to Bangalore from elsewhere. When they are so very concerned and really want to help them find a house, since they are already on this mailing list, they should simply do a search in their archives/ Inbox and give them the contact details of the already advertised flats/owners. No, they will never do that, simply because - its home work <=> hard work.

Instead they plainly send out a mail saying "my good friend is looking for an apartment to rent..." CC-ing him of course, is the highest honor of help they are doing to that person. And this fellow who is interested in renting out, does not email the person on CC, rather would do a reply to the whole egroups announcing his flat's availability.

The same goes with buying and selling. The owner who wants to sell does not do his home work reading through his old emails and contacting those prospective buyers, but once again emails the group. Assuming that the person who sent a mail out asking if there was any flat on sale would pay attention to his email now. But, why would he, he emailed not for his sake but his friend's, about whom he probably would have forgotten the minute he sent the mail out copying his mail address. And so, this mail now is of no use and again goes into their collection of emails.

When nobody really reads any email, why do they want to get their official ids subscribed ? If you give me an answer that you are the busiest man at work, then 1st thing to do is unsubscribe the official id from the groups. None of the emails are serving their purpose. Even more annoying, getting an Out-of-Office response on egroups. When will these people ever grow up ?Have these people picked up new hobby of email-collection ??

There's an other episode of the nosy 60 year olds who read all their emails, rather every line of the email and reply-all asking unwanted questions. Will write more on it tomorrow may be, when 60 years old behave like 6 year olds.

The delicious Vangi bath

2010-02-21T14:21:00.005+05:30

For all those Brinjal /egg plant lovers - the delicious Vangi bath (brinjal rice)

The simplest way is to use MTR Vangi bath powder on cooked brinjal and mix with steamed rice.

To make it freshly at home we need to prepare the Vangi bath powder first. It requires,

2 tsp corainder seeds

1 tsp Urad dhal

1 tsp channa dhal

6 red chillies

1 inch cinnamon

1 cardomam

5 cloves

less than 1/2 tsp fenugreek

1/2 cumin seeds

less than 1/2 tsp peppercorn

Heat a spoon of oil and fry the above. Allow it to cool and make it into a fine dry powder. Folks having trouble with their mixer like i do, can add little water and make it into a thick paste. The advantage of making a powder is you can re-use it later and it stays longer than the paste.

Vangi bath is best made with the long green brinjal , but any brinjal/egg plant also tastes good.

Long brinjal - 5 (or) 1 big Egg plant, cut into small cubes

1 cup of rice to cook

2 tsp of Ghee or oil

Mustard seeds, Urad dhal, 3 Red chillies, Asafoetida (Hing)

Salt to taste and turmeric powder.

50ml of tamarind juice. (adding this is said to remove any kind of bitterness from the brinjal)

Roasted Copra (dry coconut powder)

Some curry leaves, cashew nuts and coriander leaves to garnish.

Cook 1 cup of rice and keep aside.
Heat oil or ghee in a pan and fry mustard seeds, urad dhal and red chillies. Sprinkle some Asafoetida powder on top.
Add the cut pieces of brinjal and the tamarind juice, salt to taste and a pinch of turmeric powder on top and cook till the brinjal is done.
Bring the flame to a minimum/low & add the roasted copra and the vangi bath powder/paste. Let it stay on low flame for a couple of minutes before you turn it off.
Once the brinjal and the powder are finely mixed, add the cooked rice and mix again.
Roast some cashew nuts and coriander leaves and add on top of the rice and serve hot. Garnish with freshly cut coriander leaves.

Kannadigas say this is best had with a coconut chutney, but i prefer having it with a cool cucumber raita.

A sunny Saturday

2010-02-20T20:32:00.003+05:30

Saturday n' Sun
Shades n' Shadows
Shantaram.

Its Buzz off for Buzz

2010-02-17T15:43:00.002+05:30

When no body wants it, what are they trying to improve ??

http://beta.thehindu.com/sci-tech/internet/article108054.ece?homepage=true

Mint-Tofu rice

2010-02-15T22:40:00.007+05:30

Blogging took a back seat as we started concentrating more on travel and photog. But i never said i stopped cooking and trying out new recipes :-). Yesterday was one of those lazy evenings when i didn't feel like - cutting vegetables, adding too many spices, using too many utensils but still had that feeling, "edanum nanna sapadanum". Opened the refrigerator and found some mint, coriander, Tofu, boxes of strawberries and many many colorful vegetables which only my eyes were eying but my mind was already working on something minty - Voila! why not a mint-tofu rice ? It only took 15 mins to prepare.

1. A cup of rice to cook/steam in the rice cooker.
2. Cut the tofu into chunks and toss them in a pan so they become golden brown/crunchy and keep them aside.
3. Grind the following,

1. 2 handful of mint leaves

2. 1 green chilly

3. 1 medium sized onion

4. 1 medium sized tomato

5. 2 garlic cloves.

Pour this gravy/mix into a wok or pan, add salt to taste and bring it to boil and switch the burner off. Thats it!

By now, (considering you took 12-15 mins in gathering the above requirements and grinding them) the rice should have been cooked. Allow the steamed rice to cool for a couple of minutes and then add it to the mint gravy in the wok and mix. Once you feel the rice is well mixed, add the chunks of tofu on top of it. Yummm, i'm a big fan of mint, the flavor, the fragrance, the health benefits - everything is good about mint. If one prefers paneer to tofu, you could do that too and even garnish with some roasted cashew nuts.

Our man, Rah man is here too..

2010-02-14T22:26:00.001+05:30

Yet again

2009-11-10T20:17:00.003+05:30

I get to enjoy a beautiful sunset along side a cuppa hot masala chai!

Well, where there is good news, there is bad news too - a traffic jam spanning a length of 4km up the hill. More like the evening peak hour (1700 hrs) traffic when everyone wants to get home before its dark. I hate being stuck in a traffic jam or even witness one from a place far away from it.

End of hibernation

2009-10-15T15:19:00.004+05:30

I cant believe its been more than a month since i scribbled something.

I have been tuning to MTV more often these days. I fail to understand the theme behind most of the music videos. Most of the time, its one of the below or combinations,

1. gory makeup

2. undressing

3. licking

4. u kill me, i kill u or you die, i need to die too.

5. breaking,smashing, causing total damage

Where are those good old videos of amazing dances or even those recording rooms - where they just show the singer and his mike and these technicians working in the mixing room.

I only watched 2 videos today and they almost made me throw up - Lady Gaga - Paparazzi and Poker face. I wish there was a way to psychologically un-see something!

When the sea had him for supper

2009-08-31T12:58:00.004+05:30

We do enjoy glorious sunsets every evening but not all days are clear sky days and we dont always experience this beautiful huge orange ball touching the waters, because the villains called clouds hide the scene. Yesterday turned out to be one of those lucky days and by the time i realised and fetched my camera, he was half-eaten. Here's the last bit of the swallowing act by the mediterranean.

Marriage cuts men's health problems risk

2009-08-24T13:00:00.004+05:30

Says an article in the Times of India -

"volunteers aged 57 to 85", "long marriage lowers a man''s chance of developing serious health problems." "how strong the effect of being married and having strong social bonds can be"

So says their research, but in practical life we say thats the high-risk age. My dad always says, beyond 60 years of age everything is like bonus - be it health, wealth or happiness. Lower's man's chance of serious health problems - is that so ? Thats when most married men retire and their immediate worry is money, younger son or daughter's education, one of their marriages. That's when a son or daughter comes up and tells them that he/she wants to marry his/her love who doesnot belong to their caste or religion or economic status or which ever way they want to spot a difference. Thats when obesity is at its peak due to stress from all the family related issues and stress due to idleness since he's retired. If their kids are happily married, they are probably on the other banks of the ocean so 'paasa malar' might be killing them. The husband and wife staying all by themselves at home start acting like kindergarten kids. They will start worrying about Sashtiabdapoorti and about satisfying their sambandies on such occasions - giving them equal importance and maruvaadais. There were days when they used to make kadala urandai and murukku just like that for a snack, but a slightly bigger in size paruppu thengai would be like a nuclear bomb issue on ocassions like engagement, weddings or son/daughter's seemandam or the 'kapu arasi kadali' on the new born's namakaraman becomes imperative than the child's name.

Phew! the list is endless. May be their research specimen should be an indian male. I would blame this unwritten tradition which people have been blindly following and imposing on themselves just for the sake of the onlookers. When nearly 60% of folks aged >50 are already diabetic why do they stress so much on paruppu thengai, adirasam and laddus ? When asked they would answer its for the children - ahh, well done, time to spoil the next generation's health too. More nerve-wracking are these kids' birthday parties these days. Will write about it later.

I found this statement the most hilarious - "No matter how much you bicker after marriage, but walking down the aisle is actually good for health, especially for men," OMG, ask any south indian groom - that would have the most worrying and horrifying hours of his life - shirtless and the trancy dhoti worn in such a way that when it falls apart he wouldn't know which end he should pick up first. The return from Kashi yatra - with kodai, coconuts and a small bag hanging down his arms, a walking stick, pancha gacham and anga vastram - i think this can be compared to walking down the aisle fund of the vidhesis. Are they trying to say, if an average man has gone through this kind of a marriage - he can handle anything in his 60s ?

Suklam Bharatharam and filter kaapi

2009-08-23T18:31:00.004+05:30

My dad just gave me this so-far the most hilarious meaning of the shloka,

Suklambaradaram - 'Suklam' is white/bright so it refers to the pure white milk

Visnum - the dark colored dacauction

Sasivarnam - like the color of the moon (is the moon really brown ?)

Chaturbhujam - 4 hands involved, 2 hands of the wife who offers the coffee to the 2 hands of the husband who accepts it.

prasannavadanam - the ever smiling face of the person who drinks (here, its is the husband)

dhyayet - peace prevails till he drinks

sarvavighnopashantaye- removes all odds or bad mood and makes the husband that pleasant person after-coffee.

Happy Ganesh Chaturthi

2009-08-23T12:38:00.003+05:30

From us and from our hand-made eco-friendly terracota clay Elephant God!

Standup tamil comedy

2009-08-21T14:06:00.003+05:30

I have watched this one many many times and every time i watch it, i enjoy it like it is the first time. I appreciate his move for the cause of charity!

ABRACADABRA = 9 = 4+1+4 in Hebrew

2009-08-05T21:53:00.003+05:30

Now that i know Hebrew, i find this amazingly interesting!!! Even otherwise, this one's self explanatory :-)

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abracadabra

Amram Kehati [2]claims that the source is Hebrew and the ABRACADABRA has to be read from right to left as in Hebrew. ABRACADABRA, when phonetically pronounced from right to left, reads in Hebrew ארבע-דאח-ארבע. The Hebrew word דאח is the word אחד with rearrangement of the letters. This was done to confuse the daemon or for various witchery reasons. The evil, dark forces and the daemons kingdom in the Jewish Kabbalah are represented by the number 9 (the Hebrew word תשעה) or the Hebrew letter ("טית "ט). Since the ABRACADABRA word has to diminish a letter a day for nine (9) days it has to have enough letters. The Hebrew word תשעה is too short because it has only four letters. Therefore, the Hebrew word ארבע-אחד-ארבע was created. The Hebrew word ארבע is the Hebrew word for the number 4 (four) and the Hebrew word אחד is the Hebrew word for the number 1 (one). Therefore, ארבע+אחד+ארבע equal 4+1+4=9 and it represents the dark forces and daemons kingdom. This explanation for ABRACADABRA succeeds where all other previous known explanations and sources did not explain why the patient has to wear the amulet for nine (9) days. In Hebrew the "ABRACADABRA" should read as "ארבעאחדארבע" and the amulet should be as follows:

א-ר-ב-ע-א-ח-ד-א-ר-ב-ע
ר-ב-ע-א-ח-ד-א-ר-ב-ע
ב-ע-א-ח-ד-א-ר-ב-ע
ע-א-ח-ד-א-ר-ב-ע
א-ח-ד-א-ר-ב-ע
ח-ד-א-ר-ב-ע
ד-א-ר-ב-ע
א-ר-ב-ע
ר-ב-ע
ב-ע
ע

Varalakshmi Pooja 2009

2009-07-31T18:59:00.006+05:30

The pooja always falls on a friday and the occasion starts on thursday evening. Each family has its own way of celebrating or worshipping the Goddess. Some draw the face of Goddess Lakshmi as a rangoli, some draw a face on a coconut with tumeric and kumkum and create a kalasham for the body. Some have a face made out in silver and thats us. On thursday we got to dress up the Goddess and welcome her home. The dressing up became a tricky experience this time in Haifa. Usually, we use a coconut against which the face is supported and use a brass utensil, called the sombu for the lower body and adorn her with some silk cloth and jewels. But, as mentioned in my prevoius post, i arrived here with the silver face alone. Made alternate arrangements for the sombu and used an orange in place of the coconut.

On thursday evening we are to dress her up and formally welcome her home.

The prashad for the evening must be a yellow rice! It slowly got changed into Venpongal over the years. Little A always looks forward to a sweet when i mention the word Prashad. He thinks only God can make sweets and any prashad is "God given". So i made a little Sharkarai Pongal, true to its name i used brown sugar due to unavailability of jaggery. In his usual way, he hen picks all the cashews tastes it and thanks God and also assures him its tasty! This time he made it a point to say it in hebrew - "thayim" meaning tasty.

On friday, the tradition goes like making prasadams the whole of the morning, followed by the pooja at the end of which a yellow thread - the saradu is tied onto our right hand wrist. A friend of mine asked if its a simple pooja or a hard one. I think it all depends on how much we are capable of doing given the time and the situations and surroundings and most of all patience. The usual prasadams are Mothakam, vada, payasam, idli and appam. Dont ask me why idli of all things. And more over i'm not supposed to eat curd or buttermilk the whole of friday. Yet again, i do not know why! For me more than anything, the region dictated the way i did the pooja. As they say live like a roman in Rome, i prayed like an Israeli in Israel, with candles and oranges. When the Jews observed Shabbath from Friday afternoon, we observed varalakshmi vratham! Talking about prasadams, i got to make vada,payasam and idli. Performed the pooja in my own possible way with some sloka chanting and my MIL had sent me a scanned copy of how to perform the pooja. It was all in tamil! With my "ezuthu kootal" knowledge of tamil managed to read through it. For people who want to do it the simple way, just chant the Lakshmi Ashtothram . Just like all the poojas start by worshipping the elephant god, Ganesha, this pooja too starts of by worshipping him.

A new Ganesha, a cone like structure is made out of turmeric and the akshadai and flowers are offered to him as we chant some slokas and mantras. The same is offered to Goddess Lakshmi as we chant mantras on her name (the ashtotram).

I drew a Soundarya Lahari rangoli (this deserves a separate post) and placed flowers on it as i chanted the ashtotram. Did i mention that i finally bought a bouquet if roses and lilly and managed the hibiscus and arali (its the tamil name) from a nearby park.

All set and done, I dont think the Goddess ever dictated means of worshipping her. I truly beleive only the interest involved and devotion and dedication matters. The pooja doesn't end here for me. Today evening, i'm supposed to take an arathi for the Goddess, welcome home some sumangalis (married women) and offer them thambulams. Tomorrow evening or the day after i.e on sunday morning i'm supposed to leave the Goddess to rest in a rice barrel.

Hmm, let me go see how i can go about doing these now.

Almost forgot to mention, the person performing the pooja is supopsed to wear the nine yards, madisaar, and yay! yay! i did it!

All Set

2009-07-30T17:26:00.004+05:30

Am talking about the Varalakshmi Vratham. I thought i arrived in Haifa with the essentials for a complete festive year here too. But only as my MIL asked about the vastram, did it ring a bell that i had only carried the Varalakshmi mugam and not the accessories. My khoj for a perfect traditional indian wear for the Amman started a few days ago. I was hunting many a things in parellel - banana leaf, coconut, a sombu for kalasham, jaggery to make mothagam and appam, turmeric sticks etc etc. Discovered the plaintain in the gym, made alternate arrangements for the kalasham and as a friend suggested am gonna try subtituting the jaggery with brown sugar! I got the turmeric sticks from Akko along side sukku, sitharathai for little A's cold treatment. Talking about coconut as a support for the mugam, am going to use an Orange from the land of the Citrus.

Anyways, the dress for my varalakshmi was still a big question mark. My MIL suggested to just use a new blouse bit - that south indian currency which makes a full circle from door to door in an agraharam aka community. I didnt have any of that too, why would i carry blouse bits to Israel ??!! I'm totally against this whole blouse bit thing and for Navrathri i only distribute small useful gifts with the traditional vethalai pakku.

Coming back to the hunt, i visited many a baby shops looking for cute baby girl dresses that i might make use of as a vastram, but Alas! Its summer and one can guess the type if dresses available here for kids. I had made up my mind to even use the belly dancing cloth studded with gold coins that the dancers wear around the waist as a last resort. Luckily after nearly 3 days of khoj i found this one, that kind of looks like a traditional indian colored skirt - the red skirt! The only other color that i came across apart from summer colors like pink, lemon yellow, white....

A pretty long baby skirt, i cut it out, alter here and there, put a stitch or two to get a short pavadai and upper cloth. This is how it looks right now.

Am going to go look for some flowers now and if i dont succeed, i'm going to buy a bouquet!

Solar eclipse of July 22, 2009

2009-07-21T15:16:00.002+05:30

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_July_22,_2009

This is scary - http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/15946

More scary stories, http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090720/sc_afp/scienceastronomyeclipseasiatourismsuperstition

Solar eclipse : All roads lead to Bihar

http://jaibihar.com/solar-eclipse-all-roads-lead-to-taregana-in-bihar/10306/

Truth Behind Google chrome logo

2009-07-18T23:39:00.002+05:30

Times when even junk fwd emails carry some really good ones like this,

Rain in Bangalore

2009-07-16T19:50:00.002+05:30

Couldn't resist sharing this picture, captured from Nandi Hills on a cloudy ~ rainy evening in Bangalore. Thanks Saurabh for sharing this :-)

Hummus and an easy sandwich

2009-07-14T16:36:00.003+05:30

Its was 4pm was the time to think and plan for the night's dinner. I wanted to try something new. Checked the refrigerator and the can of chick peas caught my attention. I thought why not hummus or falafel balls. Hummus is wa easier than the later, which involves oil and frying etc etc.

So here we go, yummy hummus ready in no time (10 min).

1 can ~ 340 gm of chick peas
(If you do not have a can, soak the chick peas overnight, boil them for 45 min in a big sauce pan or in a pressure cooker up to 3 whistles, allow it to cool)
10 ml lemon syrup
10 ml olive oil
4 garlic cloves
2 - 4 red chillies (depending upon your the spice level)
2 tea spoon Tehina (If you do not have Tehina/tahini at home, try making a paste out of 50gm of sesame seeds)
To add more flavor one could optionally add, cumin powder and pepper powder.
Salt, to taste.

In a mixer or food processor, add all the above ingredients and grind by adding small portions of water as and when essential. For folks who do not like the smell of raw garlic, you could toss the sesame seeds (instead of tehina),garlic cloves and red chillies in little oil, allow them to cool and grind them well into a paste before adding the rest of the ingredients.

OK my hummus is ready. Now what for dinner ? Little A and I played some indoor cricket. It was around 6-ish and i had to pick AA from work. Way back home we were discussing about dinner with dishes involving freshly made hummus. We had pitas and some vegetables for a good sandwich. We hit across this idea of a good crunchy mushroom-pita salad with hummus spread :-) What a long name for an easy dish!

No sooner did we enter the house, i was at it - cutting cucumbers, tomatoes and boiling mushrooms. AA takes over the stage in frying the mushrooms in olive oil and red wine. Most of the time, the mushrooms dont reach or survive till their desired end, they get eaten up much before that. But this time they survived since i was busy helping little A with his dinner. Anyways, AA quoted the pitas with hummus, filled it up with the cut vegetables and those crunchy mushroom chunks. To add an indian touch to it, we sprinkled somce spicy coriander thogayal (made out of coriander, urad dhal, tamarind and red chillies. No coconut!) - left over's from the day before.

Thats it, end of a quick hummus making and quick sandwich for dinner.

Whatsup in G8 ?

2009-07-11T17:18:00.003+05:30

Right from the Presidents to the news reporters, is this what they are all bothered about while at the G8 ?

http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/92794/?fp=1

President Obama is in the middle of the G8 conference, where he and other world leaders are trying to fix the climate, the global economy, and about a million other terrifying problems. And yet, all anyone can talk about is a photo that supposedly shows the U.S. president and French leader Nicolas Sarkozy checking out a young woman's posterior.

Once news of the photos broke, searches on "obama looking at woman's butt," "obama checking out butt," and the pun-tastic "tail to the chief" all soared through the roof. Also buzzing was the name of the young woman who Obama and his French counterpart were supposedly admiring: Mayara Tavares (some news outlets are spelling her first name "Mayora").

So who is Ms. Tavares, anyway? According to TheWeek.com, she is a junior delegate from Brazil. Lookups on her name are up an astounding 9,212% in one day. And while some are looking at the photo as proof that Obama and Sarkozy could use some manners, a video from "Good Morning America" absolves the two of leering. Well, it absolves Obama, anyway. Sarkozy, not so much.

Video : http://www.yahoo.com/s/1098534

Apple corer

2009-07-09T17:37:00.003+05:30

While AA was looking for some Noddy videos for little A, he came across these kid's recipe videos. This one's called Noddy's Apple Car Delight.

http://www.sproutonline.com/sprout/recipes/detail.aspx?id=36c04c2b-a36f-4226-827c-997a0181a10a

After watching this tiny video, AA and I looked at each other, eyes wide open and with the same thought - "Are you thinking what I'm thinking" kinds. It was the apple corer which amused us the most. We didn't care a damn about the recipe, the cooking time nor how it tasted at the end of it. Our first thing on the to-buy list for the weekend was,
1. Apple Corer.

We were not even sure if we get them here in Haifa or anywhere in Israel for that matter. Our enthusiasm to own it was like, we were even ready to drive to IKEA (60km away) the same day.
Luckily i had to do some daily needs shopping yesterday. We ran out of milk already. Usually we pick up our weekly needs on Friday morning. But, this week, blame it on the weather, we consumed our milk tetra packs little earlier than usual as those cold-choco-drinks every evening! Anyways, while i was eying those delicious summer mangoes, AA was eying for the corer - and he did triumph! Not even for a second did we think that we would locate it in the hypermarket that we frequent every week. It's called the Shufersal. It's like Israel's Walmart, a one stop shop for everything from Vegetables to Spice corner to a Pharmacy.

Anyways, we welcome home the corer. Along with it, we happened to buy many many seeded fruits :-) in order to test it! So we enjoyed a good-evening-fruity-snack. Once again in the morning a good number of apples and plums for breakfast. I'm making little A to play a game with it, like using it as a telescope or seeing or spotting me through it and then the apple becomes his friend and he eats it too without any complaints!

As i write about this corer here, a friend of mine just mentioned about the age-old slicer or the wedger. The slicer opens up the apple and gives us 6-8 slices, separates the core and the apple for a second would like a fully bloomed flower. But that's very very beneficial for instanct consumption and for very very orthodox men and women. But for travel or to make recipes with apple rings or for folks who relish every bite of the apple, the corer is the best! I love to bite the apple as is and enjoy it, rather than slicing it up and allowing it to get DARK or brown or oxidize. I don't care about my grandmas saying - echal,10,11... The only hindrance till date was the core and the seeds. Towards the end of it as i approached the core, i always felt like a mouse or squirrel trying to grab those tiny chunks between the seeds. But now, hurray, the corer has relieved me of that trouble too.

Baking turned out to be a "piece of cake" for Dr. A

2009-06-28T12:18:00.011+05:30

It was a fabulous birthday weekend. It all started with my aerobics classes, leaving behind dad and son spend some quality time with each other. By the time i could return they had finished the weekly grocery shopping too, how sweet! Grabbed some breakfast and off we were to the Grand Canyon , said to be the largest mall in the Mediterranean area. We walked and strolled into almost all the outlets from Toys r us to Office Depot to Swatch to those tiny nameless shops around the lobby area and near the elevators. A small handbag/purse shop caught my eyes. Common don't we women love purses ? I spent a full 30 minutes trying them all on my shoulders standing in front of the mirror and chose the below two! All these days and months and years i have been carrying those big tote kinda bags, now its again time for the small and chick ones. End of those diaper and wet wipes era in my purses. There's only room for keys n' cash and mobile baby!

In the evening, after a refreshing cup of chai at home, Dr. A comes up with this idea of baking a cake for me! OK, the birthday cake's no surprise now. But we were totally unprepared. There weren't any cakey things at home. After a round of CSI - Cake Scene Ingredients investigation, we discovered he could simply do a chocolate brownie with the available butter, choco chips, flour, eggs and sugar.

He beats and stirs and bakes and then yummmmm appears the royal chocolate brownie! At 6:30pm local time, his creation comes out, this was the biggest surprise of the day. It looked amazingly beautiful, tasteful and the whole house was smelling of butter and chocolate. Neither did A or I expect it to look so shiny and wonderful, the very look n' smell told us that it was going to taste great! We looked at it like a new born and Dr. A it's Brahma, i couldn't have appreciated him more. But, alas! it was his birthday cake for me, and we had to wait for the clock to show the 00:00 hours mark for me to have the cake and eat it too. That night, we kept our dinner very very light - 2 plums and a peach each, since we knew our dessert was going to be v. heavy. We waited and waited, it was only 9pm, at 9:30pm, Dr. A after all those visits back and forth the dining table for those little peeks of his creation and making sure 'it' was doing OK and thoroughly resisting his temptation to taste his creation - comes with this brilliant idea! "Hey, its 12 o' clock in India, why not cut it now" I did not even think or wink or waste a millionth of a second, i just sprang over and was right in front of the cake waiting for a knife to be given to me. In all that enthusiasm and eagerness to taste the cake, we totally forgot to take pictures. We sang a fat-forwarded "happy birthday to you" and then atttttaaackk! It was yummm!!! It didn't taste like a first timer's bake at all. After we had nearly finished 2/3rd of it, appreciating and narrating and re-describing of how he made it and how well it had come out, we realized we did not take any pictures of the whole cake, of me cutting the cake... none at all! Those 30-40 minutes, i had forgotten all about my birthday and it was more of a day celebrating A's debut with the brownie baking !! Managed to save those last few pieces and took a pic to share with family and friends. That's the cake part of it.

On the d-day, wishes pouring in from all near and dear ones around the globe, outside - it was a gloroius bright and sunny day and we decided to go to Zikhron-Yakov. Zikhron is a small picturesque town on a hillock about 35 km from Haifa. To be precise, the look and feel of the town is like Auroville ~ Pondicherry - the promanade, art and handicrafts shops, shoes and accessories, lovely homes converted into coffee shops and wineries adorned the town. Their windows amused me the most.

The below is actually a bank.

Someone's residence.

An underground coffee shop!

A full fledged apartment converted into a mall.

This place is famous for its wineries too...

The main walk way,

MJ... He set you free...

2009-06-26T19:38:00.005+05:30

This has always remained my bestest favorite!

This is so obvious, he is and was no less famous than Google itself - Jackson dies, almost takes Internet with him How many people does it take to break the Internet? On June 25, we found out it's just one -- if that one is Michael Jackson.

The 16 young yet mad men

2009-06-26T00:37:00.003+05:30

Ha, they even had the guts to post their pictures and declare in public, their love for Rakhi Sawant. They call the program 'Rakhi ka Swayamvara', is this some kind of a spoof ? I think NDTV is just trying to bring up the viewership by casting programs with the so-called controversial bomb shell.

http://movies.rediff.com/slide-show/2009/jun/25/slide-show-1-the-men-who-want-to-wed-rakhi-sawant.htm

LOSERS! And even worse are the folks who are going to sit in front of the idiot box and watch it!
Arrrrgh!

Rajini 'Chang' Kanth

2009-06-25T10:33:00.001+05:30

What's in a name ?

2009-06-22T14:37:00.006+05:30

Reading this article, i was reminded of a lame joke from the movie 12B, when Vivek says, "excuse me" the other foolish friend of his who is name-hunting, chooses 'Excuse me, thanni kondu va', 'Excuse me, blah blah...' and on and on.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=NLetter&id=f2e22148-cda9-4263-b9d1-24b7a9c74a8e&Headline=What%27s+in+a+name%3f

There was also this time when parents wanted their kid's name to be a combo of their names like, Nilima+ Harshit = Nihar, Veera + Nisha = Varsha etc. Had we followed this, we would have had only 2 names, Umar or Arunima kinds. I dont even know if the 1st one is a boy or girl's name, all i know is, its arabic. A friend of mine once asked for some name suggestions, and his only condition was "pera ketta chumma adhiranum", i had nothing to say but, "apo Sivaji nu vei".

I think for many a parents these days, naming the baby is a far bigger discussion and debate than to have a baby or not!

Talking about little A and our name hunt, it was all simplified - Srikrishna was already given to us. It was like our ears were being bombarded with that name from all around. To me, names like Arjun, Krishna, Vishnu never lose their fancy. All of the thatha,paatis, kollu thatha paatis, independently and unanimously mentioned "Krishnan-a" (its a krishna ?) when we said its a boy! It is very common and more cliched to address a new born as Krishna down south or even all over India. Added to it was when the paediatrician(a die-hard Cuddalorean and JIPMER alumni) , gave the tiny little one to AA & to me saying, "kutti krishnan porandurukkan" (little krishna is born), as if we didn't know =) Brannon and Rogers had already told us about it! And he uttered the same "kutti krishnan porandurukkan" when he showed the new born to his grand parents who were chanting "narayana, narayana, krishna, krishna" waiting outside the labor room. AA & I wanted a name with 'Sri' too, later, we started saying out names in alphabetical order and the very first name we both uttered, chose and liked, went well with Srikrishna, our jobs made easy, we said so be it and everyone liked it.

Father's day and Carrot Cake

2009-06-21T15:46:00.004+05:30

Happy Father's day to all those wonderful, kind and loving dads in the world and the soon-to-be-dads in the year 2009.

Father's day and carrot cake ? Well, this is just an other excuse for me to bake something and tell little A and his dad, "only for you". Speaking about Father's day, it all started when we went to hostel. Till then it was a day like any other day. We could say it as westernization or effect of 123greetings.com or what so ever, all these days and dates started getting some importance in everyone's life when the families started living apart. These dates attained more significance through the Woman's day, Father's day, Mother's day sales and special offers in all the outlets.

Anyways, what did i do for father's day ? I sent an SMS to my dad, "Happy jappy yappy Father's day" to which he replied "Tan q". I myself find it quite funny, because we are the funny kinds, my dad's more like Anupam Kher the dad in most bollywood movies. We are not the psenti-emotional kinds. When we get together, it is mostly fun, gossip and more fun! But the two factors that can make any soul get emotional are age and distance! Our phone conversations do not last long, unless of course there is some real vambu (!). It would always be the usual and at the end he says, "eat well, stay well".

True to that advise, i made carrot cake the healthy way to eat well and stay well.

Ingredients:

For a good 12in * 2in carrot cake

* 2 medium sized carrots - grated
* 1 cup whole wheat flour, 1/2 cup all purpose flour
* 3/4 cup sugar ( brown or white)
Folks with high triglycerides count may substitute this with 1/4 cup honey and add more raisnins and dates as below to add that sweetener.
* 1 tsp baking powder
* 1 tsp ground cinnamon
* 3 tsp olive oil (note: you can use any veg oil or canola or even butter, as a healthy aspect i used extra virgin olive oil)
* 1 egg, just the white
* chopped walnuts, pecans, dates, apricots, raisins (any number and variety of dry fruits in proportion ot the flour)
* 1 tsp vanilla essence
* 1/2 tsp salt
* 1/4 cup milk

Preheat oven to 175 C/350F.

Beat the egg's white alone, throw away the high-cholesterol yellow. To the beaten portion, add sugar, vanilla essence, olive oil, baking powder, salt, cinnamon powder and mix well. Add the flour and the chopped dry fruits as much as you desire. I actually added 5 walnuts, 5 pecans, 4 dates, 4 apricots - all chopped. Now add the carrots and mix well . If the batter is still thick, add the milk little by little to loosen it.

Pour into a greased pan or aluminum foil. Bake for 40 minutes.

One can add icing if they wish, but i feel the icing makes my healthy cake, unhealthy :-).

Eat well, stay well and have a great day all of you who have been blessed with great dads and those to whom God has been unfair to, i know the loss is irreplaceable, I'm channeling all my love and energy to you so you can have a great day too recalling all those pleasant memories.

Can the world get smaller than this ?

2009-06-17T16:48:00.001+05:30

http://www.google.com/goog411/index.html

Holding Babies

2009-06-13T23:57:00.004+05:30

Indian thatha-paatis (grand parents) will have a heart attack if they see someone carrying a month old baby this way. Babies below the age of 3 months or atleast till the stage their neck becomes stable are said to be handled with great care. First time mother's would listen to those advices on ' art of carrying new borns' umpteen times a day from their parents, grand parents and more from the 'adutha aathu' (from the neighbourhood), 'adutha theru' (next street) vambu maamis (gossip aunties) and paatis. These jobless vambu maamis think they are the God sent mesiahs to preach child care or the mid wife incarnations always pouring those unwanted and embarassing advices. The conversations when they are around pretty much go like the age old Woodword's gripe water advertisement. Wondering what will have to say when this picture too ?!!

1954 Prediction - a computer in 2004

2009-06-12T00:37:00.003+05:30

Attempted Pita Breads...

2009-06-10T19:05:00.007+05:30

They are best had with Hummous & Tehina, so they say!

But for a die hard desi, it goes the best with Tomato pickle and Raita...yumm!!!

The mode of preparation, i followed as is from the link,

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/recipes/pitabread

used - instant yeast+salt+honey (no sugar)

flour - whole wheat flour 2 cups + 1 cup white flour

The story behind MS Blue

2009-06-10T16:46:00.002+05:30

http://www.nallisilk.com/nallib2c/history.do

1951

"One crisp summer morning in 1951, the late M S Subbulakshmi, one of the greatest names in Carnatic music has ever known, walked into a Nalli store with a blue thread in her hand. The thread was of a particular shade of blue, on that she wanted a sari fashioned out of. As that particular color was not commercially available. Nalli experimented with dyes in their own workshop and true to Nalli's reputation, she got her wish. from then on. that particular shade of blue came to be known as MS blue."

The brushing song!

2009-06-09T16:54:00.009+05:30

In order to make brushing his teeth a pleasant and a happy thing for him, i came up with a song. I always stood beside him in front of the mirror and sang and danced as he brushed. The song is as simple as ,

"side to side, side to side
side to side, side to side,
on your left, front back,
front back, front back,
on to your right front back,
front back front back,
up and down, up and down,
up and down, up and down,
side to side....up and down (how many ever times, till I'm satisfied with his brushing)
splash as you spit, grrrrrrrrrr garggle and splash as you spit "

By 'splash' I just meant the sound of water gushing out of his mouth as he spit but instead he used to spit and splash literally all over the mirror. I used to just control myself and not go ballistic about it - ain't matter now, since i feel hygiene comes first and then follows discipline involuntarily. May be it was my mistake and i should not have uttered splash at all in the first place. But it was too late, since he liked my composition and knew the song fully and i was afraid to make any changes. And moreover brushing his teeth was more important than the mirror getting wet. Kids do understand a lot, all we need to do is TALK. We explain to him that he needs to brush twice everyday in order to get rid of the bacteria. And if he drinks his milk before brushing in the morning, the bacteria is going to go into his stomach and cause stomach ache and blah blah blah. He understands this fact! Over understood to the extent that he got too finicky and when ever he ate an ice cream or chocolate or anything sticky, he would want to brush. Anyways, after a few days of splashing all over the mirror, he came up with the question, "When i spit, is the bacteria going to go to the mirror ? Mirror ku edanum ayduma (is anything going to happen to the mirror)?" I rolled my eyes and said, "Yes, Mirror paavam daane" and that's it, he is a very clean spitter since then ;-)

OK, above is all old story, now, the reason behind this post is, i was downloading some peppy Hindi songs in order to burn a CD for the car, so we can enjoy some non-stop desi music during our weekend road trips. I played a few remixes as i got going with some house hold chores and side by side doing some bollyrobics choreo ;-). All of a sudden he comes running to me, "Amma, yaaro unnoda paatu padra shano shano-la" (mom, someone's singing your song on shano shano) He became so sad, he almost couldn't digest the fact that someone else was singing the same words that i sing for him. Just too possessive! Seriously, i never knew that such a bit existed in that song, since, all along we were listening to the original track and only today i played the remix.

Here is what he listened to between 0:49 and 0:53,

It only took half a decade for that change

2009-06-06T13:37:00.005+05:30

I saw Khalnayak "only" yesterday.

We were in high school and the super duper 'controversial' hit song, "choli ke peeche.. (1993)" was a big no-no in the house hold. I personally loved that song for that wonderful choreography (spare the 'kuku kuku' parts which is very silly) by Saroj Khan and am a big fan of Madhuri dixit. The age old chitrahaar on wednesday nights used to cast that song once or twice in a month or in Rangoli on sunday mornings. That once in a month darshan of madhuri's hit song was itself a big thing and where do we ask for the movie ?

In 6 years time, came "nimbuda nimbuda nimbuda.. (1996)", where Aishwarya danced the ditto sequences of hip swaying, dhak dhaks, knee up kick kick sequences - the same Saroj Khan choreography and the same-to-same steps one after the other. And guess what, i still remember Saroj Khan winning the Filmfare for best choreography for both these 2 dances which were more or less the same, net-net she got an award for her original composition in 1994 and then copied it over to once again grab the award.

Anyways, all that ain't matter now. What am trying to figure out is, when Madhuri did the same number, the song was not accepted by any parent, neither was it a song for those school day/annual day celebrations. Everywhere it faced a 'no', school to college to home to parents to grand parents. Only because, it starts with "choli ke peeche kya hai". Ofcourse, the very next line makes it clear to the perverted minds, "choli mein dil hai mera". So, what was the big deal ?

When Aishwarya, wore the same kind of clothes, did the same hip sways, it became a family thing,a family movie. Why ? Because Nandini was from a very traditional background of musicians ? Because Ganga danced for the villian whereas Nandini dance for the hero ? Or has the attitude towards dressing changed ? Have the Indian families become more liberal in just a span 5 years ? Choli was a sinful word ? But, every bride these days wears only a lehenga - choli for her wedding reception ? Effect of westernization ? But lehenga-choli is very much Indian, so do we call it Northernisation within India, where the the whole of India accepted the north indies (rajasthani here) dresses ? If such is the case, may be i should argue as, for the rest of India to agree upon and accept north indian dresses, has it taken them holy 50 years time from 1947 ?

Yes, of course now they are and have adapted to the westernization because every kuppan and suppan has crossed the Atlantic. Post Y2k, the world has shrunk and so has everything on and in it. Its a mad mad mad world, no one knows why and when and how people change and what makes them change.

That 2 minute notice

2009-06-03T23:37:00.002+05:30

... before he sank into the deep waters of Mediterranean.

Garma garam whole wheat cookies, anyone ?

2009-06-03T22:30:00.002+05:30

Weekends are for car wash...

2009-05-31T23:17:00.003+05:30

Who said car wash is only for big cars ? His hot wheels need some cleaning too, says A!

Ever spotted a red hot moon ?

2009-05-29T12:36:00.002+05:30

A quiet beginning for the much awaited long weekend

2009-05-28T11:42:00.003+05:30

Breakfast by the beach, this is 'forever' fun!

The sinusoidal wave

2009-05-26T15:21:00.004+05:30

Am talking about the love-hate-love wave of little A with his play school. The first day he thought was a bliss and was the happiest ever kid on earth. So many kids to play with, umpteen number of puzzles and blocks and bikes and skate boards and what not. Actually the whole first week went well, we gradually increased his time at school, 2 hrs, 4 hrs and the he willing did 6 hrs, i.e the fun packed 9-12 morning hours and post lunch siesta from 12-3pm. In spite of not understanding a word of hebrew, he coped very well and i was going ga ga over it. Then came the big interval, the Pesach or Easter break for about 1 week and the real movie starts here. He had totally forgotten about school!

Every morning was a saga to wake him up and get him to get ready and we saw the other side - the cry baby in him! Never has he cried so much, not a drop of tear when he gets his vaccine shots, he used to take them like tiny mosquito bites. OK, he did cry a bit when we got him tonsured, but that too towards the end of it for a few minutes when the falling hair irritated his eyes. The next time was when his ears were pierced, even this didn't last long. Some bitter crying was during my sis's wedding when A and I had disappeared early in the morning to welcome the then groom's side. But all those are excused since he was hardly 18 months old. But this 'no school war cry' was something which we never anticipated from him. He got more and more aggressive and it came to dislike-> hate -> abhor! Every morning we got into a deal, "Today, if you stay a good boy at school, then i would take you to the pool in the evening", then some mall, a park, a zoo, a great weekend trip and what not. This went on for 2 weeks. He didn't know their language, nor did the other kids understood English and he was frustrated to a large extent. He used to yell at his teachers, only 1 among the 4 understood and spoke English, so only she fell a prey to his screams, "call my mom, call my dad, call them now, i don't want to be here, i want to go home..." kinds. In fact Israeli kids are known to be very aggressive at school, so all the more and he learnt the worst :-(. One month of play schooling and he was getting no where.

We arrived at a point where we had to start all over again from zero. I started accompanying him, stayed with him for the initial 1 hour saying that i was going to be his friend at school. With the little hebrew i know, made friends with his play school mates and patched them up with A, then assured him that i would be back in 2 hours time, before his lunch was served and promised to take him home before the other kids got to bed for their afternoon nap. Arranged play dates on weekends, this really helped to a great extent. This continued for about 2 weeks and at last triumphed!!

Now, its like I drop him at school, walk into his class with him, sit with him and do a puzzle or two as he finishes breakfast and he would by himself say, " Inum 4 minutes-la kilambiko", meaning, you can leave in four minutes, he is obsessed with 4 - his birth date! And eventually when i say, "its time" he would just give me a big hug and a loving kiss. Doesn't stop there, his orders before i leave still remain, "come before they sleep and take me home!".

So, It has taken solid 2 months for him to get used to the whole play school thing. First time play/preschoolers moms, celebrate not when you see your toddler loving the play school at first instance, the trouble is only after the first few days. They usually complete this love-abhor-love sinusoidal wave before starting to be OK with it. But, as we all know every kid is different and they take their own sweet time in coping and this may not be the case with kids who are used to day care.

News

2009-05-26T00:14:00.003+05:30

Nearly a week after the 2009 elections, i turned to some news pages to check upon whats happening back home and this is what i come across on http://ibnlive.in.com/,

Kolkata spared, Aila kills 24 in Bengal battering

Vienna Violence: Akal Takht appeals | 2 killed in Punjab

Tuesday twister: DMK in but oath-taking may be put off - equally tragic to TN

No bail for Satyam auditors, trouble at Satyam BPO

Assets worth millions seized from Delhi govt officers

Hmm, where is this taking India to ??? Looking at it from an other angle, so many people killed in natural calamities flood,storm etc etc, plus these unwanted politically, religiously motivated killings, burning of buses and vans and trains, accidents due to negligence and lack of proper infrastructure and security blah blah, the list is endless.... why hasn't India's population gone down per se ??

As i learnt it in school, "Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country - JFK", know what, i feel i have done some good, by not voting for these irresponsible jugheads.

With great power comes great responsibility. Oh, does it, really ? Because with Indian politics we only experience, with great power comes greatest atrocities.

Summer!!

2009-05-20T17:35:00.003+05:30

Come summer, people freak out in such fancy vehicles... obviously with SPF 45+, else we would all turn into kaanja karuvaadus...

Wisdom is pain! Ignorance is bliss!!

2009-05-19T23:31:00.007+05:30

Am talking about that wisdom tooth jutting out of my gums tearing them apart! For God's sake, do i need them now ? - i mean, wisdom ? After all, what am i going to do with an extra pair of teeth ? Eat better or eat more ? No, thanks! am already doing enough of that now!

Just read on yahoo answers,
Why are they called wisdom teeth ?
Because they give wisdom to the dentist to make alot of money removing them.

So true, they appear after so much of a pain that can even be compared to the labor pain as a new born comes out and the end result only to get removed!!!

"Kudukkara deiyvam, gums-a kizhuchuttu kudukkum-a ??"

What a waste of wisdom ?!

Bet She'an

2009-05-19T00:09:00.014+05:30

Bet She'an, a valley bordering Israel and Jordan, has many interesting facts and places of visit. For a nature lover, there is Gan Hashlosha - a waterfall and a stream that surpasses the visitor with its aqua-bluish-greenish waters. It is a natural spring whose waters stay warm through out the year. It is also called Sachne in Arabic meaning 'warm' or Gan HaShlosha in Hebrew., meaning Garden of the Three. The name is in memory of three men that were killed in 1938 stepping on a mine, while guarding the area.
For the kids, there is the kangaroo park just adjacent to this water body and its called Gan-guru. In hebrew, Gan is park and combination of Gan and Kangaroo renders Gan-Guru.

The highlight of Bet She'an is the ancient roman city which is only half excavated. The entire city was destroyed in a massive earthquake in 749. This is exclusively for a person who can appreciate architecture and history.

By architecture i meant, even the simplest, bare essentials like toilets and baths were constructed and provided with utmost interest and care. Managed to capture a few signage that explained their stages of bath.

A much more interesting and a rather phenomenal excavationsat Bet She'an are the Roman public toilets.
You can see the "toilet seats" sticking out from the wall. One cheek on one and one cheek on the other, and you're good to go! Underneath was flowing water, as irrigation was routed through this area as a public sewage system. The waste would be washed downstream. The groove in front of the seats was for the placement of leaves which would be used to wipe.

Additionally, the Romans believed in enjoying one's time in the restroom. Therefore, live musicians would play for the enjoyment of all, since they didn't have magazines to occupy their time while seated. Additionally, these public restrooms were for both men and women. When one was in the sitting position, his/her robe would cover the front side. Thus, the phrase, "cover my feet," would refer to going to the bathroom.

PS: Shan or She'an coincidentally means 'peace' both in hindi and as well in hebrew. Should i rename this post as Bet She'an - "bathroom mein shaan"...;-)

Strawberry + Walnut pie

2009-05-10T18:51:00.002+05:30

My baking debut - glad it came out well!!
Happy Mother's day!!

Common road sign in Haifa

2009-05-05T19:56:00.002+05:30

Thopu karanam

2009-05-04T17:32:00.008+05:30

Not long before they start teaching Sandhya Vandanam!

So, this is our age-old thopukaranam reinvented. When i was a toddler my grandma made us do it every day in the morning before heading to school and it was also a means of punishment when we cousins fought amongst us. A 108 thopukaranams is a practice or a prayer which is followed by many a men even now, for example one of my uncles does it as a special prayer when he prays for someone's speedy recovery of health. And i bet he has always had a blood clot on his thighs which wouldn't heal for the next couple of days. Three years ago, when i came back to India while i was heavily pregnant, in my last trimester with little A, my mom begged me to do at least 9 every morning in order that i have a normal delivery. It doesn't stop here, even the post pregnancy fat could also be gotten rid off with daily thopukaranams and it did work for me!

Hence the thopukaranam is not only the super brain yoga, but the head to toe rejuvenating yoga! After having written and realizing the goods of it, its high time i restarted my thopukaranam regimen.

PS: Thanks to Chiku who sent me this link and made me scribble today!

Nazareth

2009-05-03T12:53:00.007+05:30

Nazareth, an old Jewish town is where Jesus grew up and is a very important Christian/Biblical pilgrimage center. This is the native town of Jewish Mary and the town where she got married to Joseph of Nazareth. The main attraction is the Basilica of Annunciation, where Gabriel, the angel announced to Jewish Mary about the birth of Jesus and they fled to Bethlehem and returned to Nazareth after a while where Jesus spent the rest of his childhood, so they say! because the place of birth of Jesus is still a mystery and the modern day scholars still argue between Bethlehem and Nazareth.

But, you know what, i was totally surprised to see that the town comprised of only Arab population today. Arabic is the most spoken language, folks hardly speak Hebrew or English. It is said that at the Basilica and St. Joseph's church, the services were also initially conducted only in Arabic.

Basilica's Main entrance,
Main Grotto of annunciation, this is where virgin Mary was told by the angel about the birth of Jesus

The old caves/Grottos can still be seen under the Basilica and St. Joseph's church or let me put it this way, the churches were built over these old jewish caves.

The huge dome, said to be shaped like a white lily.

A corner restaurant,
Bang in front of the Basilica of Annunciation,

A coffee shop where you get freshly ground coffee powder from the beans of Kenya, Columbia, Turkey etc etc.

Standing still

2009-04-28T11:39:00.005+05:30

April 29th is Israel's Independence day and today the day before is the Memorial day in remembrance of the soldiers. Actually the whole one week starting from April 21 to tomorrow is a memorial week. Last week was Memorial day for the Holocaust (remember Hitler, WW II ?) victims. On the eve of the memorial days, entertainment is blocked, only slow and sad melodies are played on TV and radio. On the holocaust memorial day and on the eve of the memorial day yesterday, a siren, just like the war siren goes through out the country and the whole country comes to a stand still for 2 minutes. Every x,y,z stands up and observes a 2 minute silence - even the cars on the road and this is what i caught last night when the siren was on. This is just amazing, i mean, bang on the middle of the road, just not stopping their cars, but they get off their cars and stand in attention for 2 minutes. Their patriotism and love for the country keeps them so united! I dont think they will ever stop surprising me - be it eating only those crackers during the 'no bread' Pesach week, average of 4 children per family, every teenager serving the country's defence forces, gun men casually walking amongst us... the list is endless.

Definitely not a thing i have witnessed in my own country. Patriotism, blah, it only appears on Mandira Bedi's saree or when Sachin cuts the Indian flag cake, Sania Mirza's disrespect.. all of the controversies.

Hot Bombay Quiz 1

2009-04-27T19:25:00.007+05:30

With the amazing number of weird bollywood movies and songs that i get to see on Hot Bombay here, i decided to quiz the rest of the world :-)

Can you guess the name of the hero/heroine/song/movie - any or all of it ? This should be pretty obvious because of the daring colors worn!

Cougar Vs Bear

2009-04-27T19:10:00.000+05:30

From the Oscar nominated nature film "The Bear" (1988).

Just after sunset

2009-04-25T00:59:00.003+05:30

Guess the skies and clouds were jealous about the way i admired the sun and the sunset, and they decided to give their best to me after the sun called it a day....

Yesterday's ball of fire

2009-04-19T17:22:00.002+05:30

as it descended...

My chef!

2009-04-18T13:19:00.002+05:30

Is he making a magic potion out there ??

Ayan Music - straight from Harris Jayaraj's Trash Can!

2009-04-17T16:35:00.003+05:30

After reading rave reviews, few good and few bad i finally attempted the songs of Ayan. Hmmm not a bit to appreciate or even write about - the title of this post says it all. This is definitely not from the guy who composed Minnale and Kaaka Kaaka. Pieces rejected from all his previous compositions/film directors so far have just been recycled and put together for this Surya flick!

you know it rained

2009-04-16T17:08:00.002+05:30

rather poured, when you spot these through my window...

S of Lights

2009-04-16T10:43:00.003+05:30

Mithun - Maddy or Neil of the 80s ?

2009-04-15T12:17:00.007+05:30

Few of those favorites from my long list of disco favorites from the 70s and 80s. I still vividly remember how my aunts, uncles and big cousins, the then college goers used to go gaga over Mithun those days. As Maddy or Neil Nikhil Mukhesh is to us , so was Mithun to them! Even today my grand ma who is 80+ loved/loves Mithun and says her 3rd son , my c.appa resembled Mithun whenever he sported a brown goggles. He is the one who introduced us to tulips with his pictures from Netherlands in 1980s. Paati always used to say, for an eligible bachelor in late 70s and early 80s, he had to look like Mithun, the height, the color,the charm -"Payyan Mithun madiri veluppa,sevappa,osarama irukkana ?" used to be a regular question from the bride's side. Even though a Kamal Haasan existed, they always looked up to Mithun. Now, i know why.

Happy Vishu!

2009-04-14T13:49:00.003+05:30

Iniya Tamil puthaandu nall vaazhthukkal!
Shubh Shubh bengali new year!
Happy Varusha Porapu!

I just checked on the tamil daily sheet calendar with the little ezhuthukootti tamil i could manage and realized that the name of this tamil new year is "Virodhi"... i'm wondering what it actually means - 'unfriendly'... i hope not!

Does anyone know ?

Back to business

2009-04-13T10:48:00.005+05:30

Yeah, its time to upload pictures from our vacation ~ outings. First of all, the week long vacation is for Pesach (see paragraph below). We drove down to some interesting places. I mean its so easy out here, the whole country is of the size of Kerala where N to S is about 450 km approx and getting to anywhere would not take more than 3 or 4hrs.

We planned to explore the northern parts of Israel - the Golan Heights, north eastern bordering Syria and then the Rosh Hanikra - northwestern bordering Lebanon. Well, little A also needs some entertainament and we visited a National Park - the Hay Park. We trekked a bit in Nimrod and Banyas in the Golan, found fossils of Star fish and experienced a cable car ride at Rosh Hanikra - they say its the place where the love story between the mountains and the sea is never ending. And at Hay Park, little A took a pony ride, spotted kangaroos, penguins and ostriches and their huge eggs!

Pictures will follow in a couple of days...

Summary of the below for foreigners in Israel - these are the NO-bread days!

Passover - Passover is a holiday that commemorates the liberation of the ancient Israelites from 400 years of slavery in Egypt (approximately 3000 years ago). Since that time, the holiday has come to represent the universal value of freedom. It is the holiday where family and friends gather around the seder table to celebrate, and by the use of certain symbols, to see themselves as commanded, "as though each one of us has also just come out of Egypt". Egypt is of course symbolical of leaving bondage for freedom.
One of the major customs of this holiday is the prohibition against eating any leavened products and the commandment to eat Passover Matzos. When the Children of Israel hurriedly left Egypt, they had no time to bake leavened bread, and thus the matzo, flat and unleavened, came into being. Whilst in their wandering in the Sinai Desert for 40 years, the people lived as Desert people, and would sit and lean against cushions on the sand, and the Haggada - the book of Pesach, reminds the participants that they too should lean on cushions at some point in the Seder.
The Ten Plagues that God sent to convince Pharoah to release His children, the Israelites, are also remembered by dipping a finger in salt water, and flicking drops of water onto a plate, reciting with each dip the list of the Plagues. In more secular Seders, the motif of Spring is also included. On the Seder night, the first night of the Passover holidays, Jewish families the world over sit together, very often with invited guests, and those who have no family to be with, to commemorate their freedom, and to recall the miracle of the passing over the Red Sea, and the beginning of a life of freedom.

seder - ritual dinner that begins the holiday

The haggadah - is the story of the Jews leaving Egypt, but much more. It also explains many of the traditions of Judaism, and the wisdom of its teachings. The Haggadah has been present at the Seder for many centuries, sometimes changing its format, but basically keeping its essence.

Matza = unleavened bread – that the Jews ate when fleeing from Egypt. We continue to eat only matzoth during the 8 days of Passover to symbolise our unity with our Forefathers.

Chametz = leaven bread - Before the holiday begins, all “Chametz" – ie. Foods that are made with flour, have to be cleared out of the house

- The Bible tells us of ten plagues The plagues that God used to convince the Egyptian Pharaoh to let

the Jews leave Egypt. The final one – the death of the first born in every family, did make Pharoah consent

Seder plate - an arrangement of the traditional foods that symbolize happenings in the Jewish history.

time for wine and vacation...

2009-04-08T23:17:00.001+05:30

Ever seen such intellectual chocolates ?

2009-04-08T11:38:00.002+05:30

this is real food for 'energetic' thoughts...

Hello Spring!

2009-04-07T23:59:00.002+05:30

as it gets bright and blue and beautiful...

2009-04-07T11:32:00.003+05:30

I guess the weather is also gearing up for a good Pesach vacation! BTW, the sea and the sky - where do they meet and merge ?

Picture perfect sunset on sunday

2009-04-06T10:54:00.002+05:30

am reminded of primary school drawing hours - drawing 2 mountains side to side, a semi-circular sun in the midst , the orange colored rays using a ruler.... wow!

Sunday Morning Blues

2009-04-05T11:30:00.003+05:30

While the whole world enjoys a lazy Sunday, here we are, already on the job and our week has already begun. Dad and son in their respective cubes and I am back to coffee shop and vetti times with sudoku, blog, email, chat et all...

Just one more day to go and i should be busy with my classes.

Sunday is so synonymous with lazy mornings, play, movie, eat out, beach etc... But, work and Sunday ? boo hoo hoo... Have a great sunday all you lucky souls!

1st day 1st show

2009-04-02T11:47:00.004+05:30

.... at the kindergarten, 1st of April, yeh, i know what a day to start schooling!

The day before, i was actually imagining all sorts of hungama to happen, you know may be one like, Prakash raj in Abhiyum Naanum, where Dr. A might end up doing some drama or the usual "uwaaah, school poga vendaam :(" like anyother kid in India you know. Ofcourse, I didnt imagine myself doing anything crazy out there.. :-)

But, he walks in with his Bob the Builder bag, says Shalom! to the other fellow kids and his teachers, and one look at me and says "buh-byeee" and that was a look that very well and clearly said - "Now, you can GO!" or even "its high-time you left!"

So, i go to a nearby coffee shop and started on some sudoku. Meanwhile they served the little ones some breakfast, played to the fullest under the sky! Lunch was served at 11:30am. I get a call stating my son was refusing to eat. So, i rush to the spot, only to see him happily have a sandwich followed by rice. So i walk up to them and ask, you said he wasn't eating, well, i see he is now. They said he refused to have the soup. I was like, "Oh!" . While my brain was doing some mute talking - "namba enga, evalo naal soup-oda sapadu saaptrukom, its so ob he denied to have that" and on the days he has had soup so far , only i have fed him and he has never drank it by himself, he can only handle semi solid items by himself with spoon or crunchy items by fork. A bowl of soup and spoon all by himself was a first timer to him. He is only used to having milk+cereals, rasam mum, thachi mum or plain yoghurt by spoon, noodles, pasta, fruits and vegs by fork!

Anyways, our dear sir finishes his lunch and they declared a half-a-day. But to my surprise he was not prepared to leave and wanted to do a full time the very first day! After some kenjals he agreed to leave and way back i ask him why he refused to have the soup.

He says, "adu verum rasam ma, how can i just have the rasam alone without rice ?"

Well, A & I only had to laugh it out as we shared this conversation with all of his excited aunts and uncles and thatha(s) and paati(s).

Google's new Street View application

2009-04-01T18:33:00.002+05:30

You never know how an application gets notorious!

London: A British man is facing divorce after his wife spotted his car parked outside another woman's house, via Google's new Street View application. His wife happened to see the husband's Range Rover on the Street View service, while she was spying on a female friend's home.

Although the husband claimed that he was away on business, the wife easily caught him red-handed after she recognised his car because of its blinged-up hubcaps.

However, the husband, whose identity is not yet known, is not the only man trapped by Google's controversial new 360-degree photo search, which covers 25 cities and towns in Britain.

There have also been other cases where wives have caught their spouses by spying on them using the Street View service. Ever since Street View was launched on March 18 this year, it has triggered a stream of complaints from people caught on camera.

"I was talking about the Range Rover case when another divorce lawyer came up to say his firm was dealing with the same sort of thing. People are getting caught out on Google," the Sun quoted top media lawyer Mark Stephens as saying. He added: "I suspect the husband's lawyers will claim it was an invasion of privacy that will cost him his marriage and the Range Rover."

Names

2009-03-31T13:33:00.001+05:30

Polyester Padmini
Nylon Nalini
Silk Sunitha

Any guesses on what kind of names or rather whose names these could be of ?