A Peek Into My Life

mushrooms and onions

2009-10-03T15:50:00.000-07:00

I made a large batch of caramelized onions and mushrooms and used it in different ways over the week. To make the caramelized onions and mushrooms, first obviously I thinly sliced lots of onions and 2 packages of mushrooms. I used white button and baby bella mushrooms. Heat up a lot of olive oil and once it is hot, add the onions and mushrooms. Meanwhile mince some garlic cloves and add it to the pan. Add salt and pepper and keep stirring on medium-low heat. This is going to take a while. In the meantime, I cut up strips of green bell peppers and also de-seeded and sliced jalapeños. I used the jalapeños for a bit of kick and also coz I had to use them up. The onions and mushrooms will reduce to more than half their original size and will look all brown and caramelized. At the last min, add the peppers and jalapeños.

Armed with this batch, the first thing I made was pasta. I made a beautiful white sauce. Add some flour to heated olive oil and butter, stir it till the flour is cooked. Slowly add milk and keep stirring to avoid lumps. I also add a little bit of water to the sauce. The sauce will thicken and will be smooth and silky. Add salt, pepper, chili flakes and italian seasoning. Thats a flavorful white sauce! Cook up some spaghetti in boiling water and pre heat the oven. Layer some white sauce on the bottom of the pan, add some of the onion mushroom mixture, some more sauce, spaghetti and the rest of the sauce. Top with grated cheese if you want. I just don't keep cheese on hand these days since we are trying to avoid it. Heat it up in the oven till the cheese melts and you are in for a treat.

The second thing we had was subs with the onions and mushrooms. I bought some sub rolls from the bakery at the local grocery store along with swiss cheese. Some things just need the cheese. ;) Cut up the subs and layer the swiss cheese slices and heat it in the oven till the cheese melts. Layer some lettuce leaves and add the onion mushroom mixture on the subs. Top with sliced avocados and some of the leftover white sauce. Thats the second treat.

The last of the onions and mushrooms got used in a frittata which is a type of Italian omelette. It is a big fat omelette which is generally cooked first on stove top and and then broiled in the oven. But since I don't have a oven safe skillet, I did all the cooking in the oven. Add a little bit of milk into a bowl and break eggs into it. I used 5 egg whites and one whole egg. Beat the eggs with salt and pepper. Add dried parsley leaves and of course the onion and mushroom mixture. Pour into greased baking dish and top with swiss cheese. Cook it for 15 mins at 350 F oven and broil for 2 mins after that. Remove from the baking dish and cut into wedges or layer on some sliced bread.

I loved all the three dishes. I think its because I really like mushrooms cooked this way. Anurag was not a fan of the frittata. Not really sure why. Out of the three, the pasta was really a star recipe. I had also made an asian inspired spaghetti where I used a bit of this mushroom mixture but it was not the focal point as in the above recipes. But that was some lip smacking and easy dish to make. Chopping was the hardest part. If you use the coleslaw mix, this can be made in minutes. I had to cut up cabbage, bell peppers, onions, spring onions and carrots. Heat up some oil in a pan on high heat. Add onions and garlic. Keep the heat high and keep stirring. Add the cabbage, carrots. Add some salt and pepper and stir till the cabbage is slightly cooked. Add cubed tofu, caramelized mushroom and onions, peppers, frozen peas and spring onions. Thats a lot of veggies compared to the amount of spaghetti but I like it that way. Meanwhile, find some time to make the sauce. Heat a little bit of peanut butter in the microwave, add soya sauce, hot sauce, lemon juice. I also added a sesame orange asian sauce. Mix it up and keep tasting to add more of what you like till you love the sauce. Add this sauce and cooked spaghetti to the cooked veggies. Garnish with toasted sesame seeds and spring onion greens.

I did not take any pictures this time. I am just bored of taking pictures before eating. And I have not written about my trips too. We had gone to Niagara falls and Gatlinburg,Nashville. But I didn't write about it. Bored of that too!

Till I get inspired enough to write a post....bye!!

Easy and simple dinners

2009-08-22T08:05:00.000-07:00

When you have, some tomatillos, an extra large tomato and some beautiful pink radhish :

what does it turn into for dinner?

Mooli paratha and Sev tameta. I can eat mooli only in parathas, that too made my way. I sautee the grated mooli and its leaves in some oil with hing till they are cooked. Then I take some wheat flour, add a bit of besan to it, some salt, chilli powder, turmeric and the cooked mooli. Then I make a soft dough adding water as needed and make parathas as usual.
I used the wrong type of sev for the sev tameta but that was the only one I had at home. Usually, the thick variety is used. Making Sev tameta is really simple. Just make a tadka with some oil, mustard seeds, jeera, hing. Add some chopped onion and garlic if you wish. Otherwise just add some chopped green chillies and turmeric. Add the chopped tomatoes. I had some tomatillos so I used them along with the tomatoes. But tomatillos are more sour than tomatoes so be careful. Cover and cook the tomatoes. Add some salt and sugar. If you have jaggery, better still. Add some dhaniya jeera powder. Add water. We need a gravy and the sev will also soak up the water. Keep tasting to adjust the sweetness and sourness. Let it boil for a 4-5 mins. Add sev just before serving. It was a really nice combination of the mooli parathas and the tangy tomato curry.

Once in a while, I buy the beautiful purple cabbage.

I had some of the cabbage leftover after making a sabzi. I made a colorful salad for dinner along with sandwiches. I had some sprouted brown chana. I added the chopped purple cabbage, onions, grated carrot, finely chopped and deseeded jalapeno pepper or some finely chopped capsicum. Add some salt, chaat masala, pinch of sugar and lemon juice. The sandwiches are the usual potato sandwiches. Boiled and mashed potatoes, seasoned with salt, chillies, dhaniya powder and a tiny bit of garam masala. Mix it up, layer it on bread and toast it on a pan. And you are ready for a nice and filling meal.
The other type of sandwich we generally have for breakfast are the vegetable filled ones along the lines of the mumbai street food sandwiches, but not quite. But it works for us, since it is simpler and still tasty.

For the sandwiches in the picture, I have spread some honeymustard on the bread, layered some boiled and sliced potatoes, sliced onions, sliced cucumbers, sliced beetroot and sliced jalapeno. Sprinkle salt, pepper and chaat masala on top. And roast it on a pan. Sometimes we use green chutney on the bread, if we have a bottle sitting in the fridge. Sometimes, we add some cheese to the sandwich. It all depends on the mood and the availability of ingredients.

Miami - on the road

2009-07-08T10:23:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was a long weekend. 4th of July. And we are in the middle of a travel or more specifically, a driving spree. As usual, we made last minute decisions about where to go. We went to Miami to a friend's place. We decided to start on Wednesday afternoon around 2 o clock and again as usual, we were delayed by more than an hour. We finally left after 3:30. It was a 730 miles journey by road. We took our first stop around 6 in the evening, just before hitting I-95 S which makes up for 450 miles of the total journey. After a cup of tea from our excellent new thermos, a plate of triple layer nachos for our stomachs and fuel for the car, we were back on the road. I was asked to sleep in the back seat. I tried but within an hour, I was hungry again. Glad we brought the bananas with us! We wanted to cross Jacksonville before our dinner stop but we stopped a few miles before. One of the reasons was a weird noise. We were worried the tires might have a problem. But it turned out that there was something about the road which caused the car to give out that weird noise. Since we had stopped, we ate our packed dinner of roti and potato sabji. We also had donuts from the nice store at GATE fuel station. After that, another tea and fuel stop at 2 in the night, we reached Sumit's house at 5 in the morning. I did doze off a few times but thankfully, Anurag didn't and he was fast asleep as soon as he hit the bed.

I spent the next day in a half asleep state. I did sleep for a while in the afternoon while Anurag had to work since he had not taken leave that day. Shweta had prepared a nice meal of rice, dal and aloo capsicum the previous evening. We had that for lunch. After a dinner of chole, roti and rice, we slept early for the long day ahead.

The next morning, we woke up at 4:30 and left home by 5:30 to reach Key West in time for our day long adventure which was to start at 10 in the morning. It is a cool 4 hr drive to Key West on the overseas highway. The highway connects several islands and also goes over the ocean for some part. Key West is the last island in the chain. The highway is quite scenic and there are a few stretches with ocean on both sides. We reached the Fury Cat Ultimate Adventure boarding point by 9:30 after finding a place to park the car. Key West is a very small place and we had heard people have trouble finding parking there. We had booked the Fury Cat Ultimate Adventure package online before leaving for Miami for a small discount although people can book it on the spot for a higher price. We had to first fill out a few forms confirming that we are fit for the adventure activities which included snorkeling, para gliding and jet ski. Other activities included kayaking, artificial iceberg climbing. At 10 o clock, everyone boarded the Fury Cat boat all set for the day. Breakfast was immediately laid out. We had bagels, cream cheese, muffins, yogurt and orange juice. After breakfast, we were given snorkeling instructions. We were not allowed to touch or stand on the coral reefs, obviously. The Florida reefs are the only location in US to have live coral reefs. We were given the snorkel gear - the mask, snorkel tube, fins, life jacket and vest. Soon, we reached the reef location and descended down the stairs at the floor of the boat into the ocean. I was quite scared to be leaving the safety of the boat to go into the ocean. But life jackets are an excellent thing. After a few minutes, I was sure I am not going to drown. :) But I had a huge difficulty breathing through the tube in my mouth. I also had problem getting the tube to fit properly in my mouth. Extremely salty water filled my mouth ever so often. After some time and some coaching by Anurag, I was able to breathe a little. After that I really enjoyed my time observing the under water views. Snorkeling time was 1 hour and before we knew it, time was up. We headed back to the boat and had a fresh water shower. It was time for lunch. We had pasta salad, potato salad, buns and cheese slices. The other options were fried chicken and lot of other things which we wouldn't eat.
The boat then left for Gulf of Mexico for the second part of our trip. There it docks on a floating island which is the base for para sailing, jet ski, kayaking, artificial ice berg climbing. The people on board are divided into groups and a group of around 10 people are taken for para sailing or jet ski while the rest can do any of the other activities like kayaking or iceberg climbing or just swimming in the ocean. We were in group no. 7 which mainly consisted of Indians. First we were up for the jet ski. We were given instructions on using the jet ski and then were handed the jet skis. The instructor told us to remember 2 things : this is not a bicycle so you don't need to balance it and other is not to turn without running the engine. I was a prepared to fall off because our other friends who had done it earlier had fallen off. But luckily, we didn't fall. It could be because I used to start screaming if Anurag increased the speed too much. It felt like I would just fly down the jet ski if I didn't hang onto Anurag's life jacket straps. We had a fun 15 min on the jet ski.
There was a one hour gap before our para sailing turn. So we just took the kayak and went around. I had thought it would be physically strenuous but it was fun. After an hour of kayaking, we were ready for para-sailing. We went into a smaller boat and were strapped up and sent flying in the air. I hadn't expected to be scared. But once we were very high up in the air, I was so scared. All I could see below me was water and the huge ocean. I still find it funny that I was scared like that.
After that, it was time to go back to the shore. We roamed around the little town of Key West for a while. I tried the key lime ice cream but didn't like it too much. Anurag had gone with the safer option of vanilla ice cream and enjoyed it. We left Key West around 5:30 and were home by 9. Had dinner and crashed for the night.

Next day, we got up late and had a late lunch of kadhi chawal. In the evening, we went to Miami's most famous landmark - the South Beach. I had heard that it is a very good beach but I had not expected such clean and clear water and white sands. It is also not very deep near the shore for some distance. While Anurag went for a swim, I just dipped my legs in the ocean and was collecting shells. We spent nearly 2 hours there and it was time for sunset. We had had a difficult time looking for a parking spot when we had reached. We had finally found one after nearly half an hour. While going back, there was a near traffic jam. The driving in Miami is not as disciplined as Charlotte and nearby places. We reached home, showered and changed and left to watch the Transformers 2 movie. The Movico cinema hall was modeled on Egyptian theme. I cannot say if the movie was good or bad because I had dozed off during the movie. But the others said it was good.We came back after the movie at nearly 2 o clock.

Sunday, the last day of our stay at Miami. We had planned to go to Everglades national park. We hadn't done any research on what the place exactly offers. We just drove down to Ernest Coe Visitor Center. We were given a map and were told to take some of the trails while hoping to see some alligators. We drove down the route towards Flamingo Visitor Center. Our first stop was the Anhinga trail where there is a high possibility of spotting wild life. The weather was hot so the cap and sunglasses were necessary. We did spot two alligators on the trail. There was Gumbo Limbo trail near Anhinga trail and we decided to try it. It was completely swarmed by mosquitoes. Anurag's bad luck was that he had worn a black t-shirt and they were all over him. I was saved to some extent due to my white t-shirt. We couldn't stop to see a thing. The huge mosquitoes were feasting on our blood and they just stuck to our bodies even if we tried to slap them. We ran as fast as we could and got out of the trail. We didn't stop at any of the other trails for the fear of mosquitoes. We reached the Flamingo visitor center. There they had an AC room housing a small museum. We were relieved to spend a few moments there away from mosquitoes and the heat. There was a small shop near the visitor's center where we could buy sandwiches and microwave them. Our only option was the egg salad sandwich. I loved them. Maybe because we were really hungry. We also took a piece of carrot cake and choco bar ice creams. All of us enjoyed the lunch because we were completely unsure whether we would find anything to eat in the mosquito swarmed forest and when we found food, we were happy. There are 2 hour air-boat rides offered at the shop. We didn't take it because we were already so uninterested in everything. "Once bitten, twice shy". But we were actually bitten hundreds of times in a matter of minutes that we were terribly shy of going anywhere else :)
We just drove around a bit more and returned home. Ordered in a pizza for dinner and slept.

The next morning, we left for Charlotte at around 11:30 in the morning after packing some lunch and tea for us to eat on the way. Our first stop was around 2:30 near the cocoa beach exit. Does it remind anyone of 'I Dream of Jeannie' (Cocoa beach, Florida)? We had lunch and moved ahead. Our second stop was somewhere around 6:30. We ate two subs from subway and had some more tea. After that it was non stop till Charlotte although we did have some tea in the car. We were home at 12:30. We were still catching up on sleep a few days after we arrived.

Trip to Atlanta

2009-06-17T09:03:00.000-07:00

Now that Anurag got his drivers license and we made the small trip a couple of weeks ago, we felt ready for a longer trip. We decided on Atlanta and quickly booked a hotel and bought the Citypass online. Citypass is a good way to get tickets to all the attractions in a city in a single booklet at an affordable price, atleast for Atlanta.
We had decided to leave by 4 in the afternoon on Friday but we were finally able to get going at nearly 6. Being, summer, the day lasts till atleast 8:30 which was good for us. As we neared Atlanta, we moved into severe weather of thunder, lightening and heavy rain. But it was the last part of the journey and we finally made it by 10:30 to the hotel. Somehow, I was not able to sleep that night. At 6 in the morning, it was a great surprise to be awake. At home, I never feel awake before 8:30.
We were out and about by 8 and headed to the georgia aquaruim. There we exchanged our Citypass e-ticket for the booklet. On summer Saturdays, the aquarium works extended hours (8 am to 8 pm) to accomodate the larger crowds. We were among the first few to reach there which is a good thing as the crowds grow larger later in the morning.
We started with the Ocean Voyager exhibit. It is a huge tank with more than 6 million gallons of salt water. It contains fascinating animals like the largest fish - whale shark and hammerhead shark, sandbar shark and many other sting rays and fish. And the beautiful and the only manta ray in US aqariums.
After that we went to the 3-D show. It was good for children and gave a message that our small actions can pollute the rivers and oceans and harm the ocean life.
After that we went to the Tropical diver exhibit. It was an amazing collection of a whole lot of colorful fish in a huge tank. It was kind of like watching a rainbow come alive! We saw some beautiful jelly fish too in there. By this time, the aquarium had gotten really crowded.
After a quick look around the River Scout exhibit, we were just in time for the Quick dip tour. The quick dip tour guide takes us to the top of the Ocean Voyager and River Scout tanks. It is great to see the huge whale sharks from the top of the pool. The Ocean Voyager pool itself is the size of a football stadium.
After a better look around the River Scout exhibit at the pirhanas, the tree boa and the otters, and then looking at the touch pools, we were just in time for the Titanic Aquatic exhibit which is a temporary exhibit till Sept. It contains artifacts recovered from the Titanic and stories about the passengers on the fated ship.
The Coldwater Quest was the last exhibit at the aquarium. We spent a long time looking at the beluga whales there. They are giant animals with very graceful movements. It was beautiful watching them. The other animals included the spider crabs, sea dragons.
It was already past 2:15 by the time we finished seeing everything at the aquarium. And hunger hit us and I could feel the first signs of migraine coming up. The cafe at the aquarium had only roasted vegetable pizza as the vegetarian option apart from desserts. We took the pizza and the keylime tart. The pizza was good but the tart was way too heavy. We had to finally leave out the cream and eat only the crust.

The next stop was 'The World of Coca-Cola' which was just next door the aquarium. There we found out that the Coca-Cola company is more than 100 years old, saw coca-cola artifacts from all over the world, watched how the machines used in coca-cola factories, watched a 4-D show and tasted coca-cola products from around the world. Some of them were downright bad and others were good. But nothing beats the coca-cola original. Everyone gets a bottle of fresh coca-cola at the end. We sat down for a while near the lawns. My migraine had picked up intensity by then. We checked the GPS to find a subway nearby. It was right down the street next to Centennial Olympic Park. We decided to walk down there. We were thinking of spending some time at the park but we were still really tired after eating the subway and I could see the migraine coming full on. So, off we went to the hotel. After some tablets and some rest, I was better by night.

The next day we checked out of the hotel around 9:30 and headed towards the Swaminarayan temple. It is a beautiful temple with the carved stones sent in from India and assembled here. The other highlight there was the sweets and snack shop in the temple complex. We filled up the trunk of the car with khakras, chundo, sweets. And also had a nice lunch there.

After lunch, around 1, we headed out to Fernbank Museum of Natural History.

The highlight there were the dinosaur fossil skeletons. The other interesting part for me was the 'Reflections of culture' exhibit. It had traditional clothing, jewelery and accessories from around the world. We also caught the 'Dinosaurs Alive' IMAX movie.

We left around 5 from the museum towards home. After pulling over to a rest area and enjoying papdi and jalebis picked up earlier at the temple, we were back on the interstate around 7:30. After a few missed turns, we were home by 10 at night. Its times like these when the frozen parathas come to the rescue. After a good fill of aloo parathas, it was good to be sleeping on my own bed :)

weekend trip

2009-06-04T06:35:00.000-07:00

Last week Anurag finally got his driver's license here. So we decided to rent a car for the weekend. I should write about the fun and food before it gets too late. On Saturday evening, we went to the temple at Charlotte. It was only recently we found out that there is a temple here.
It might just have been the first centrally airconditioned temple I have been to :) Next to the temple was another small building. We saw many people going there. So we thought of checking out what it was. It turned out to be a dining hall and people were having dinner. We were not sure if it was for everyone so we started to go back. But a person called us and asked us to have dinner and go. And dinner we had!! I still remember the vaghareli khichadi and bateka nu shaak and the cooling chaas (that is khichadi, potato curry and buttermilk). Yummy! And also got to eat sukhadi as prasad. It was pretty nice to go to a temple after a long time and meet some friendly desi folks. Because otherwise, the desi folks just see through you while the Americans stop to say hi.

The next day was Sunday. After a late start to the day, we ran some errands for grocery shopping and after lunch, headed out to Lazy 5 ranch It is quite an amazing place for a privately owned, no federal funding setup. And it doesn't burn a hole in the pocket. We reached the place after an hour long drive. At the gate, we paid the entry fee and bought the feed buckets. No sooner did we enter the safari drive, we were surrounded by ostrich. I asked Anurag to feed him from his hand. It was not such a good idea! The ranch recommends feeding only from the feed buckets. And we hadn't read that. Well, Anurag's fingers are still intact. But the ostrich was still hungry and he saw the feed bucket in the car and was trying to get in to reach it. There was some screaming in the car, it was mostly me! But Anurag managed to move the car forward a bit and the ostrich thankfully didn't try to follow. The windows were quickly closed and noone tried to feed any more ostriches!! :)
There are around 750 animals at the ranch including the lama, different types of deer, rhino, giraffe, zebra, bison, cows, bulls and birds. We had a fun time getting them to eat. Be prepared for dusty roads and dirty cars because the animals spill their food on the car if you don't keep the bucket completely outside the car. And as you must have guessed, I am speaking from experience :)

This was our first time driving experience in the US and for that matter, in a car. And we did nearly 100 miles that day. Even though I was not the one who was driving, I was thinking from the front seat, wow, this is difficult! Although the absence of clutch and gears makes it a bit easier, there needs to be a lot of multitasking. Checking the speed limits, the GPS, changing lanes and all that stuff. It was a good driving trip. Hope we have more soon.

sweet somethings and i feel love

2009-05-11T08:35:00.000-07:00

Thats baked karanji/gujiya. I took the crust recipe from here. I took
2 cups of all purpose flour, salt, 3 tbsp ghee, 3 tbsp yogurt, pinch of baking soda and water to get a tight dough as mentioned in the recipe. For the sweet filling, I melted jaggery and added dried grated coconut, cardamom powder and some sugar too. It would be great if you can find the soft kind of jaggery. I baked it at 375 F as mentioned in the linked recipe. It turned out delicious for a low fat sweet. Anurag said the crust was like biscuit. Maybe because it was crispy hard, which means, I had to cut up the karanji with a knife instead of being able to break it by hand. We got a lot of karanjis from the dough but we were still sad when they got over after a few days :)

I had tried this easy rasmalai recipe on diwali. Yes, thats a long time ago. I also made a lot of other stuff which is in the background. This baked ricotta cheese rasmalai is so tasty, that its hard to believe you didn't toil hard in the kitchen to make it. :) I love these type of recipes. I admire the smart people out there who create such innovations.

I made these banana nut muffins from this recipe. I had made the loaf version of the recipe a couple of times earlier. And banana bread or muffins are always delicious. Anurag made this absolutely yummy bowl in the second row. He cut up two muffins and scooped vanilla icecream over it. Then he poured chocolate syrup and sprinkled nut topping on it. It sure felt like a tiny bit of heaven in a bowl :)

I had made the banana muffins again. This time, skipping the nuts and adding chocolate syrup in the batter since Anurag enjoyed them with chocolate syrup drizzled on them the last time. Although I try to avoid chocolate as much as possible lest the migraine flares up.

Check out this video. "I feel love" by Venus Hum and the Blueman group. It is electric and vibrant. Sure to lift anyone up from a bad mood.

Isn't Annette Strean almost super natural with her singing? She is singing it so effortlessly, you would think its baccha song. I have heard other singers try to sing it for the blue man group but they are just not able to cut it. I also love how the guitarists and drummers are so totally enjoying what they are doing. Each person on the stage seems to be in a trance, completely absorbed in enjoying their own thing. But yet it works so well in complete harmony. :) Let me not get philosophical about it and say bye before I start sounding weird.

new veggies, old tastes

2009-04-21T08:55:00.000-07:00

There isn't a huge variety of "known" vegetables in the supermarkets here. The staples on our weekly shopping are cabbage, cauliflower, french beans, spinach. Sometimes, I buy the vegetables I am not too familiar with, just to break the monotony. So, this post is about those vegetables which I tried to cook for the first time.

The first one is Brussels sprouts. The picture shows them raw and then cooked with potatoes.

I just quartered each Brussels sprout and cooked it like the usual cabbage aloo. Made a tadka of jeera, hing, turmeric, chilli and then added the cut up Brussels sprouts and potatoes, some salt and dhaniya powder. Then instead of cooking it up in the pan like usual. I thought this needed to be crispier than that. So I put the almost cooked vegetables in an oven tray and broiled them for a while. I didn't warm up to this vegetable a lot though Anurag thought it was good. I thought it had a strong odour and taste. I never had this problem with cooked cabbage. I thought this was way stronger.

Who wouldn't be tempted to buy these cute little chillies? I gave into the temptation and bought them. I was thinking of stuffing them but I finally made mirchi ka salan. It sure is a tasty dish and the best recipe is here.

If you don't concentrate on reading the label "tamarind paste concentrate", and read it only as "tamarind paste" then you can end up with mirchi ka salan that looks a lot more brown than necessary and you also have to add a lot of sugar to compensate the sour. If you didn't notice, thats the stupid mistake I made. But the positive side is that, I could still turn the blunder around into an edible dish. Though it didn't taste like a mirchi dish :) It could have been a spicier. I think I shouldn't have de-seeded these peppers. They were pretty mild even without the sugar addition.

I had been intrigued since I first saw asparagus on the internet when I was in India. I wondered what a stem like vegetable would taste like. So I took the opportunity to taste it first-hand. It does look pretty and tastes good too. It is nice and crunchy when baked. That is the only way I tried it. Need to buy it again one of these days.

I cut up 1-2 inch pieces of asparagus and carrots. Added olive oil, salt, pepper, chilli powder and a tiny bit of dhaniya powder and rolled it around to coat it with the spices and baked them till crisp. We had them as a side with dal chawal. Surprisingly, it also tasted great on the pizza I made the next day.

Next is the very traditional punjabi dish of sarson ka saag and makki ki roti. I used a can of mustard greens instead of fresh ones. This one doesn't have a before and after picture as I didn't take the picture of the can :)

I followed the recipe almost as it is from here as I think this is the most authentic recipe I could find on the internet. My makki ki roti doesn't look yellow because I used white corn meal. I also added a bit of wheat flour as the corn meal was quite coarse. I also didn't add any radish to the roti. You know how I avoid strong flavour and odour. They make my stomach feel weird. This was super yummy. And don't forget to add ghee or butter on both the saag and the roti.

This weekend, we were just roaming around the neighborhood shopping center. We tried the ben and jerry's frozen yogurt. I had frozen yogurt for the first time and I thought it is an amazing idea. It is lighter than ice-cream and is not as sweet. So I loved it.

I almost feel bad writing about this after all the food stuff but I just need to tell this. We also went into a pet shop. We always used to see these cute rabbits and birds from the shop window, so we thought of having a look around the shop. There were so many beautiful fish in there and then can you believe it, there was a section of reptiles. Absolutely eww. There were snakes, and lizard or I should say gecko. eww. eww. Let me not get into their types and sizes . I ran from there into the dog section. What kind of people would want such pets!!! And here I used to think "wow, I live in a lizard free land" coz I had never seen them before like in India where they sneak into the house. Oh enough!! I need to stop before I have nightmares about them.
Lets talk about movies. It seems like a mandatory section here these days :) But I don't have much on this front lately. Just saw "Aa dekhe zara". It is an average movie in the thriller category. Neil's first movie "Johnny Gaddar" was way better. His next is going to be "Jail" I think but I don't have high hopes on that either.
I think I haven't mentioned "Marley and Me". Saw it long time ago. It is a beautiful movie. Nothing extraordinary in terms of story but it touched my heart.

favorite website for deals

2009-04-15T09:37:00.000-07:00

Check out http://www.deals2buy.com/ for great deals in everything ranging from electronics, laptops, toys, clothes, shoes, jewellery and everything you want.

Crafty ideas and a trip

2009-04-09T15:22:00.000-07:00

What does one do when one washes a pillow in the washing machine and it kind of gets torn? One can do some kind of patch work on it. That someone is me.
The pillow threads got loose and it was sure to get torn if we didn't do anything about it. Anurag said we need to do a patch on it. After thinking for many days, we finally went into a craft store. And instead of a real cloth, we bought a felt cloth. And some stick-on snowflakes and flowers and leaves. That made the task so much easier. Anurag gave the idea that one side of the pillow represents winter and other side represents spring. So we stuck snow flakes and flowers in seemingly random way, but I assure you I spent a few days (pretending to be) thinking the design.
I tried to sew on the felt on the pillow but the stitches didn't look neat. I should have expected that, since my sewing experience is in negative. So I took a ruler and marked dots on the felt so that I know exactly where the needle goes in and where it comes out.
I am not sure if I did a good job but guests, specially the ladies, say "wow, those are some unusual pillows" and I take that as a compliment :)

We also bought this small round mirror from the craft store. And the picture shows what happened to the mirror after I painted on the poor thing.

In other news, a few weeks ago we had gone on a small trip to sugar mountain resort for skiing and then to grandfather mountain. I think this is the first time I am writing about a trip so late after the trip. But honestly, I didnt have much to write about it. Except, skiing is hard :) It makes you feel like a baby who is learning to walk. You fall and you can't get up by yourself. It was kind of fun overall. Atleast, we did something new and exciting.
Grandfather mountain was good. We could only see the mile high swinging bridge. The nature museum was closed coz we were late for it. Some pics from Grandfather mountain below

baking, movies, music ...

2009-03-06T11:54:00.000-08:00

Here's some of the fun stuff I baked in the past few months.

The first row of pictures are paav. I made them a few months ago. I think I used this recipe. We had them as pav bhaji. They didn't turn out as soft as I would have liked them to be. Must be because I used some whole wheat flour instead of all purpose flour. Also looks like I baked them a bit more than needed. I hope to give it a try once again. Lets see when I muster up enough courage to do it again :) The yeast I used to buy in Bangalore was such a bummer. It didn't froth so much. The yeast here does froth very well. So I can't blame anything on yeast any more.

The second row is vegetable puffs or some people call them patties. They don't look so good in the pictures but they tasted amazingly good. I used ready made puff pastry sheets like these. I had them in the freezer for months. A few times I had taken out the box but well, it seemed quite time consuming to make when someone is over for tea. 40 mins to thaw and then baking it. I had even cut open the box once but didn't make it. So the uppper layer had dried out a bit by the time I finally made the puffs. Once you have the filling ready, just cut up the sheets into rectangles of appropriate sizes. Put some filling in the center and fold it over. Bake as per the directions on the box which were 15 mins at 400 F on the box I got. The filling recipe is a winner by the way. Can be used for samosas or just as a plain subzi. Quite tasty.
For the filling,
- boil, peel and chop potatoes into small pieces.
- Chop some green chilies
- Get the peas out of the freezer or shell them and cook them in the microwave or any other way.
- Heat oil in a pan, Add saunf (fennel seeds), asafoetida, green chillies, turmeric, red chilli powder, dhaniya jeera pwd, garam masala, salt, sugar
- Add the potatoes and peas, some lemon juice. Mix. cover and let it cook for a few minutes and you are done. The best flavour here is of the saunf with the potatoes. It tastes best when it is a bit spicy.

Next up is flaky dinner rolls with fake misal. I followed this recipe for the dinner rolls. They were one of the best things I ever baked. Absolutely lovely! Soft, crusty and divine. When I tasted them, I was proud of myself even though all I did was follow the recipe. :) Instead of using whole wheat flour entirely, I had used replaced half of it with all purpose flour because I was scared by the paav experience. Coming to the fake misal. Hmm, it is not the real misal but we love to eat our sprouted moong curry like misal, with the pav and with a whole lot of toppings.
The moong curry is pretty simple.
- Get some sprouted moong. Do it yourself like I do or buy the sprouts.
- Chop up some onions. Get the ginger-garlic paste and tomato puree out of the fridge or chop up ginger, garlic and tomatoes too.
- Heat oil, add mustard seeds and let them splutter. Add asafoetida, onions and ginger garlic
- Let the onions turn transparent. Add turmeric, chilli powder, tomato puree and let it cook for a min.
- Add the moong sprouts, salt, sugar, kala masala (maharashtrian garam masala) made by mom. Add water and cover and let it cook till the sprouts are done. It should work with any other garam masala too. It should be a slightly watery curry. Pretty simple, isnt it? Now take the curry in a bowl, add some chopped raw onions, coriander leaves, lemon juice, curd if u like, and add sev or any other farsan. Dip your bread in this delicious bowl, scoop up and enjoy!

The last picture is corn bread muffins and vegetarian chilli. I had heard a lot about chilli. It is one of the American favourites. I had bought a packet of self raising corn meal and just followed the directions on the packet to make these corn muffins. Just add eggs, milk and oil to the corn meal and bake it in the muffin pan. For the chilli, I had looked up a lot of recipes on the internet. I don't think I followed one particular recipe but took the recipes as a guideline. I bought canned kidney beans, canned corn and canned Italian tomatoes and some tofu and vegetables which were not canned ;). Heat oil, add onions, garlic, mashed tofu, celery, bell pepper. Let the tofu brown a bit. The chilli usually contains beef. Some recipes used tofu in the vegetarian version. I believe it would have tasted just as good without the tofu. Then add the can of tomatoes, beans and corn, chilli pwd, cumin pwd and let it cook on low heat for as long as you can. I let it sit for nearly 45 mins. It was good but I don't think I will make it again. I would rather make a rajma with the can of kidney beans :) Looks like Old habits and tastes die hard.

A few days ago, I watched Dev D and 13B movies. Both the movies are good. I was apprehensive about Dev D because it was supposed to be very bold and realistic and I was not sure if I wanted to see that much reality. But then there was Abhay Deol and I have always liked his movies. This might just be his first path breaking movie. Shahrukh's devdas really pales in comparison. In that movie, I thought devdas, chunnilal, infact most of the characters were quite irritating. Inspite of devdas being an inherently irritating character (he is hell bent on destroying his life), Dev D is a very interesting and fresh. It absolutely can happen to anyone. And I loved the moment of realisation for Dev. I mean really how self-destructive can you get! You need to stop and realise one day. Speaking of realisation, I see some of that devdas in me. I feel the compulsive need to stay away from everything which can be good for me like gym, studies or anything worthwhile and I am yet to find my realisation. ;)
In the last post, I talked about Delli6. What a waste of time that movie was! And after hearing the music of DevD, Delli6 really doesn't look that good even music wise. I absolutely loved every song of DevD. I can imagine 'Emotional attyachar' playing on radios in india. Nayan tarse, pardesi....i would have to list out all the 17 songs because there was not a single song I skip unlike most other albums where only 2 or 3 songs are worth listening to. And I had completely forgotten to mention about 'Oye Lucky' music. Lovely songs there too. All of them. There is a 70 year old man and a 12 year old boy from villages singing addictive songs on this album. Both Dev D and Oye Lucky songs grow on you as you keep listening to them.
Check out this making of Oye Lucky music. This has been a long post! Hope to write again soon!

Lets talk food...

2009-01-24T20:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I made butternut squash which looks like the pic. It tastes like pumpkin which we get in India. And I thought this is the best way to eat pumpkins. I saw on 'Highway on my plate' show that kaddu ki sabzi is very famous in UP. So I had asked Priya for the recipe a long time ago. And I just adapted from whatever I could remember of it. I wanted to note this down so that any-time I want to make it, I can follow this exactly. What I did was : Heat some oil in a pressure cooker and add a teaspoon of ghee to it. Add mustard seeds and let them splutter. Add some jeera. Then add two nice pinches of asafoetida and half a teaspoon of methi seeds powder. Pic: Google

Then go in the usual suspects, half a teaspoon each of turmeric and chilli powder and some chopped green chillies. It shouldn't be overwhelmingly spicy but it must have that sharpness. Then add about 2-3 cups of the squash, chopped into cubes. I had mixed in a potato. I know, I love adding potatoes to everything. Then add a good 2 teaspoons of dhaniya powder and a teaspoon of dhaniya-jeera powder and a bit of garam masala. Add salt. I am sure this was not in the recipe but I added some dessicated coconut and kasuri methi for the added hint of sweetness and bitterness. The squash has some sweetness to it and we had already added methi seeds powder. But this is one curry where you wouldn't mind adding a bit of extra everything. I was worried at the amount of dhaniya powder I had added but something told me, nothing is too much, when doing this curry, specially the dhaniya pwd. Well, we are almost done. Just add water enough to cover the squash and pressure cook for 1 whistle. Let it cool down while you make rotis or parathas to go with this and you will be ready for a meal to remember. Be sure to make some extra curry and next day, add some dough to it and make pumpkin parathas.

In the middle of winter and a day of snowfall, I made mango icecream. Sitting inside a warm house all day long doesn't make you feel, "you cant eat icecream and not catch a cold". (Thats too many negatives in one sentence! If you understood it, then "nacho" - which is dance and its Chetan's favourite thing to say :) ) Back to icecream, It was the most easiest and the best recipe to make mango ice cream and It just takes a few minutes. I took the idea of using condensed milk from here and well, I didn't really measure out anything. I just poured out a tin of condensed milk and added some whipped cream and milk and some mango puree till I felt it had a good consistency and a good mango flavour. Freeze in a metal bowl which is wide rather than tall. I got this tip from here. I think using condensed milk doesn't create crystals and hard icecream. Otherwise following the process of beating the icecream at regular intervals as mentioned in the tips page needs to be followed.

I just made some methi na gotas (pakodas) for some guests at tea. It came out really good for a first attempt. The guests were surprised at the fluffiness. I mostly followed this recipe. But I used semolina instead of wheat flour, opted out of using peppercorns and coriander seeds. I also used Eno instead of baking soda. It is important to have sour curd and since the yogurt here is never sour, I added lemon juice just as the recipe says. Here's how they looked like.

I have recently started using balloon whisk. Its such a great kitchen tool. I am wondering how I managed all these years without it. :) Do buy one to make all your mixing a breeze.

By the way, aren't 'Delhi 6' songs great? I think its one of the best albums that has come out in recent times. I hope the movie is good. Unlike most movies these days, which are really bad. Specially the hyped and over-hyped ones. And I wonder if reviewers get paid to write good reviews for movies like Dostana and Ghajini or they write good reviews just coz there are Bollywood bigges involved. The last movie I enjoyed was 'Dasvidaniya'. I also saw 'The President is coming' which really doesn't have much of a story but is quite hilarious and a good watch.

If you are wondering, will this post ever end? You are in luck, the post is ending now.

trip to orlando

2009-01-02T07:30:00.000-08:00

This was our first trip after coming to US and unfortunately it was not a road trip. Oh! How we miss our bike, or motorcycle as they call it here. (When in rome... ;) ) But it was still a good trip. Let me start with the preparations. Since I promised to write about the food experiments and didnt keep up the promise, heres what i made the day before the trip :

chivda/chevdo/mixture whatever its called in different parts of india made from puffed rice and cornflakes.

Moong dal halwa - using this recipe. The only problem was the the dal didnt get ground finely in my mixer. Otherwise I can imagine this to be really tasty

Baked tikhat/tikhi puri - For this, I took wheat flour, besan, one grated garlic pod, til, ajwain, fair amount of warm oil, baking pwd, chilli pwd, dhana jeera pwd and made a stiff dough. Rolled out in a round shape and made cuts on it to prevent puffing. Baked them at 375 F for 5 mins on each side.

I knew that we are not going to eat so much of home food but this was just an opportunity to try the recipes I had wanted to try. Otherwise I am too lazy to make snack kind of recipes.

The next day, the journey to Orlando was not uneventful. Well, we missed the connecting flight from Atlanta. We were put on stand by on the next flight and if we couldn't get on that one, we would have to spend the night on the airport and leave next morning at 8. But luckily, we were cleared for the flight. But we had to endure a couple of stressful hours.

We were at our hotel by 4:30 in the evening. We were too tired to go out so we just went for a small walk around the place and had 2 nice subs from subway. I was surprised that we need to buy water and a water jug is not provided in the room unlike India :)

The hotel's guest service desk, told us that they have really good discounted tickets. And she said we also have a free tour of our resort and free breakfast and a presentation. And you will get the tickets after this 2 hour program. There was also a free pickup and drop. We could not see any harm in it since it started at 7:30 and we would be free by the time, the parks open. That was a mistake to have agreed to this. The so called "presentation" was to try and force us to buy a time-share vacation property. Somehow we managed to escape by 11:30. Then we had to wait in a long queue to get the tickets. And by the time we were back to the hotel, half a day was wasted. To cheer ourselves up, we went to the Indian restaurant buffet which was bang opposite to the hotel. The food was good and we were happy and stuffed again ;) Now was a good time for a nap. Before taking the nap, I made reservations for the dinner show at wonderworks. We already had the tickets now.

At 6 in the evening, we reached wonder-works. It was a fun place to fill up any free hours in Orlando, if you have them. The bed of nails and some video games were good. But the dinner show was the best part of the evening. It was a comedy and magic show. And it was great fun with lot of viewer interaction. And there was unlimited pizza, popcorn and drinks (that would be pepsi for us ;) ) That's wonderworks, the upside down building.

The next morning we took the shuttle service provided by the hotel to reach disney. We went only to one of the 4 disney theme parks and that was called magic kingdom. This being Christmas day, the park was completely crowded.
The jungle cruise ride was good fun. The cruise is supposed to take you through the rivers of African and Asian jungles. There are some wild animals and other surprises on the way. And the skipper who is supposed to navigate the boat keeps the humour going.
The Pirates of Caribbean ride was also a good one. Get to see the very real looking Capt. Jack Sparrow and other characters and experience some "mild but wild thrills" as they call it at Disney.
The Splash Mountain ride is very popular at Disney. We had to wait for nearly an hour in the queue to finally ride it. I was too busy anticipating the fear of a 5 stories drop into the water to enjoy the ride fully. It is better to let the ride surprise you rather than know what's going to happen. And well, it wasn't so frightening after all and I was like, is the drop already done! Then, we went to the Haunted Mansion. Another fun ride. All rides at Disney are fun rides and nothing too extreme.
We got to see the "Once upon a Christmastime parade". That was the highlight of the day. The Fantasyland part of Magic Kingdom can be completely skipped if there are no children in your group. Except Mickey's PhilharMagic which is a delightful 3-D show.
By evening we were exhausted. And decided against waiting for the fireworks display. We had to regain some stamina for Universal parks the next day.

The next day we went to Universal resort. They have 2 parks. We first went to Islands of Adventure. This was a day full of adrenaline rush. In this respect, Disney and Universal are different. Disney is more plain fun and Universal is more of extreme fun. But each of them is unique. It is good thing, we covered both. The first ride we went to was called "Incredible Hulk Coaster". Some interesting facts about the coaster :
The Incredible Hulk launches riders upward 150 feet in three seconds. Immediately, riders experience a zero-g heartline inversion and turned upside down 110-feet above the ground.

The Incredible Hulk reaches top speeds of 67 mph. It also features one of the highest inversions in the world at 109 feet.

The G-force experienced on the Incredible Hulk Coaster is equivalent to that felt by the pilot of an F-16 fighter jet.

The Incredible Hulk launcher provides about 45,000 pounds of thrust for two seconds. If the same thrust were used on a bowing ball, it would reach the Pacific Ocean. More facts found here

Do I need to say we were shaky for a while after the ride? But I loved the ride. Next we went to the "Amazing Adventures of Spiderman" ride. The most popular ride at Universal. And we waited an hour in the queue. But the best part is that the story is slowly built upon as you wait in the queue. So you are not bored and get into the Spiderman mood before the actual ride. This story building is part of many rides at Universal and Disney which is a good thing considering the way these parks get crowded. The story goes that you are sent out to get pictures of Spiderman as the city is taken over by all the baddies. The baddies come to hurt you while Spiderman saves you. You need 3-D night vision glasses for this ride. I really cannot write much about it. It has to be experienced, and several times at that. This really was the highlight of the day along with the revenge of the mummy ride.

Next was the Popeye & Bluto's Bilge-Rat Barges ride. You pass through white water rapids on large, round rafts that seat eight people. Everyone gets soaked on this ride. The next soaking ride was Dudley Do-Right's Ripsaw Falls. Experience a 75 foot drop into the water sitting inside a log. Guaranteed fun and guaranteed soaking! One problem was the ride experienced some technical difficulty when we were half way through the queue. So some time lost there.

Next up was Duelling Dragons which is also a very popular roller coaster at universal. But we didn't get much of a queue because it was lunch time. And no one would dare ride this on a full stomach. We planned on a late lunch after finishing this ride. There are two inter-looped roller coasters called "Fire" and "Ice". It has several inversions, including a zero-g roll, a Cobra roll, two corkscrews, and two vertical loops but the distinct feature of this ride are the 3 near misses with the other coaster. It seems as if the 2 coasters come straight at each other in a head-on collision but are steered away at the last minute. If you are brave enough, the ride is best experienced in the front row. There is a separate queue for the front row seats.

After lunch, we headed straight to universal studios park. First up, was Shrek 4D. It didn't impress as much, maybe because we already did the mickey 3D show and this wasn't much different other than moving seats.

Next, we headed for the Revenge of the Mummy ride. Another great ride, similar to Spiderman. The queue area is used to create a story line. You wander on to the sets of Mummy and later into the Mummy's tomb. Good set-up all the way. Ride itself is a lot of thrilling fun. Universal calls it psychological thrill ride. Again a must-see attraction for adults.

As soon as we got out of the Mummy Ride, we were just in time and the right place for Macy's Holiday Parade. So, we were lucky to catch it. Although, the Disney parade is better, this ones good too. By, the end of it, it was already going to be 6 o clock in the evening and we had had enough of thrills for a day. So, we just roamed around a bit and headed back to the hotel.

The next day, we went to SeaWorld. If you are staying near International Drive, it is better to use the I-Ride trolley instead of the hotel shuttle which takes forever to reach SeaWorld because it goes to both Universal and SeaWorld. This day was like a breath of fresh air after all the mad roller-coaster and waiting in queues days. We went straight to the Shamu "Believe" show. Shamu is the killer whale and unlike its name, it looks so beautiful. If I could, I would have sat in that stadium to see the show over and over again. It was definitely the highlight of the day and of the trip too. The relationship between the trainers and the whales, touches the heart. Again, one of those indescribable things which needs to be experienced.

Next up, Blue Horizons show. It was spectacular with elaborate costumes and stunts. There were dolphins, parrots and amazing stunt actors. Since, this was the holiday season which translates into hoards of tourists. We had to reach the respective stadiums at least half an hour before the show. There is also a dolphin nursery and dolphin cove where you can feed and touch the dolphins. Stingray lagoon where you can touch and feed Stingrays. We also saw the manatees, penguins and sharks. People can pay to be put up in cages in the shark pool! That's what they call a "close" encounter :) The other show that we saw was A'lure, the call of the ocean. No animals on this show. It has some amazing performers and silk yo-yo artists. Underwater viewing of whales and dolphin pools is also good. And if you are lucky, you can see them right next to your nose, like the dolphin in the picture. Did you see the air ring it is creating?

We had reservations for the dinner show, Arabian nights. So, we left at around 6. First there is a magic show in the waiting area. It is more hard core magic unlike the comedy magic show of wonderworks. And then everyone is led into a stadium for the actual show. There was salad, pasta and some strange icecream. The show was good. I think they had brought in a new story line for Christmas. Much of the acrobatics was as seen in the A'lure show. The exception being, there were lots and lots of horses here and some good performers on the horse. It is not worth the 50-60$ they ask for. But we got discounted tickets so that was fine.

That was our last outing in Orlando before we caught a flight back home the next afternoon.

Some of the new tastes I discovered during this trip were : salad and honey mustard dressing. Who knew salad could taste so good? Fresh and crunchy lettuce and other greens spiked with the lovely honey mustard dressing. And I also loved the creamy scrambled eggs. And the lovely Italian herbs and cheese bread at subway. I can now understand how people can eat a sub everyday at subway. Some mouth-watering memories those! So, on our next trip to the grocery store we bought a bottle of honey mustard dressing and salad greens.

Continuing the story

2008-11-17T09:34:00.000-08:00

Continuing my story from the previous post, I landed here in Charlotte with nothing particular to do. People had warned me "You will be bored out of your mind there, alone and jobless". Well, I am different. At least these 3 months have not had that effect on me. Does that mean I like being jobless and whiling away my time being lazy? Oh well. Bad question. Forget about it.
Now the first month was gone in trying to arrange the house and search for furniture. Every weekend, there was a shopping list to tackle. Well, that is still the case but now it focuses more on groceries.
In the second month, Harry Potter took over my life. I was with him day and night. That just means I read all the seven books. It was a crazy time as if I lived in another world. The author is one amazing woman. It was only after I read the books that I could understand why people used to go crazy when a new book was released. As always, the movies do not do anything for me, compared to the book. It brings in only fourth of the excitement of the book for me.
Before that, I read "the 3 mistakes of my life" by Chetan Bhagat. His books are always a short and a good read. There was major drama towards the end of the book. Very much like a Hindi movie. But I doubt if I will ever like a movie more than a book.
I also did some more of my experimental cooking. Tried out new recipes and some old ones. Having a nice oven helped. Some thing like this. More oven cooking is in the plan.
Now I am trying to finish the anchor stitch kit scenery. It was bought nearly 4 years ago. I didn't get time for it before. It is a complicated scenery. I will post it if it gets completed and it looks good :)

And by the way, beware of "Dostana" movie :) since people are likely to waste their money on it seeing the 3 and a half stars review. Definitely does not match up to the review. Avoid it people and save your time and money or see it without any expectation. Then you might like it. I preferred Golmaal Returns over this, if all you want to see is comedy.
Spell check gave spelling suggestion "Dustpan" for "Dostana" :) Interesting!
And don't you think the new James Bond is absolutely drool worthy? None of the actors have had this effect on me before.

Will be back with my cooking experiments next.
Pic from http://salestores.com

Trying to start blogging again :)

2008-11-10T08:42:00.000-08:00

Its been a long long time since my last post. I have had such breaks many times but because I am now at home most of the time, many of my friends and I had expected myself to blog more frequently. But I always used to freeze each time I opened blogger :) Writer's block? Maybe if I am a writer at all ;)

Today I am determined to write. So, lets see. I have come to the US for the first time. And now its been more than 2 months that I am here. I could have written about the flight. Everyone told me they think that my 17 hour Mumbai to New York direct flight would be quite difficult and boring as it is so long. They had taken flights with a stop over in Europe. But the flight was pretty cool. Well, literally too. I had to ask for 2 blankets :). I boarded the flight at 12:30 in the night and then we were served dinner after an hour I think. I had to wake up from sleep to have the dinner which wasn't really worth breaking my sleep for. Then I was mostly drifting on and off sleep. And eating every now and then what the folks were serving on the plane. Many people in the plane weren't so much into sleeping as I was. They were watching movie after movie. I watched only one movie. I love my sleep :) And when I reached New York, it was 6:30 in the morning and it was raining. By the time I finished all formalities and checked my luggage into the connecting flight, it was 9:30. I had 4-5 hours to kill before my flight. I roamed around the "HUGE" JFK airport a bit. There was a terminal only for Delta Airways. And to me only that part looked bigger than the Bangalore Airport. I settled down in a quiet place with my book. And well, after a few hours I landed in Charlotte. Anurag, Sumit and his wife were there to receive me. It was a nice ride back home. I remember the first thing I noticed was how empty and smooth the roads looked. And then I noticed the beautiful houses. I felt as if I was in a movie. Coz the houses looked like the ones I had seen in Hollywood movies. Funny thought that one! I was still a little dazed and couldn't feel this was real maybe because of the jet lag.

Anurag's nice friends made tea and dinner for me (and for him ;)) We reached back home at 10 in the night with the house littered with my huge suitcases. We were late in calling back home. And miraculously the phones were also giving some problems. Finally we opened a skype account and called up and everyone was ready to reprimand us for being so late in calling. Things like this happen so often. When you are in a hurry, everything that can go wrong, goes wrong. :) I have too many instances for this. Lesson to be learnt? (still not learnt) "Don't wait till the last moment to do something."

Wow...I just wrote a post...not bad!! Let me just go ahead and publish this. Stay tuned for the next.

Experiments in my mom's kitchen

2008-08-09T05:48:00.000-07:00

Some big changes happened in my life since my previous post. For one, I am unemployed right now and totally enjoying the break. I am at my mom's place for about 2 weeks and using her oven for my experiments.
The first experiment is not really an experiment. I made a baked pasta dish. Made it in 3 parts, first were vegetables, I sautéed onion, tomato, corn, cauliflower, basically whatever was at hand with salt and sugar. The second part was boiling the pasta in salted water. The third was white sauce. About a tablespoon each, of olive oil and butter. Some whole spices: pepper, cinnamon, clove. Added 4 tablespoons of flour and roasted it and added a cup of milk, some salt and pepper and a bit of water as the whole thing started getting thicker. Take care not to cause any lumps. In case you are lazy to avoid lumps, just run it in the mixie and you have a smooth sauce, just like me. :) In a borosil glass dish, add the veggies and pasta, mix and pour the white sauce on top and spread some cheese over it. Bake it in a hot oven for 10 mins and delicious pasta is ready. I think it would taste equally good even if its not baked.

The other experiment was baked bread rolls. Bread rolls here are the potato stuffed bread which are generally deep-fried. But deep frying bread completely puts me off. So I just stuffed the bread with the usual potato stuffing, applied oil over it with the brush and baked it for a long time in the oven. It doesn’t look as brown like the deep fried version but definitely better than oil sticking in your throat. Usual potato stuffing : boiled, mashed potatoes, grated ginger, chopped coriander leaves, salt, dhaniya powder, bit of garam masala.

The third was truly an experiment. Biscuits, which can be eaten for the fast or "upwas" as it is called. And this being the "Shravan" month of the Hindu calendar, lot of religious fasting is done, though I don't follow this. I took equal amounts of shinghada and rajgira flours which was about 2 and a half cups. Added 3/4 the cup sugar, 1/2 cup beaten ghee, one and a half cups of chopped pista, cashew, dates, dried apricots, 1 tsp of baking powder, some cardamom powder and mixed everything up. Added some milk to get dough. Shaped it into rounds and baked for about 10 minutes. They tasted divine, obviously considering the tasty ingredients that went into it.

Read at your own risk!!

2008-07-06T10:27:00.000-07:00

I didnt know what title to give this post written in the middle of a Sunday night (if 11 o'clock can be called middle of the night ;) ) It might be a depressing read so proceed at your own risk!! So, I gave the warning in the title :)

Why is life full of difficulties? Well, it has its share of happiness too. But sometimes I think about this a lot: why life? I really cannot understand why millions of people exist on earth and each one goes through similar hardships and ups and downs, one birth after another, if the reincarnation theory is to be believed. It baffles me, why god, if there is one, wants not one or two but millions of people to go on living completely insignificant lives. I mean ok, some people have made history and all that, but fine, I fail to see the importance of all of this.
I wonder why I am alive. It wouldn’t make any difference to anyone if I was not born. But now that I have already lived a few years, some people would be sad if I am not here but they will recover sooner or later. And to think, people want to give birth to bring more people to live through miserable lives!! The kid would fall sick, cry while going to school, get bullied at school, get depressed at not doing as well in exams as the other kid, worry about getting admission to college, struggle to get a job, find a spouse, learn to adjust into married life, become a parent, struggle to take care of finances, child’s education, parents health, his own health, grow old and suffer all the aches and pains of old age, and then die only to be reborn and live through all of this again!! Sounds very terrible to me.
The saints/gurus say that happiness/bliss is within you and all that stuff. It sounds good to listen to. But what bliss are they talking about. And it is within you! Are you serious? I can only see misery, tensions with a bit of happiness here and there.
Well don’t get me wrong. I am not unhappy or leading a very miserable life as per the normal standards. My life is pretty much above average: I have wonderful people in my life and there are a lot of people to care for me and look after my happiness.
I haven’t even completed half of my life; considering average human lifespan and I already feel like I don’t have much more to do in life. I don’t want to go on living just for the sake of it. I feel like vanishing somewhere. Hey, the Himalayas sound like a good idea ;)

You know, I think I found why I feel all this. Maybe it is because I don't like to face hardships or difficulties or anything which requires more effort. I love running away from difficulties and I want difficulties to run away from me. Is there any way I can do that? other than going to the Himalayas and getting buried under the snow :)

Weekend stress buster - Bandipur and Gopalswamy Betta

2008-05-12T21:55:00.000-07:00

This weekend was not a long weekend. But the itch to go somewhere was strong. We had a few options - Bandipur and Gopalswamy Betta, Nagarhole and Irupu falls, Yellagiri and optional Vellore. Finally at the last moment, we picked Bandipur and just packed whatever we could lay our hands on. We had had a lazy Saturday morning and an even lazier lunch of yummy mango custard and brown chana sprouts. It was 5:15 by the time we could leave home. We filled petrol and bought water bottles and we were on NICE road by 5:45. A break for tea and a dosa at the restaurant behind Coffee Day after Channapatna. We were at our hotel room in Mysore by 8:45. The room was small and nothing great but still cost us Rs 700.

Next morning, we left the hotel at 4:30 in the morning. We took a break by the road side to eat the biscuits we had got with us and reached the safari office at Bandipur at 6:45. The van was already filled and ready to leave. The driver cum guide told us to join him in the van. We got to sit on the wooden planks next to the driver's seat which offered the best view. But there wasn't much to view. There were lots of deer; some bison, some orange mongoose, some peacocks and one of them was dancing with his feathers spread out. There was also a lone elephant eating some leaves. We had more elephant sightings on our Ooty trip than this safari. The van had a noisy family who just couldn't keep quite in spite of the driver reminding them again and again that we are in a forest and should maintain silence. That was the irritating part.
With the safari done, there wasn't much else to do at Bandipur. So we had a nice breakfast at Pugmark restaurant and had a walk around the resort.

After that we were ready to go to Gopalswamy Betta. It is about 20 kms from Bandipur on the way to Mysore in Hangal village. It was nice to pass through the sleepy little village. Most of the fields had a “machan” because wild animals come to the area after dark. At the forest gate 25 Rs fee needs to be paid to climb up the hill. The road is open only from 7 am to 5 pm. It was nice to experience a couple of steep curves. It reminded us of the Ooty trip. At the top of the hill, we were greeted by some amazing views and a temple. After going to the temple, we sat at the temple compound for a while soaking in the greenery and the silence. We are suckers for greenery and silence ;) Finally at 11:30 we left the temple and were on our way back to Mysore.

At 1 we were near the bangalore by pass road and for some weird reason, we decided to take that route instead of going through Mysore city. That route seemed nealy 10-15 kms longer!! And it got quite frustrating when the White Orchid restaurant before Srirangapatnam said they are booked and cannot allow us to have lunch there. It seemed the Punjab police had booked the hotel as there were lots of police cars standing there. There go our plans of eating a relaxed lunch in a nice place. We were thinking we could have found an A/C restaurant in Mysore and had a good lunch. On the way we saw Fun Fort which had a restaurant. We decided to find out if we could have lunch there. The sun was beating down hard and we just needed a break. Thankfully, for restaurant entry they charge 50 per head which would be deducted from the bill if the bill amount is more than 100 Rs. Otherwise the entry fee is 275 per head. The restaurant was called seafood restaurant but we were assured of getting vegetarian food. Thankfully, we got vegetarian food which wasn't too bad.

At 3:45 we were on the road again. This time there was some Sunday evening traffic along the entire stretch between Srirangapatnam and Bangalore. With nothing else to do, I started reading the sign boards along the way and found some funny ones "Sri 'some name' parboiled by rice" !!! , 'Sachin heir saloon'

We stopped at Kamat for tea. And as soon as we were about to finish our tea, the rain and wind started coming down heavily. So we waited for a while for the rain to subside a bit. We left from there at around 6 and were home by 7:30.

Welcoming the microwave oven

2008-04-13T22:11:00.000-07:00

Last week, we bought a new microwave oven. So, this weekend, I made complete use of it. I baked a brownie using this simple recipe. I didn't use the brown sugar and orange zest and forgot the salt. I also used the normal wheat flour instead of maida. It was good enough but slightly overbaked. First I baked them for 15 mins at 180C but it was slightly undercooked. Then i microwaved it for 3 mins and it got overcooked. Next time, I will try out the egg less brownie recipe by tarla dalal. I also made rice in the microwave and I think it is better than the pressure cooker for making rice. The grains puff nicely and are seperate from each other. I boiled potatoes in it and also roasted peanuts. I made mint flavoured peanut butter also for the first time. It is pretty simple. Just put peanuts, mint leaves, sugar, salt. I added a bit of chilli powder and run it in a mixie with little oil till it looks spreadable.

Brownie Update (4/28/2008) :
I did make the brownie using tarla dalal recipe. I added flour, curd, baking pwd, baking soda, cocoa pwd, walnuts and oil. That called for a lot of replacements like replacing butter with oil, dark choclate with cocoa pwd and flour with a mix of whole wheat and refined wheat flour. But after all this, the batter still looked a bit dry so I added milk till it looked wet like cake batter. This time I just microwaved it. It was done in about 6 mins and was moist. I think the moistness was majorly due to the added milk otherwise this time too it would have dried out. But the problem this time was, it was a bit too choclatey...more bitter than sweet...and thats not the way I like it. Either the sugar I have is not sweet or the recipe proportions are not correct or brownies are not meant to be sweet....
Well....hope to have better luck next time. :)

Food updates

2008-03-27T07:43:00.001-07:00

Some of the things I made. Theres gula chi poli (jaggery stuffed chapati), til gul (sesame and jaggery ladoos). This I made in January for Makar Sankranti. Too late to be posting it!! I know but I always fall back on the proverb "Better late than never" ;) Then there is the home made equivalent of tandoori roti and chole. Also featuring my version of vegetarian momos with homemade sauce. I know they hardly look like momos...blame that on my poor photography skills....but believe me I followed the googled momos recipe I found on the net to a large extent. ;) These are half moon shaped momos which are steamed and lightly roasted on a tawa.

Ooty Conquered !!

2008-03-26T05:29:00.000-07:00

Good Friday holiday expects us to go on a long ride. How could we waste a good long weekend like that? But the weather was playing tricks on us. We had taken permission to leave early from office on Thursday afternoon and had decided to go up to Mysore and take a night halt. But just before our scheduled departure time, the rain gods were out in full force and there was much indecisiveness about whether to go or not. By the time we were able to get out of office and try to decide whether to go or not, it was already 6 in the evening and we didn't feel up to the ride with the tiring decision making and the fact that we worked overtime in office in order to leave early. So we decided we will get up in the morning and check the weather and decide whether to go or not. We filled up the tank and the wallets and went to sleep.
We are up and ready before 5. The weather looks good so we arrange the new cramster bags which we had bought to avoid any luggage problems which we had faced before. The bag design is a genius (that's an exaggeration). I mean, it fits so well on the bike, has enough room to stuff a lot of things in it, and it has a design element for each requirement like some easy access compartments, bottle holders, rain protection and the like. It is an absolute must for people who are serious about going on long trips on their bikes.
Ok, so the ride is on at 5 in the morning. The weather is nice and cold with early morning breeze. It was a smooth ride till Coffee day at Channapatna. After half an hour break for the essentials we are back on the road at 7. There is a light drizzle and all through the way till Mysore, the rain gods were threatening us with a few drops here and there but I guess they like us and so they didn't bring forth a huge downpour. I was thanking the Gods for that.
We reached Mysore by 8:30 and didn't take the bypass road to Ooty and entered Mysore so that we could have breakfast. After searching for a hotel, we finally found a small one and had our staple travel breakfast of idlies and tea. We left Mysore by 9:15 and went through Nanjangud, Gundlupet. The road from Gundlupet to Bandipur is in a bad state. But in the forest, the road was good and the surroundings beautiful. We spotted deer and peacocks near the road but didn't stop to take pictures. The forest on the Tamil Nadu side is called Madumalai Wildlife Sanctuary.
After the sanctuary, there are two ways to reach Ooty. One is through Gudalur and the other through Masinagudi. The only thing we knew about the 2 routes is that the Masinagudi one had 36 hair pin bends while the other didn't but was longer by almost 30 kms. And that most people still took the Masinagudi route. We stopped to decide which one to take and finally decided on '36 hair pin bends' route. The hair pin bends and some portions of the road are quite steep. Even our 350cc Enfield was having trouble climbing at some places and it didn't help that Anurag and my combined weight was around 150 kgs and some more weight for the luggage. We saw even a few cars, specially the smaller ones having trouble climbing. The 25 odd kilometers of ghats took us nearly 2 and a half hours and some stops to let the bike cool down.
At 3:15 we were finally in Ooty in the hotel room. We had booked Hotel Villa Park through Makemytrip. It was slightly cheaper through the site than direct booking. It is a huge place with all types of rooms. We had taken the standard room which was slightly small but very clean. The bathroom was big, neat, functional and very clean. Trying to decide on a hotel in Ooty is very difficult if you are using internet as the source. Every hotel has some bad reviews written about it.
We had to wait till 4 for the restaurant to open and then we had some nice dosas and went back to the room. It was very cold and it was a good thing the hotel provides heaters in every room. We sat with our feet facing the heater and then went to sleep. We got up at 6:30 and decided to go for a walk around the market place near the bus stand. It was very near from the hotel. It was like bone chilling cold and I could feel my nose turn into ice ;) but it was really nice to walk around in the mist and clouds. No sooner did we reach the hotel, it started raining. Thank you again, rain gods!

The next day, the weather was bad with rain and mist all through the day. So we had booked a van tour which would show us coonor and some spots in ooty. At most viewpoints, all we could 'view' was clouds instead of tribal villages ;) But they were beautiful views nonetheless. The tea gardens looked so beautiful especially in this weather.
At Dodabetta peak, I thought we have reached subzero temperatures (exaggeration again!)
We didn't go to the Botanical Garden and left the van there. We went roaming and exploring on foot. We reached Charring cross and saw a nice looking restaurant called 'Sidewalk Cafe' or something. As soon as we entered, we saw Rocky and Mayur and their team. These are the guys who go around eating food on highways ;)!! They come on NDTV Good Times channel in a show called Highway on my Plate. We really like the show and so we were happy to meet them. After some more roaming around and some shopping, we were back to the hotel.

The next day we had a nice Ayurvedic massage at the hotel. After bath and breakfast, it was already 10:45. Anurag went to an Enfield mechanic to show the bike as it had a strenuous ride up to Ooty. The oil needed to be changed and all of that took nearly 2 hours. So, we could finally check out after 1:30 only. We had lunch at the hotel after that and then left at 3. The mechanic had told that Gudalur route is a curse for the shock absorbers and so we went through the Masinagudi route again. I had my heart in my mouth for the entire 30 minutes it took for us to climb down the ghats. I had clutched the seat so tight, my hand started paining. I used to breathe a sign of relief for every hairpin bend that we crossed. Phew! I am glad we made it after all. Climbing up took us 2 and a half hours but we came down in just 30 minutes!!
While crossing the forests, this time, we saw lots of elephants close by. One tusker was almost standing on the road. We stopped at JLR restaurant after Bandipur for tea and reached Mysore at 8. We saw the lit up palace and hunted for a descent hotel. Finally found one and crashed for the night. Next morning, started at 5:30 and were home at around 8 and back to office at 10 in the morning.
Every ride we take on feels better than the previous!

yummy soup!

2008-03-13T01:41:00.001-07:00

These days I am trying to have soup for dinner so that I eat less chapatis and also eat something nutritious. I made this really yummy soup yesterday. I sauteed 1 onion, 1 long red carrot, half of a capsicum, 2 tomatoes, few cauliflower florets and half katori yellow moong dal in little bit of olive oil. Then I pressure cooked it with some water and salt. Ran it through the blender and seasoned the individual servings with pepper. I absolutely loved it. I guess the cauliflower played a great role in the result though I didn't add a lot of it. Even the small bit of capsicum goes a long way. This resulted in a lot of soup and since I am the only one who enjoys soup (Anurag won't eat more than 2 spoons when forced), I am looking forward to drinking it again today and tommorrow :)

Its Spring!

2008-03-12T01:27:00.000-07:00

I know it am noticing a bit late that spring is here. But atleast I am glad I noticed. On my walk between home and office, I see beautiful purple flowers in full bloom, leaves turning red on the trees. Everything looks so beautiful! I am making an attempt at being a more positive person and so it is nice when you encounter something beautiful in the daily grind and more importantly, you notice and appreciate it, without being lost in the humdrum of daily routine. I will try to keep my eyes open to notice more of such beauty even if it might be rare in the concrete jungle.

Jodhaa Akbar

2008-03-06T05:13:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we watched Jodha Akbar movie. The most heard statement about the movie is that, "It is too long". Yes, it is more than three and a half hours long. But I didn't feel bored at any point of time during the movie. I find it really funny to say that my most favorite part of the movie was the jewelry through out the movie. The costumes were ok but the jewelry was amazing. Also they shot some of the scenes in real palaces I believe.
I completely failed to understand how this film could create controversies because no one is shown in a bad light in the film. I read up the internet and found that some people in Rajasthan find the story inaccurate. Some interesting reads about Akbar during my search : Akbar the great and Akbar the not so great. I think the controversy is only regarding the name of Akbar's wife. It is a quite common understanding that Akbar's favorite wife was a Hindu and that he had married several Rajput princesses.

But at the end of the day (movie), I do not care who Akbar’s wife was. All I care about is that I enjoyed the movie and Ashutosh has made a beautiful movie. The movie keeps its focus on the relationship while showing other important incidents in the life of Akbar. And needless to say, Aishwarya looks extremely beautiful and surprisingly, acts well too. While Hritik is a absolute eye candy for all females. In spite of this, you will forget that you are looking at Hrithik and Ash but you would be looking at Akbar and Jodha. And I also wouldn't like to slot it as a 'romantic' film. In fact, it is difficult to put it into a particular genre.

I hope to watch it again over the weekend. But of course, I wouldn't spend ticket money to watch it twice. I love history. I have always been intrigued by palaces and museums and all that links us to history. Not that I know history too well but I find it immensely fascinating to find out how people lived in those times. And this movie was perfect for a person like me. I know, it might not be completely accurate but I am not interested in accuracy otherwise I would have read history books. :)

Updates - Mysore Trip and bhindi sabji

2008-02-27T00:30:00.000-08:00

Last weekend we went sight-seeing to Srirangapatnam and Mysore. This time not on the bike. My in-laws had come and so we hired a car for a day. Tipu's tomb in Srirangapatnam is worth seeing. Then we went to the Mysore zoo. We had no idea that the zoo was so good. Definately worth a trip but the zoo is really huge and would take 3-4 hrs of your time if you want to see it completely. Electric cars are available there, similar to the ones at Lalbagh. It is recommended to use those when you have older people or less time with you. After the zoo, we didnt have time left for Chamundi hills. Then we saw the palace. We were really tired by the time we finished seeing the palace. We had been walking for more than 4 hours now though not at a stretch. But we didnt want to miss Brindavan Gardens. The garden is without doubt beautiful.

Now for the food part, on our way back, we had dinner at Kamat on the highway. Loved the jowar roti and brinjal and everything else that was on the thali (banana leaf) dinner.

Yesterday I made an awesome bhindi ki sabzi. I know I am praising myself but I really liked it. I saw this recipe but didnt follow it completely as usual. Do check it out. It could be the fresh and tender bhindi that I bought that added to the taste. I had made it slightly differently this time. Used a little more oil than usual, around 1 tablespoon and a little more. Added mustard, hing to it. Then finely cut onion, garlic and capsicum. Sauteed on high heat for a min or two till the onion is slightly translucent. Added turmeric and chilli powder. Then I added the bhindi cut into rounds and drizzled with lemon juice. Sauteed on high for a few mins and then turned the heat to low and let it sit for 15 mins with very little stirring. Then added salt, little bit of sugar, sabji masala, coriander powder, amchoor powder. I liked the sweet and hot flavours lent to the bhindi. (sweet from onion and sugar and the heat from chilli pwd and capsicum) I had not expected this to be so good. My mouth is watering as I remember the taste ;)

I am Sleepy

2008-02-15T00:01:00.000-08:00

Its a Friday afternoon and I am feeling so sleepy as if I have been drugged. Well actually...I think I am drugged. I am taking a drug (medicine!) for pain which the doc warned makes people drowsy. Or could it be because my house help has suddenly gone on leave and its been nearly a month now....hmm....not really..its been a little over two weeks but I am completely pulling out my hair. And to top it, my in-laws are coming tommorrow!!! So I have been working hard at home and office...maybe I am just tired. I am sleepy..............zzzzzzzzz

'Sunday' and Gramin

2008-02-04T00:00:00.000-08:00

After removing the frustration in my previous post, I am back to my 'fun and food' self. Friday morning I won tickets for 'Sunday' movie on Fever 104 FM. Yesterday evening we went for the movie with virtually no expectations (not even expecting it to be bad). We thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Ajay Devgan, Arshad Warsi and Irrfan Khan's performances stand out in the movie. Arshad Warsi pairs really well with male co-stars in comic roles. Ajay Devgan as a cop is impressive as he goes about solving the mystery of the missing Sunday from Ayesha Takia's life. She does need a new dress designer and a new personal trainer at her gym. I can hear my friends laughing at me giving out suggestions related to weight. But hey, I ain’t no Bollywood actress. And I try sometimes ;) to control my weight! It definitely is a good movie. Very well made and a nicely told story. There are a couple of illogical things like Arshad running a few days after getting shot on the backside and fighting the bad guys in spite of kidney problem. But I ignore such things most of the times and this is no exception. It’s just a movie. Don’t watch it as if you are reading your science text book. As long as the movie entertains, I have no complains.
If only the ticket prices were lower, it would have been a hit. The multiplex guys really need to do something about the ticket prices. Spending 1000 Rs for a family movie outing is affordable only for exceptional cinema.

After the movie, we went for dinner to the reliable 'Gramin' restaurant. As usual, a very pleasant experience. It is an exceptional place for vegetarian food. The food, the service, the experience is really nice. And for the first time, I really liked the masala soda. I have never liked it much at other places. Kudos to the Gramin guys!

What’s the world coming to?

2008-02-03T22:31:00.001-08:00

I should have rather said what’s India coming to? Just when we thought India is poised to become a great power, we hear news which is as disturbing as it is disappointing. If anyone watched the news channels yesterday, they would know what I am talking about.
First there are the Mumbai clashes. It was disgusting to see the so-called guardians of Maharashtrians in Mumbai go about beating poor hawkers and taxi-drivers. Just because they have come from some other state to earn their bread in Mumbai? What have these so-called guardians contributed to the growth of Mumbai that they think they own the city? It is an utterly childish and completely illogical behavior on display. They are doing a lot of harm to Mumbai rather than protect it if that’s what they feel they are doing. The image Mumbai had, of an accepting city where everyone can come and blend into the crowd has taken a hard beating. Even Mr. Laluprasad said that why are they spoiling Mumbai and creating a divide across Mumbaikars? If he can understand the completely negative impact of this on Mumbai, I am sure the people who did this have no good intentions on their mind. We need to think of ourselves as Indians before thinking of our states. Remember SRK saying that in Chak De! How can one even think of restricting people’s movement across states? People cannot move around and stay wherever they want in their own country? Then maybe they should start giving out visas for people who want to move to another state! If someone moves to the US and settles there, do these people expect him to become an American and do charity in America and forget about India? If he does that, these very people will go around beating up the NRIs for forgetting India. Then how do they expect people from other states to forget about their native place when they move to Mumbai!!

We should take pride of our 'Unity in diversity' principle instead of bashing it up. That is definitely the way forward and not such regressive acts which will only pull India back.

The other very disturbing news was of a small kid being tied to a pole and abused and beaten up by the public. It is a highly shameful and a cowardly act. Try doing that against someone who is stronger than them. What are they trying to prove?

And to top it all, none of the people involved have an iota of guilt or remorse at what they have done. What have the people of a great nation like India come to? Or is it that all people in general have become completely insensitive and lost their minds or their minds are full of dirt? All around me I see people completely disregarding others. You just need to go out on the road to experience it. Jumping of traffic signals, constant honking even if there is nowhere to go.

Pav Bhaji meets Pasta?!!

2008-01-07T01:13:00.000-08:00

Sounds like a weird combination and it’s not what I had in mind when I started making it. All I wanted to do was make it taste completely different from what I have tasted before :) After thinking about how I should make the pasta this time for the whole day, this is what I did. I boiled a combination of bow and spiral pasta in salted water. While it was boiling, I added a small onion, two small tomatoes, a small capsicum, walnuts, olive pickle (made by me), some olives, and garlic into the food processor and made a coarse paste out of it. Then I heated olive oil in a pan and added the paste into it and sautéed it for a while. Then added some milk, cream, oregano seasoning and chilly flakes (the small packets which you get at dominos, I put them to good use) :) Added the pasta and some corn, covered it with cheese slices and covered the pan and let it warm for 10 mins till the cheese melted.
The verdict: Anurag says it is kind of like pav bhaji meets pasta.
I say it was one of the better tasting pasta I have made. The only problem was the paste was more in quantity compared to the pasta.
Try it at your own risk ;)

A day of experimenting and indulging

2007-11-26T04:59:00.000-08:00

On Saturday we explored two new restaurants.
The first was Taam Falafel. I was surprised to find a falafel restaurant in Bangalore. I had only heard/read about how tasty a falafel is so I was not going to leave this chance to taste it myself. So on Saturday afternoon, I told Anurag that lunch is at Koramangala. He was scared at what he would have to eat since he had no idea about the food but being left with no choice ;) we landed at the restaurant at around 1:30. And there is no one there except the staff! I start feeling guilty about bringing Anurag to an unpopular restaurant. The staff was helpful, (they had to be coz there was nothing else to do) and told us about the food and were helping us to decide the order. There is not much to order there. Basically there are different combinations of pita bread, hummus, falafel and salad. There are also some juices and a dessert on the menu. We decided on a veggie platter which contains 2 pita breads, hummus, falafel, pickled veggies and a big bowl of salad and some chutneys. We have to assemble the whole thing on our own. So we started with the salad which could be eaten directly out of the bowl. It was quite good and so was the lemonade. By this time, thankfully, some more people came to the restaurant and we thought it is not unpopular after all. We started trying to fill our pita bread. They had given only 2 falafel balls. So most of the pita bread had to be filled with pickled veggies. Initially we were confused about how to go about filling the bread but later as we got the hang of it, it was enjoyable. But I personally didn’t like the pita bread too much. I have no idea if it was authentic or not but it looks uncooked. Maybe that is how it is but maybe I would have like it more if it was toasted a bit. We also ordered a pre-assembled taam falafel. So that we know what we did was ok or not. ;) This pre-assembled one had a lot more falafel balls in it and it was less messier to eat. The dessert was the show stealer. It was very different and very nice. It was something like the puff pastry sheets stuffed with dryfruits and some khova. I might be wrong about the khova but there was a milky taste to the dessert. It was different and infact quite good.

We discovered the other place quite accidentally. We had some work in Jayanagar 4th block and we saw this place called "Just Chocolate". That was interesting and so was the decor. We hopped in thinking a chocolate ice-cream will do no harm. But what we finally ate was a lot more than just chocolate ice-cream. :) It is a really chilled out place. Fewer crowds, is such a relief in Bangalore. We ordered brownie with a scoop each of chocolate and vanilla ice-cream which was floating on chocolate sauce with nuts. And boy! That was GOOD! The chocolate ice-cream was perfect, not too sweet, and not too bitter. It is difficult to find a perfect chocolate ice-cream in most places. Even the rest of the stuff was good. We also ordered a shake with chocolate and coffee. It could have been a little colder. But otherwise it was a perfect jugalbandi of chocolate and coffee. Each sip left the taste buds debating whether it is chocolate or coffee! We just sat there chatting even after finishing our drink. It is the kind of place where you feel at home and conversations flow easily. It would be perfect for dates and which is why most of the people there were college students. They also sell chocolates which are made there. I am not a huge fan of chocolates but I would still love going there often because it is the entire experience which made me love the place.

A peanutty craving - Satisfied

2007-11-22T23:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I made a different gravy for my mixed vegetables. I saw The singing chef blog and a peanutty gravy was something that was tempting me in my mind since a few days. Although i have never had a peanut based gravy before. So I took the veggies lying in my fridge. 3 small carrorts, some beans, a potato, half a capsicum and some frozen corn. I cooked all of this in some oil which had mustard seeds spluttered in it along with some jeera, hing and turmeric. For the gravy i blended a around a tablespoon of peanuts with half a tomato, some curd, coriander leaves, ginger, some mint leaves, few pistachios, green chillies, cinnamon, some peppercorns and cloves. This goes into the almost cooked veggies. (And psst...a secret..the leftover tomato soup also went in ;) ) I had to add a bit of coriander powder and sabji masala and sugar, out of habit. Can be left out.

The result was quite nice and did perfect justice to my peanut cravings. And to think i hated peanuts when i was a child! Well even now, I dont like eating whole peanuts as such but i am discovering the joys of peanut products like peanut butter and this gravy.

Day 4 : Ride back home

2007-11-18T09:41:00.000-08:00

6:30 : We get up and get ready for the ride. The previous evening's drive from chickmagalur made Anurag decide against leaving before there is daylight.
7:00 : We have bread, butter, jam and tea and do the check out formalities
7:45 : I had walked down the mud road and met Anurag on the proper road. We start the ride to chikmagalur. We drive through the mountains and the thump of the bullet was resonating among the hills. We had to stop to re-arrange the bags.

9:45 : We reach chikmagalur riding through the potholed roads. Stop for idli and tea. The weather and the hills seem to have incresed my appetite.
10:15 : Leave chikmagalur to reach Belur. Some more potholes before moving out of chikmagalur. Then the good roads seemed such a blessing.

Haleebedu temple
11:15 : Reach Haleebedu temple. As soon as we reach people start pestering us to buy some pictures or idols etc. We move ahead and into the temple compound. There is a small museum there for which there is a 2 Re ticket. Every inch of the temple wall is a fascinating piece of art. The photographer in Anurag surfaced and went on clicking pictures :) We were mesmerized by all the carvings and forgot all the worries we had about reaching home on time. But as soon as we tried to get out of the temple, those hawkers started troubling us again. It was quite frustrating. We leave from there for the Belur temple

Belur Temple
1:15 : Reach the Belur temple. This was much more organised and better. No hawkers crowding us. There is a parking attendent who helps with the parking and guides us to the counter where we can leave our bags and shoes. The temple compund is also much bigger. In this temple, it is the pillars inside the temple which are more fascinating than the carvings on the outer walls. The outer walls had fewer carvings than the Haleebedu temple but were nevertheless beautiful. We were glad we stopped at the temples and didnt miss these wonders.

3:00 : After having lunch which was ok to fill our stomachs, we leave for Bangalore.

5:00 : Leave from Kamat near CR Patna after a cup of tea. Then we ride nonstop till we reach home. At around 6:15 it starts to get dark and later the headlights of the other vehicles dont allow us to keep up a good speed. Around 70 kms from Bangalore, the traffic also thickens. It is almost like riding in the city and not on a highway.

7:45 : We manage to reach Tumkur Road. We see a diversion for NICE road and decide to try it to avoid traffic. But as soon as we enter it, we are doubtful about where it will lead us to. We finally land up on Magadi road and have no idea where we are in Bangalore. We ask a taxi driver for directions. He asks us to go straight for 12 kms to reach Majestic. Somehow we get lost in Rajajinagar. Finally we find the way out to Majestic and reach home at 10 in the night.

The 4 day saga finally comes to an end. It felt good to be home and on a familiar bed. :)

Day 3 : An overdose of the hills

2007-11-18T09:38:00.001-08:00

7:00 : The day starts. Today we have hired a sumo to take us to Kemmanagudi and other places.

8:30 : We get ready and are served breakfast. I had the biggest king size breakfast which made me ashamed at how much I was eating but I couldn't stop. We devoured 6 dosas, 2 omlettes, and an entire loaf of bread, butter, jam and tea between the two of us.

9:00 : We start for our day in the sumo.

11:00 : We reach chikmagalur. Buy a new backpack. And start for Mullayangiri. We start the climb through the narrow winding roads around the hills. The last patch to Mullayangiri was very narrow and it was a mud road. That was scary. We had to climb around 250 steps to the top. It was difficult for me to even walk so climbing those stairs was getting increasingly difficult. But with Anurag providing the motivation, we managed to reach the top. There is a small temple at the top. This is the highest peak in Karnataka. We captured some good views from the top. The climb down was very easy. After this we started for BabaBudanGiri.
Mullayangiri

1:30 : BabaBudan Giri was a unique experience. Two shrines - one Hindu and one Muslim stand side by side and they are visited by both Hindus and Muslims. 3 kms from there is Manikyadhara. Whoever calls it a waterfall must be joking. It is nothing bigger than a shower. It was a disappointing place with disappointing scenes like people throwing their clothes after bathing under that stream. It is supposedly a part of a legend to leave an item of their clothing behind. We left from there.

2:30 : Drive to Kemmanagudi starts. The roads get worse with potholes and flowing water on the narrow roads. The drive seems never ending with the same views and the same winding roads. We are hoping we reach Kemmanagudi as early as possible. But alas, the road seemed never ending.

4:15 : We finally reach Kemmanagudi. There was a canteen there. The only thing they could offer us as lunch was a bowl of rice, black channa, papad. After that we went to the garden on top of Kemmanagudi. We take a quick walk around it and start back to the estate.

5:00 : Drive back to the estate starts. By now I am fed up of the hilly roads and the coffee plants. Those are the only things we have seen the entire day. I am just counting the minutes to reach to the estate again.

7:00 : Reached chikmagalur. We had got cans with us from the estate. We filled petrol in them for the bike and started our climb back to the estate. Again those ghats and hill roads. I am nauseous now. But thankfully a while later I am in deep sleep. I wake up only once we reach the estate.

8:45 : Back at the Eagle eye estate. Freshen up and have dinner and sleep. That was a long day. Maybe we tried to see too many things in the same day.

Day 2 : A day at Eagle Eye

2007-11-18T09:29:00.002-08:00

6:45 : The lizard's sound wakes us up more effectively than any alarm. We get up and hurry to get ready for the forest trek which is supposed to start at 7. After tea, the trek starts at 7:30. Within minutes from the start of the trek, we had to cross a stream of flowing water. One man tries to cross along with his kids but they slip and fall quite hard. That family aborts the trek and only 4 of us are now left for the trek. We follow our guide through the thick vegetation. I realize my fitness levels are the lowest as I am panting the hardest while the others are barely panting. We finally reach the top of a rock and great views greeted us. We sat there for a while taking in the views. And then we started our way back. I was glad I could complete the trek without falling and that feat was possible due to Anurag's support :)

8:40 : We are back at the cottage. We take bath and go to the dining area for breakfast. After a hearty breakfast, we get ready for the plantation walk

11:00 : We begin the plantation walk through the coffee estate. This time it was a larger and livelier group. We saw the two types of coffee plants: Arabica and Robusta. The guide told us that Arabica is costlier and more difficult to grow than Robusta. We had so go down a slippery slope. That was difficult. We saw the other plants which they had grown like pepper, cardamom, soapnut, cocoa, Jaiphal etc. It was pretty interesting. On the way we also saw centipedes, small crabs in the stream and a yellow frog.
Takeaways from the plantation walk

Can you see the frog?

After climbing back up the slope, we walk some more to reach the paddy fields. There is a lake behind it which is supposed to have a crocodile. We walk around the lake but no crok in sight. And we walk back up to the cottages.

1:15 : We reach the estate and to our cottage and just lie on the bed too exhausted to move. After a while, we go to the dining area for lunch. There was a waterfall nearby which we would have gone to, if the estate vehicle was free. But it wasn't and so a siesta was what came our way.

4:45 : We hurry down to the pond below for coracle riding and fishing. We wore the life jackets and got into the coracle with the oars. I was not able to get the rowing technique right and so my hands and shoulders also joined the other leg muscles in the list of aches in my body. There were water snakes in the pond. One of the snakes was right next to the coracle on my side, staring at me and Anurag had to warn me not to drop the oar in fear :) Then we were given the fishing rope and after a few attempts we managed to catch two fish. They of course throw the fish back into the water.

6:30 : Back to the estate reception area. After tea and snacks, we sit out there for a while. As it starts getting dark, I go back to the cottage to catch up with my book while Anurag plays badminton. In the cottage, I see a big lizard in the bathroom. I just close the bathroom door and lie on the bed and read. That was brave for a lizard fearing person like me. :) After a while I go out to watch the badminton match.

7:30 : There is a bonfire lit up and some music. Drinks were being served. We created our own drink by mixing strawberry juice with sprite. Not bad! After the bonfire and dinner, we check the cottage again. This time there are two lizards, two large hairy spiders and numerous butterflies in the cottage. We ask the manager to help. She sends a girl with a large broom who drives the lizards and spiders away and also gets us a mosquito coil.
Now I can sleep relatively peacefully. I guess this was the best day of our four day trip.

Day 1 : Reaching Eagle Eye Holidays

2007-11-18T09:16:00.000-08:00

4:45 : The alarm goes off. I switch it off and we finally wake up at 5:45.

7:00 : It already 7 by the time we leave home. We reach Tumkur Road via Yeshwantpur at 8. It has lot of traffic mainly trucks. We finally get past Neelamangala.

9:00 : I am hungry and there is no restaurant in sight. We stop to eat biscuits and notice that the bags which we had hung on the bike were not holding well. So we tie the bag to the saree guard and hang the second bag on the other side. All of this takes around an hour. We decide aganist stopping at Shravanbelegola or Belur because we wanted to reach the estate before dark.

11:00 : We reach Kamat near CR Patna. The first thing we notice after reaching is that the bag which was hanging on the silencer side has burnt from the bottom. If we hadn't stopped here, things would have started falling out of the hole burnt in the bag. We access the damage. Our mobile chargers, camera cell charger, our sunglasses everything is burnt. It is a good thing that we had removed the camera from the bag. We eat idlis and dosas there and then use newspapers to line the bag so that things don't start falling out. Now Anurag hangs the bag around his shoulders towards the front so that it rests on the fuel tank.

12:30 : We reach Hassan and try to buy a new back pack but do not find anything good. Hassan is such a dusty, dry and hot city. And the roads are little patches between potholes. It was a pain stopping at Hassan.

1:15 : We finally leave Hassan and decide to move on without a new backpack. Belur to Chikmagalur was the best part of the route according to me.

3:00 : We are at Chikmagalur. The estate is 50 kms from here. We stop and call Eagle Eye for directions. We are on the hilly roads now. The roads have more and more bends and curves as we move ahead. At one stretch there was the hill slope on one side and a little bit of careless riding could land us into the valley below. Crossing some villages and coffee estates on the way, we reach a forest gate and the road after that was even worse. The final stretch was a mud road climbing up. All of this was keeping up our adrenaline and we thought to ourselves 'the estate better be good. The last patch was really steep and I decide to get down and walk to give Anurag and the bike a little less trouble. (Maybe to save my life too ;) )

5:00 : We are at Eagle Eye. Phew! Finally. I am in no mood to appreciate the scenic views greeting us. I am busy panting from the climb. We are offered the welcome drink. It was a strawberry drink and never before had strawberry juice tasted so good.

5:15 : We are shown our cottage. It was pretty good and neat. Anurag spotted a black lizard on one of the windows. I want it out of the cottage. The attendant says "It is ok. No problem". I have a problem. Please get it out. I say. The attendant seems to be more than half blind but thankfully with Anurag's help the lizard is out. After the much needed bath we feel better. As luck would have it, there was a problem with electricity at the estate. We sit outside in the open near the reception area. We are given snacks and tea. Some people are playing badminton and Anurag joins them while I sit with the cool breeze and the views.

8:30 : Dinner time and thankfully they had solved the electricity problem. After dinner we retire to our cottage. It was getting difficult for me to sleep between 12:30 to 3:30. I was surprised because I was one of the people who could sleep without any problem anytime. Some sleep is better than no sleep especially after all that happened that day.

Happy Diwali

2007-11-13T01:11:00.000-08:00

Hope all of you had a great Diwali and enjoyed your time with family and friends. I had a different diwali this time. I and Anurag had gone to Chikmagalur on a four day holiday. Details on that coming up next. So watch this space.

Ras malai

2007-11-02T22:16:00.000-07:00

I tried the ras malai recipe from this blog.
http://snackorama.blogspot.com/2007/10/paneer-with-saffron-two-ways-low.html

I added MTR badam fest to the milk. It is excellent stuff. Also added some milk powder. And finally some pistachios.

Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary and KRS dam

2007-10-03T05:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a holiday! yay!! And it has been a long time since we went for a ride, isn’t it? So there, we went to Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary and KRS dam. But this time, we didn’t go alone. Wondering how two people go alone? Well, Its not about people, its about their bikes. ;) 2 bikes, 4 people and lovely roads. It doesn't get better than this. Let me introduce you to the characters involved (in the ride).
2 bikes - our beloved Royal Enfield Electra and Yamaha RD350
4 people - Anurag, yours truly and Savita, Jai
Lovely roads - Bangalore-Mysore highway

The story (ride) begins with our meeting point on the highway. We thought of meeting at 7:30 but we finally met at 8:30. There is a marked difference in weekday mornings and holiday mornings. On a weekday at 8 o'clock, there is a lot of hustle bustle. But on a holiday at 8 o'clock, hardly a soul on the road. Within half an hour after meeting, we stop for breakfast at Kadu Mane. Super soft idlies and chai. Good food but costly. Tummies and fuel tanks get filled and we proceed. Jai's bike has new engine parts which impose a speed restriction. So our speeds are limited to around 50-60. I am not sure if we would have done better in terms of time without the speed restriction because we like going slow. Speed does have its thrill but slow is good too. At Mandya, the farmers had blocked the road by spreading sugarcanes on the road. Thankfully, we had only two wheels and could maneuver our way out. ;) We reached the Bird Sanctuary at about 12:15.
Took a personal boat for 250 Rs. The good thing about it was the roof on the boat protecting us from the sun. This apparently is the season of White Ibis and we saw a lot of them. One or two other kinds of birds here and there. And of course, the crocodiles. They looked like they were having their afternoon nap.
1:30 to 2:30 is lunch time at the Sanctuary. We reached in good time to catch the pre-lunch boat. After that, we had lunch at the restaurant on the premises. Food was quite ok. Most importantly, the place looked clean.

We decided to go and see the KRS dam as it is further down the road. According to http://www.mysoretourism.org/krs.htm, it was built in 1924, and is India's first irrigation dam. I like visiting dams because of the contrast you see on either side of the dam wall. This dam had still and calm water on one side and water flowing down rocks at great speeds on the other side. I wonder why we couldn't see the Brindavan Gardens because it supposedly is adjacent to the dam. Maybe we had to go further down but we wanted to reach back home around 6:30 so we didn’t think of exploring. And it is a good thing because it is really not fun riding in the dark. Dark after sunset that is. Dark before sun rise is a pleasure because watching the sun rise is so beautiful.

It is 3 o'clock when we leave KRS dam. Stop on the way at Coffee Day near Channapatna. Back home at 7:15. Savita and Jai still had to brave some more city traffic before they reached home.
Good trip especially if you are enthusiastic about biking because most of the time was spent sitting on the bike.

Directions :
Keep going on Bangalore-Mysore highway till you reach Srirangapatnam. Keep going till you see a sign on the right announcing the right turn for Ranganathittu bird Sanctuary. Take that turn and keep going till you see another sign on your right. Take that right turn and you will reach the Sanctuary. It is around 3-4 kms after you take the diversion from the highway.
To reach KRS dam, do not take the second right turn for Ranganathittu. Instead keep going straight till you reach a forked road. Take the road on the right and keep going straight. The dam was around 5 kms from the bird sanctuary.

Every city has a character of its own

2007-09-04T02:41:00.000-07:00

It’s been two weeks since we had to go on an urgent visit to Mumbai. I had thought of writing about it but many times I just do not feel like writing. Now I have gathered up enough motivation to write. Just a week before we went to Mumbai, I was telling Anurag that I have really started liking Bangalore. Mumbai was never on my list of favorite cities. But another visit to the city and a week later, it miraculously appears on the list and that too very close to the top. It is not that this is my first visit but some things were different this time.
The experience started from the airport itself. We take a pre-paid taxi. The person escorts us to the taxi and we are in an air conditioned Honda city. Compare this with Bangalore airport where we take the pre-paid taxi slip and one of the cab drivers takes it from us and asks us to wait till he gets his cab. This takes 10 mins easily. Maybe the Mumbai cabs take more money but seemed ok to me considering the distances there.

I also got to travel in public transport systems. I used the famed local train, buses, and auto rickshaws. The local train was not a first experience. Maybe I was in a better position to compare it with other road transport systems. The thing that struck me most was that life would be impossible without local trains in Mumbai, for people who travel large distances daily. Yes, I had heard this before but this was the first time I experienced it. The journey which took an hour by car was done in 20 mins by a local train. To me, that was amazing. If you are just a little bit ready to accept the local train, you can be very impressed with it, like I am. Yes, you have to stand during the journey and if you are lucky, you will find a comfortable place to stand. I was lucky. It was afternoon and I was in the ladies coach. But to me, standing in the local train is far better than sitting in the bus. One, it is amazingly fast. Two, it is quite entertaining. People getting down, climbing the train and keeping track of when and on which side their station is going to come. I was looking at the other women in the coach. Some of them catching up on their sleep, some cutting vegetables. Most of them dressed with impeccable fashion sense. On my previous local train journey, I saw people selling things ranging from hair pins, earrings, fruits, vegetables and what not, on the trains. And people were buying them.

The bus and autos also deserve a mention. The bus conductors were very helpful. Anurag also told me an incident where a passenger had to get down before the conductor could give him ticket. So he just gave the money to the conductor and got down the bus. The conductor threw the tickets out of the window while he was in view of the passenger. The auto drivers, neither do they say no to you nor do they ask for more money. Both these things need major improvement in Bangalore.

Overall, it was the energy of the city which struck me more than anything else. I could just feel the energy and pride the people of Mumbai felt. Anurag rightly said you should always be aware if you are in Mumbai. Also, their attention to detail and their motivation to do their work the best they can. Well, this might not be true but I deduced this from seeing the shop keepers. The shopping complex next to our apartment had a single vegetable and fruits shop. That guy need not worry whether his shop is looking good or not. People will come to him anyway. But he had taken pains to arrange the fruits and vegetables in an appeleaing manner. All people are very courteous unless you do something wrong. I have heard tales of how people get beaten up if caught with slightest misbehaviour towards females. Another thing I noticed that people stand up for what they believe is their right. Compare it to the 'adjust madi' attitude in Bangalore where most things are tolerated.
It is true that every city has a life and character of its own. I am not trying to say that one city is better than the other. Every city is unique.

Old should be gold

2007-08-12T22:52:00.000-07:00

I am writing after a long time but the incident I am going to write about happened around a month or two ago. I very rarely go to beauty parlor. It is not that I am so beautiful that I don’t need to go there. ;) I am just plain lazy. I never find the motivation or the drive to go there and spend at least an hour. Getting a hair cut is the maximum motivation I can draw. Anyways, the last time I had been to L’Oreal beauty salon was a month or two ago. An old lady had also come there. She had short hair and was nicely dressed. I was amazed to see her come for a hair cut and some other beauty treatments.
I was thinking, at this age, she has the enthusiasm to walk to the parlor and sit through hour long sessions. I admired her silently. But what I didn’t like was the attendants at the parlor were speaking of her in the manner of making fun of her. Old people need to be admired for not letting age come in the way of enjoying life. Older people also have a right to live the way they want to. Just because they are old doesn’t mean they have to sit at home and sing bhajans.
Weekend activity update: Anurag gets a card in office which can be used for purchasing food items. Mainly it is for buying lunch, snacks etc in office. But the remaining amount lapses this month end and so we went to the FabMall located inside his office and picked up as much food stuff as we could see, without looking at the cost. It was fun. We ended up with one and a half kg of pasta of different types, olives, olive oil, custard powder which makes 100 bowls of custard, pasta sauce, salad dressing and all the things which I would otherwise never buy. But looked like many people before us had already raided the place as most of the shelves were empty and we still managed to spend 2000 Rs. on food items. :)

Destressing in the lap of nature

2007-07-23T01:33:00.002-07:00

Last week had been really hectic for Anurag. Late nights in office, work even on Saturday. So a de-stress break was much needed. As for me, I am always ready to de-stress (read I am the eternal travel bug). Here’s what happened:
Sunday morning 7o clock: Unusually early for me to be up. In half sleep I ask "Are we going to Big Banayan tree today?" Anurag replies "Yes. But you can sleep some more time. We can leave after 10".
I remember the heap of utensils lying in the kitchen sink. And the fact that maid servant is on leave. I finally get up at 7:30 and tackle the utensils in the kitchen while asking Anurag to take care of the camera and get the bull ready. Then prepare tea. After tea and biscuits, I go to the kitchen again to prepare parathas. We will take these with us for lunch along with the jeera aloo prepared the previous evening. And my favorite mom-made chundo. Lunch packed and oh dear..its already 10.
Anurag asks me to hurry up. Take bath and get ready.
11:00 am: We are out on Bannerghtta and fill up the petrol tank. We were armed with printout of blogs for directions to the Big Banayan tree. We have to hit Mysore road. The Mysore road passing through Banashankari is a pain. If all the speed bumps there are added up, it might equal the speed bumps in rest of Bangalore..me thinks. Anyways, we soon reach Kengeri. Blogs say we have to turn right after Kengeri on Kumbalgod junction. I see no Kumbalgod junction. We keep going straight to cross Wonderla and reach Bidadi. We realise we have come ahead. U-turn and go back some 10 kms. Ask some people on the way and take the correct turn. Here's some help so that you won’t miss the turn like we did. After you cross Kengeri, you should see the Rajarajeshwari Medical college on your side of the road(left side). Go further ahead and you should see Rajarajeshwari Dental College on the right side of the road. It’s a huge white building. Right next to it is a road which goes inside. You have to take this road. There is a railway crossing and it is an industrial area. Keep going straight for around 6kms and you will reach the Big Banayan tree. The ride suddenly gets bumpy once you leave the 'makkhan jaisa' Mysore highway.
12:30 pm: We are there. Go around the Big Banayan tree. We took lots of pictures and admired the amazing maze of branches all over the place. I had read that the tree is spread in 2 acres of land. There is a small temple inside the compound. The sad part was people had written their love proclamations all over the tree. We were really sad to see that but otherwise the place is maintained quite well. Many people had come there and we also saw some sign boards mentioning some resort nearby.
1:00 pm: Leave Big Banayan tree and go towards Manchinbele dam following the directions on the blog printout. There aren't really detailed directions except, keep going straight and when you reach a forked road, take the left. Be prepared for a more bumpier ride. On the way we saw huge satellite receivers....that’s what I think they were. They were like dish antennas..only they were HUGE. We were going forward on the bumpy road which was still good due to the landscapes around us. Full of greenery and the weather was also good. The clouds were following us wherever we went. The road takes some twists and turns and dips and climbs. Suddenly on a dip, we see a newly paved out road. Wondering if its a mirage, we go ahead. It really is a new road...Overjoyed we move ahead.
Now comes the most memorable moment of the day: On reaching the top of one of the climbs, we see a lake below. The road almost dropping into the lake. It was an amazing sight. Took pictures and moved ahead. We saw the dam on the way but there was a locked gate telling prohibited area. And we wanted to ride some more on the new road so we just went ahead to see where this road leads us to. But after a while the new road stopped as abruptly as it started and the same old bumpy road stared at us.
So U-turn it is.
2:00 pm: We should have lunch. See 2 trucks parked on the side of the road and go and park there. Open our packed lunch and eat it. 2 dogs look at us expectantly. Give them a paratha and go back to the dam. This time lots of vehicles parked on the sides of the road near the locked gate. So we ask people and they tell us to park the bike and walk towards the dam from an opening next to the gate. We walk up to the dam. It is amazing. Lot of water on the one side of the dam and lot of greenery on the other side. The watchman comes and tells us this is a prohibited area but as you have come from far, give me 20 Rs and I will allow you to see the dam. Ok, so here goes 20 Rs. Whether the deed was right or wrong...we loved the sight from top of the dam. Finally the watchman drove us out. But we collected some information from him like the water released from the dam goes to Makedatu. And the dam was built 35 years ago.
3:00 pm: Out on the road. On the way we see a car going down onto a road. Below we saw the lake and lots of cars and 1-2 small buses there. People were going into the water. We also went down on the pathway. Had a nice time there. Went into the water and took pictures. Climbed some rocks around. It was good. It had turned very cloudy and we decided to leave.
4:15 pm: Back on the road and a little while later we see the rain approaching us. That was a first. To see the rain at a distance while we are still in the no rain area. And what a rain it was. Falling on us like little pieces of stone. But we got used to it in a while and really enjoyed the ride in the rain. It was lovely and from then on...the rain followed us where we went. The dry roads told us that it hadn't rained there but when we reached, it started drizzling.
5:15 pm: Back on the mysore highway. There is one diversion there near a petrol pump, saying towards kanakpura and hosur road. We took that diversion. Kya road hai. Too good. On the way, there is a meteorological observation center and around it, Freedom garden. Many vehicles were parked there and it looked good so we also stopped there. Spent some time roaming on the grass and admiring the water fountain. From the slope we could see the road, the fountain and the black clouds. Some sight it was. Anurag says this tells me India is shining. See the cleanliness, the roads and the discipline. Then I felt India is not too far behind the other developed countries.
6:00 pm: Reached Gottigere on Bannerghatta Road. That new route which we tried helped us bypass the horrible banashankari road with its mad traffic, jp nagar and we are near home. We stopped at Uphara Bhavan hotel in Gottigere and had tea, coffee and snacks. Back home at 6:30.
What a day! Completely de-stressed at the end of it.

I am thinking...rather wondering

2007-07-19T05:34:00.000-07:00

I have got into this mode where I am thinking about what makes people choose their profession (read course as in college/university). It is such an important decision of a person's life but I feel most people are not adequately equipped to make that decision. People around me (including myself), mostly follow what is in demand or what seems to be a sane choice according to elders and parents. It is not that they hate the subject and still do it because it is in demand, though on second thoughts, I think it might be the case for a few people.
For me, I had software engineering as the first choice because I thought I had the aptitude to write software. An idea formed due to some stupid programs written in the computer lab of our school. At that time though it seemed like an achievement. And another important factor was that I would get a good job. After all, most, if not all, software engineers get jobs in India. Yet another important factor was less struggle and easier life compared to some other professions like architecture, fashion, hotel management. All three of them were also on my mind at the time of decision making. But they lost the race due to the difficult life they entailed. And family members did not think the professions were good enough compared to engineer/doctor. Becoming a doctor was just out of reach for me, I was not so studious. So, software it is.
Do most people make this decision in a similar way? Calculated decision? Or do some people get an inner calling telling them what they are meant to do?
I feel at that young age, we do not know anything about how things are in different professions. This is especially true of people not living in metros. Sometimes I wonder what if we have made the wrong decision. There is no way to find out…at least for me. But at least I am happy that I am not bad at my job. My supervisors say I am quite good. He doesn't always say good things. But it is ok as long as he doesn't say only bad things ;) So maybe I can safely deduce that I made the right choice. Maybe it is all pre-decided up there and we just have an illusion that we made a choice, when it really wasn't a choice but it was destiny or our fate decided by God.

Ramblings of an irritated mind

2007-07-10T04:29:00.001-07:00

This week has not started on the right note for me. A migraine attack, a flickering right eye and an overwhelming feeling of running right out of office, never to return again. All of this since yesterday and still going strong. I have always felt like I am not doing the right job and have written about it before. But I have never experienced this strong a feeling of resentment towards anything related to software engineering. If I hear any of the words like files, code, meeting, functions, execution and..well...you got the feel....All of these words make my brain heat up and let out smoke like a pan kept too long on the stove. I don’t remember the last time I was excited about my job. Am I made for some other job or is software engineering not for me? I work in a really nice company and the job is not so hectic either and I can’t seem to pin point a single reason why I should be feeling so fed up of working. How I hope I could just quit working! But even that is scary.
I hope my mind sorts itself out and starts to appreciate the fact that I have a job (seems like a remote possibility!).

An Experiment whose result was egg roll

2007-07-09T00:39:00.000-07:00

This one was truly an experiment. I think I can call this egg rolls. Some background on how it happened and came to be known as egg roll. Friday night hubby dear had gone to meet his college friends so I was alone for dinner and I knew I can really experiment my heart out without worrying about backup food. And I wanted to do something with egg and wheat flour dough along the lines of egg puff. I love egg and specially boiled egg though Anurag likes more of masala egg..something like burji, omlette, egg curry and most of all sunny side up. So that was the root of wanting to boil eggs. And I read this post on how to boil eggs. I used to boil eggs before reading this post but initially there were a few failed attempts in terms of eggs being a little soft on the inside. Some interesting tips there to help peel the shells easily and avoid forming the bluish layer around the yolk. To get on with my take on egg rolls..sounds good doesnt it? ;) So on my walk back home from office, I was thinking what am I going to do...and slowly and steadily as I reached home, the idea had formed in my mind completely. So once I reached home, this is what I did.
Outer covering:
I mixed 1 cup of wheat flour, pinch of salt, pinch of sugar, pinch of baking soda. Broke an egg into it and mixed it and made a soft yet firm dough with milk instead of water. Covered and kept it for around 45 minutes. After that apply a teaspoon or two of oil and roll the dough in it.
Stuffing:
Hard boil 3 eggs. Peel and cut them into pieces. Run 2 onions and a green chilli in the food processor. Head oil and add the onions and fry them till they are transparent. Add turmeric, salt, little bit of garam masala and the eggs. Mix and keep aside to cool.
Assembly:
Roll out thin chapatis from the dough. I didn't use any flour for dusting. If the chapati tends to stick, apply few drops of oil on it to help it roll. Once you have a nice thin chapati, put some egg mixture in the center in a rectangular from and fold the chapati over it from all four sides. You will have a rectangular block. Heat a nonstick pan and put the blocks on it and cook them from all sides, applying some oil once they are done a bit. It would be best if you have an oven instead of using the pan. Once the rolls are crisp on all sides, cut into squares and enjoy with some tomato ketchup.
Loved them, nice spicy and crisp. Had them for breakfast the next day too. Its lunch time here and writing this is making my mouth water....need to go and have lunch NOW.

Bottlegourd and some magic

2007-07-06T01:00:00.000-07:00

There is some magic in the combination of coconut, groundnut and tamarind which works for me. I have been completely floored by its taste. Yesterday night I made this combination work for lauki. It was love in first bite. :) I had a lovely, tender, seedless medium sized lauki. And two potatoes. Why potatoes? Well, I didn’t have any specific intentions when I added it except that it will add volume to the sabzi so that I can take it for lunch tomorrow and second intention was a seemingly vain attempt that hubby dear will eat it. But only later after eating it did I realize that potato played an important role in the taste. It is undistinguishable and yet adds a subtle taste of its own. Lauki being pretty bland otherwise. Guess what Anurag ate it! And liked it!!
Ok..so on with the procedure. (Procedure word scares me as it reminds me of programming ;) )
So you have the cut up lauki and potatoes. Get a wok, heat oil and add mustard seeds to let them splutter, add hing, curry leaves (about 6-7), garlic (4-5 cloves), haldi and the vegetables. Stir, cover, open, add salt, cover and cook till done. What do you do in the mean time? Make the paste which is going to make the sabzi delicious. Take a handful of coriander, half an inch of ginger, a green chili, about a 4 inch piece of coconut, handful..Make it two handfuls.. of roasted groundnuts and about a 3/4th small cup of tamarind water. Grind it to a paste. While you grind this, the sabzi will be cooked. This sabzi doesn’t require much oil. Now add the paste to it and some water if needed, some jaggery and bring to a boil. It should neither be a gravy nor a dry sabzi..somewhere in between....I am confusing you, ain’t I? Well, my point is just that the paste should coat the sabzi evenly, not be runny like gravy.

Day trip to Pearl Valley

2007-06-25T00:19:00.000-07:00

I have been craving for a break..read a bike trip since a few weeks now. I don’t know whether it was more a craving to be with nature or a craving for a long ride on our beloved bull (Royal Enfield). But we haven’t been able to go anywhere because the weather and our health were not keeping too well. Finally this weekend we ‘had’ to satisfy the craving. Searched for some blogs on the internet for nearby places where we can see nature at its best. Finally we settled on Pearl Valley as it was near and the description was good. A waterfall just 40 kms from Bangalore sounded too good to be true. So the plan for Saturday was all set with the helpful fellow bloggers giving nice detailed directions on how to reach there.

Saturday morning I had an extension of yoga class where they taught us Neti kriya which aims at clearing the nasal cavity and prevents cold, allergy which are so widespread in Bangalore. So after I finished my class and reached home it was almost 10:15 in the morning. After that we were thinking should we pack something with us for lunch or have an early lunch and go as we had read that we don’t get good food there. Finally we prepared bread pakoda and ate quite a few of them and packed the 'Bingo' snacks with us. We were all ready with thick jackets as it is getting cold and cloudy here in Bangalore and it was also very windy that day. Next day we read in the newspaper that some trees fell on the road near cricket stadium. It was almost 12:30 by the time we left. We went straight till the road forked. The straight road leads to Bannerghatta national park, take the left turn from there and keep going straight. Lot of new construction and new layouts are coming up on the road. When you keep going straight, you reach Jigni town. There you will find a crossroad but don’t turn, keep going straight. You have to reach Anekal. If in doubt, ask for Anekal, which is what we did at the Jigni cross road. The auto driver said it is 11 km from there. Once we reached Anekal we were just going by instinct. I was the navigator and Anurag was the driver. You go through the road passing in front of the KSRTC bus stop and the busy town market. Once you are out of the town, some sign boards say Thalli Road. Keep going on the road and you will see a board on the right saying Happy Homes or something. Thats where you should turn and take the road on the right. It is quite near once you are out of Anekal. But we didnt take the turn, instead we kept going straight and finally reached the Karnataka-Tamil Nadu border with sign boards saying Welcome to Tamil Nadu and Welcome to Karnataka respectively. Took pictures, turned back and took the correct turn. On the way 2 boys stop us to give a 7 Rs ticket. The road also seems to be newly built. Kept going till we reached Hotel Mayura Nisarga run by KSTDC. That is the place where we have to park for a 3 Rs ticket. This is for two wheelers. It is more for 4 wheelers. There are some steps which take you down. There is a temple which was closed, Rocks, water and a small stream of water falling. Cannot be called a water fall. I had read that water is there only when it has rained heavily. But we were not disappointed. It was so beautiful. The rocks, the water, the butterflies, the trees, the trek, the weather, the air...it was all so beautiful. It rained there and we were trekking on the mud path in the rain. It was the first time I was enjoying the rain without the fear of any consequences. It used to rain for 5-10 minutes and then stop for a while. It was nice to sit on the rocks and enjoy the beauty of nature. Whatever small stream of water was falling, it created small droplets and I had read that because the falling water creates droplets similar to pearls, the place is called Pearl Valley. Then we walked up and went to the restaurant and had tea. It tasted a bit strange..not sure why. We left from there at around 4:15.
The ride back was good…not as much traffic as we had while going. The roads are also good except for two patches of really slippery road. The TATA Sumo in front of us slipped and went right and again left before going straight. Anurag was scared more than me. I had two people to trust...Anurag and our bull. Not sure whom I trusted more to prevent falling ;) The ride has increased my love and respect for our bull. It has never failed us till now. The wind was so high that day; I could feel myself being pushed back or sideways due to it. Sometimes even the bike felt some push and pull due to the wind. I am glad we had such a sturdy vehicle...I would have been scared if we were on one of those plastic bikes.
Reached back by 5:30 and headed straight to the friendly neighborhood restaurant for 2 cups of coffee each, some idlis, dosas and chaat. Next day we were thinking of going to big banayan tree but were too lazy to do so. May be next time. On Sunday we went shopping instead at shoppers stop and Brand Factory. Also had lunch at The Dhaba at HSR layout. Food and service was unimpressive to say the least.

Dinner in a jiffy

2007-06-19T00:18:00.000-07:00

After all the convenience foods bashing, I am all set to write how I put them to use yesterday. I reach home by 8:45 - 9 and to cook dinner after that is a challenge and convenience foods help me live up to the challenge. I prepared a exotic (I tried it for the first time hence 'exotic' ;)) vegetable. Mixed vegetables and paneer in coconut milk. Although I do not particularly like coconut, I give my thumbs up to coconut milk, obviously store bought, conveniently packed. So I got some pre-cut, packed mixed vegetables from food world, frozen peas, aashirwad multi-purpose cooking paste and the coconut milk. Also paneer, which I believe is no longer considered a convenience. I haven’t come across people who make paneer at home. I took some oil, put whole garam masalas like pepper corns, dalchini, bay leaf, cloves, elichi and let it sizzle for a minute. Add haldi and about a cup of mixed vegetables. Cover and cook till almost done. Stir the vegetables once in a while particularly if not using a non stick pan. Add salt, peas, paneer. Then about one and half teaspoon of cooking paste. Stir and add the contents of a small packet of coconut milk. Let it come to a boil and switch off immediately. And your dinner is ready in a jiffy.

Notice the absence of any spice powders like dhania powder, garam masala. The sizzling of whole garam masals in oil lends the flavour to this dish and so does coconut milk. Mild,creamy flavours is how I would describe this dish. Paneer makes this dish more creamier.

One more tip I would like to share regarding pav bhaji. Add little bit of beet root to the bhaji to get a wonderful color to the bhaji.

Oh for a breath of fresh air !

2007-06-18T03:09:00.000-07:00

I am back after a long gap. Was not keeping too well in terms of health. Now I am fine or so I hope. Doc said the problems are due to stress. I would have been quite surprised to hear that but my mother (also a doc) had predicted the same cause. Stress has become such a common word in fact I should have been surprised to know I don’t experience stress. Looks like all people living in cities/metros are stressed. But still people want to live in metros. To live a 'high' life. To enjoy malls, super markets, convenience goods, frozen food, just a minute meal. But do we get any free time in spite of having all the tools meant for saving time at our disposal? What are we saving time for? So that we can work more, earn more and buy more time saving goods. Wow...what a vicious cycle. Of all the weekend options representing 'high life' (multiplexes, shopping malls, food courts and so on), my favorite weekend activity is going for long walks near the garden, better still riding far away from the maddening city towards nature. Simple joys, simple lives, simple meals, all of these are still the best sources of happiness. Do we need to live in cities for these things? I wonder why is a simple life of growing your own food and living in clean air, not considered a good option. It sounds like the best way to live, to me, but obviously doesn’t seem so, to a lot of other people.
Human mind is not the one to get satisfied easily...so says my husband. It wants to do more, discover more, invent more or just wants more...more power, more recognition which most often translates to more money. I guess humans were not satisfied just knowing how to grow/hunt food and eat it. They tried to find out ways to do things better and so the quest to satisfy the human brain with its endless power went on and on. Every five years there comes a new way to live and we wonder how we ever managed to live without this gadget.
But in the midst of all the brain power and innovation it brings, are we pushing ourselves as well as Mother Nature into danger? New diseases are cropping up trying to threaten mankind. But the human brain is trying to beat the viruses and bacteria in their quest for human suffering and I would like to think humans are succeeding. I hope we find a way to beat stress and pollution who are also on a quest for human suffering.
Global warming - the newest talk of the town, immediately comes to mind when I think of Mother Nature being harmed. I am sure we humans have the power to overcome it if only we put our brain power to use in order to regain what we have lost.
How I wish to smell clean air, the unpolluted smell of nature. Will this become a reality some day?

Weekend blogging, pizza sauce and pancakes

2007-05-14T01:48:00.000-07:00

Another weekend gone by and comes Monday and with it, the wait for Saturday. But this weekend was different with many tasks being done. The most important was getting Netlon fixed. Well, measurements of the windows and exhaust fans are taken and tomorrow we will have a lizard proof house. Or so I hope. On Saturday, the inverter guy also came to install the inverter. The whole day went by just like that with people coming all the time to do some or the other work.
In the mean time I managed to prepare pizza for lunch. I had the pizza base ready, prepared the pizza sauce and used baked beans, capsicum, onion and mozzarella cheese for the topping. I got ready made breakfast that day with Anurag preparing bread-omelets and tea. Couldn't have had a better start to the day. Got out of bed and voila! Breakfast is ready, courtesy hubby dearest. We also managed to watch a movie on DVD in the afternoon with a few breaks in between. In the evening I was too full to eat anything. We went for a long walk and after that I had ice-cream while Anurag had bhelpuri and sev puri.
On Sunday morning, I made an English breakfast of pancakes topped with honey/jam. My first attempt at it and it was really tasty. Might become our Sunday special breakfast. Watched some TV and had a leisurely bath. For lunch, I made chole, rice and pudina flavored curd. Slept in the afternoon, watched 'Pirates of the Caribbean' in the evening, had dinner and again a long walk.
On Friday night, I had prepared lauki-beetroot halva. Came out pretty well.
A satisfying weekend. Though it did not come without its share of ‘Sunday evening blues’. I think what was great about the weekend was that I and Anurag got to talk. Hey, I don’t mean we don’t talk but to have spare time and to talk about things in general is a luxury. Otherwise everyday talk is limited to ‘wake up’, ‘what’s for breakfast’, ‘don’t forget to take your mobile to work’, or any thing which needs to be discussed. During and after the long walk on Saturday, we talked about our childhood, about the people in our lives....I came to know about problems people have in their lives. Someone has a mentally-retarded grownup child, someone’s mother-in-law doesn’t like her and is giving her a tough time, someone’s wife has gone mad even after giving birth to four children leaving the children deprived of mother’s love. Also of illnesses and how the illnesses were taken care of with pure love. Might not have saved a dying person but sure must have made them feel better. It was like an eye-opener for me. I always felt I have a blessed life. I had never seen people suffering. Almost felt like Prince Siddhartha (Buddha) who was unaware of things outside his palace. Well, I definitely knew poverty, suffering, misery existed but never knew anyone who has suffered. Really scares me as to how would I ever deal with anything but a rosy life.

Now to get into my recipe guru ‘avtaar’. How to make pizza sauce and pancakes? Fret not , recipe guru to your rescue :) Here’s how I made them.
I have come up with a pizza sauce recipe which I really like and it never fails me. Here it is :
In a pan, heat some oil, add 5-6 peppercorns, 3 cloves, a bayleaf, half an inch dalchini stick, 1 medium onion chopped, 6 cloves of garlic, sauté till onions are transparent, add 3 medium tomatoes chopped. Add salt, sugar, chilli flakes. Cover and cook till tomatoes are done. Now blend it with a hand blender. I removed the bayleaf before that as I was not sure whether it would mix. Use it for pizza, sandwich. I even used it for making gravy for vegetable.
Do try the pancakes if you like egg. It has a unique texture and tastes yummy. I used 2 eggs beaten with 4 teaspoons of sugar. Added about 4 tablespoons of flour, pinch of salt, vanilla essence, about a tablespoon of milk and beat some more till completely blended. Then heat a pan. Spread a little bit of ghee on it and pour a bit of the batter. Pancakes are generally thick unlike dosas. Cover and cook till done on one side on slow flame. Turn and cook the other side. My pancakes didn’t need any prodding to separate from the pan. They came out on their own. That's one way of knowing whether its done. Once out of the pan, spread some honey or jam on it, fold and serve hot. Perfect to start a weekend.

Experiments in Cooking and Me - II

2007-05-08T22:13:00.001-07:00

Another cooking experiment born out of boredom of eating cabbage the same old way. Anurag loves cabbage so I make it often though not as often as he would like :)
It is specially made after he is made a scapegoat for many of my experiments and I have to make up for it. I do not have any aversion to cabbage but making it the same old way with potatoes every time makes me run away from it.
Yesterday was one such day meant to make cabbage. Since I am back from my vacation, I hadn’t prepared a proper home cooked meal. So this was the way to start on a right note or was it?
I wanted some kick in my cabbage not the plain old cabbage with only few masalas for flavor. I had on impulse picked up some pudina, a raw mango on my vegetable shopping spree. Yes...I am going to add these to the cabbage.
It had to be completely different. I had started out with the idea of adding capsicum and peas instead of potato but what resulted finally was better cabbage sabzi than I had ever made before. At least that is what I thought.
I had left office early yesterday so I had time to cut the cabbage into neat thin strips. I don’t like using food processor for cabbage as it makes it too tiny. Do you too face the same problem?
Ok, so I cut about one small cabbage, I cut a capsicum into small pieces. I grated one medium carrot. I cut the raw mango into very small pieces. I could have grated it but I like cutting more than grating :)
I heated oil in a wok. Added jeera, ajwain, til, saunf to it. All on the spur of the moment. Some haldi, chilli powder goes in. Then the cabbage, capsicum and carrot. Sauté on high heat for about a minute and cover.
Now add little bit of cut raw mango. About 7-8 chopped pudina leaves, salt, sugar, dhaniya powder. Cover till done. A beautiful aroma fills the kitchen. Anurag arrives from office and asks "Pudina ki sabzi hai kya" :)
It looks as beautiful as it smells. Carrot adds nice color to it and cutting veggies neatly does make a difference in the beauty of the final dish.
The saunf added a good flavor. I could have left ajwain out I believe, maybe next time. I couldn't figure any difference in taste due to sesame seeds. Maybe it was too less to lend itself to the dish.
But overall, I really liked the taste. Slightly tangy with a hint of saunf. Best part is it cooks quickly. Only the preparation takes time.
Another good experiment. But I think I liked it more than Anurag did.

My vacation and a Survery

2007-05-06T23:09:00.000-07:00

I am writing a post after a long time. I had gone home for a week. I had a great time and ate all the good food and relaxed a lot. I hope life could always be like that...eat, sleep and make merry. I know it cannot be and it is fine because I don’t have any major regrets about the way life is right now.
On the flight home, an old man was sitting next to me. He had a bag full of papers. He was going through the papers and discarding some of them and putting some of them back...hopefully arranging it. He finished doing it about 15 mins before landing. But he was the most restless person I had seen, He couldn’t sit still for even the few minutes. He opened the tray table and started looking at the papers again and then writing something. The air hostess had to ask him to put up the table and sit straight. He looked really sad about sitting without doing anything. He must have been glad to get off the aircraft.
I also had a nice time shopping there in Gujarat. It was a great experience compared to the shopping experience here in Bangalore. You can bargain, you can choose from a huge variety. The shopkeepers there are really interested in selling their stuff and they try to make a personal connection and help you decide among a mountain of clothes. That's what makes shopping fun.The biggest problem with buying clothes in Bangalore is that in sometime everyone around you will be wearing similar dresses.

There is one more purpose to this post as the title suggests - a survey :) If you have read the blog, you have a fair idea on what I feel about babies. I want to know from you - married, or unmarried, with children or without children, men or women, boys or girls :)
Do you want to have babies? Why?
Please leave your comments with your views on why would you want to be a parent/why would you not want to be a parent.
I just want to know the thoughts in general. Because I am not able to figure out reasons for having children. I really feel people with children are not able to live the way they would like to. Also, there is already enough stress in our lives, why add the stress of raising children. I know most of you would not agree, that is why I want to know why you think I am wrong. And those of you who agree with me, please leave those comments also. I would be glad to know we share similar views.

Dreaming Big?!!

2007-04-12T05:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was watching KBC while waiting for my husband to return from office. I am not a regular viewer of the show. But, yesterday, I missed my swimming classes. I am planning to miss it today too. Well, I have a reason which I am stretching to bunk 2 days of swimming. I haven’t learnt much of swimming yet. But day before yesterday, after finishing my swimming class, I felt feverish with huge amount of body pain and for the first time, I was not able to point out which part of my body was giving me the most pain. ;) Also, by the time I reached home, I was shivering and had to take 3 blankets in the summer month. But now I am as healthy as I can get with 2 tablets down my throat.
Coming back to KBC, a young guy was a contestant and he said 2 crores are not enough to fulfill his dream which was to topple the government of Swaziland and be the king of the land. What a dream! May I say...weird dream! It got me thinking that only young people can dream of becoming kings/queens. I haven't come across an older person with such dreams. They have more realistic dreams like owning a flat/bungalow or a small/big car depending on the state and 'thinking big' capacity of the person. Again, people get 'older'(mature is a better word I guess) once they start earning their own money or at least after the initial high of earning money gives way to 'I need more than this' race.
Weird dreams are replaced by realistic dreams, adventure is replaced by boring routine, and enthusiasm for life is replaced by the race for all things material.
I can't imagine myself wanting to be a queen. I would say, let me own a small apartment first. But then, who wants a small apartment? How about a duplex flat, a penthouse, a bungalow with at least 2 cars parked in its compound? Better not go so far. So, I guess I am left with no dreams.
One of my friend says (He has taken it from a book) "Dream, and the whole universe conspires to help you realize your dream". But if you are one of those lazy kinds (like me), the universe might not help you!
By the way, heard of Swaziland before? I hadn’t. It is an African country. Coming to it, maybe the contestant could have dreamt bigger and wanted to be king of Switzerland instead. ;)

Never try Gujarati thali in Bangalore

2007-04-02T00:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to ‘Zaika’ restaurant in Raheja Arcade in Koramangala in hope of eating Gujarati thali. There was a mention of this restaurant and that it serves Gujarati thali, in Bangalore Times on Friday.
And as you know, I have been praising Gujarati food; I thought we can try it out. But now, after eating it, I can understand why people wouldn't like Gujarati thali.
It was bad. They tried but the result was far from the real Gujarati food. Yes, they made it sweet. People should understand that sugar is an ingredient in Gujarati food, but it is not the only ingredient. There has to be a good proportion of spicy taste in it and sweet is just to offset the spices. Anyway, what made it worse was the price. Priced at 125 per thali, and limited food, it made matters worse. The katoris in which they provided the vegetables were so small, they could be meant for infants. Me being used to the unlimited Gujarati thali with lots of dishes, it was a major disappointment.
I guess everybody read the Friday article and came to eat the thali. So there was a waiting time of 20 mins outside the restaurant. Then once we were seated at the table,
10 mins later a waiter comes to clean it and put fresh table mats (paper ones) and get us glasses of water. After another long wait come something which could pass of as cold milk and some papads which we thought came to our table instead of the neighboring table. But the papads were good. Another long long wait for the thali and when it came, it was like a needle to prick my excitement. They tried to make undhiyo which was ok.
They tried the potato curry (gujju style). Major disappointment. Didn't finish even the infant size portion of it. Then there was kadhi which was the only thing which was close to the real taste. Also a piece of khaman/dhokla with sweet chutney (sweet being the key word :) ) They give 3 chapattis and a bowl of jeera rice. It is quite enough to fill your stomach but does not leave you satisfied.
The owners have an idea but they haven't planned the execution well (in fact not at all planned). Nothing compared to the execution style of neighboring ‘Gramin’ restaurant. It does leave you impressed and satisfied even if you have to wait for your turn at the table.
Let me leave Gramin to another blog. All in all, go there if you are really craving Gujarati thali and have no other option. Never go there if you want to see what a Gujarati thali is...

Memory Lane down Gujarati Food

2007-03-30T03:35:00.001-07:00

Two posts about food in a day!! That means at least two things:
1. I have food on my mind.
2. I don’t have anything else to do. :)
Well, let me leave it at that. Now to get on with what inspired me to write this post. It was this blog http://thespicewholovedme.blogspot.com
This blog has some mouth watering, mind boggling.... gujju recipes. I am a great fan of gujju food. I was literally going mad looking at all those pictures and recipes. Although, I am not a Gujarati, I spend my entire childhood there and I was the one in our house to love any kind of Gujarati food. Well, rest of my family isn't too keen on food. That explains the size difference between me and them. ;)
Thinking of the Gujarati food does make me nostalgic. You might wonder what is so special about it or you might think its all sweet. But that is far from being true.
To taste real Gujarati food, you need to come to Gujarat. How can someone not like the food? I find that hard to imagine.
The khakaras are quite famous, so is dhokla. Dhokla does make me weak. These days in Bangalore we get dhoklas at food courts in the malls. I can’t pass by a stall featuring dhokla without eating it.
The dhebras...hmmmm....fried puri like but so much yummier than puris. And then there is chundo, the grated mango sweet, spicy all at once. I can eat it with anything or when I eat something I did not like, I refresh my taste buds by eating a spoonful of chundo.
Then there is handvo. You can eat it any time of the day. And the undhiyo...how can I forget that? I spent my childhood days waiting for undhiyo party to happen.
And the day it happened, I was one excited kid. We used to go to a farm and there they give 'matla undhiyo' (translated to pot undhiyo). They bake the beans, the sweet potatoes, potatoes etc in earthen pots with their mouths covered with dried grass or something. Then serve these baked veggies with spicy green chutney, also the sweet chutney, sev, oil
We had to take the beans out of their covering, mash the potatoes and them mix all chutneys and eat it. I will remember the taste all my life. Nothing can beat it. Then you have jalebi with it. It is the yellow, crisp jalebi unlike the orange, softer version which I saw in Maharashtra. I love the yellow jalebi. Haven’t eaten it since I left Gujarat :(
The other version of undhiyo which is more cooked vegetable kind is also great.
Then there is this fulvadi with mattho. Fulvadi is fried vadi...not sure of details but extremely spicy and when you have it with curd based mattha, it tastes just perfect.
Oh yes, then there is ‘papdi no lot’ (translated to papdi dough). You wouldn’t have heard of people eating dough but once you taste this you will wonder how the dough can be left to be turned into papdi (similar to papad). The steamed dough is eaten with oil drizzled over it. I am pretty sure, women in Gujarat would hide some ‘papdi no lot’ from family
members otherwise they can never prepare papdi. The oil is poured to reduce the spiciness of the dough.
I can not get enough of Gujarati food. Though the real fact is that I have had it only few times till now. I am not talking of the gujarati thali. That I have everytime I go there but the other things that make the Gujarati food so much more fun. We didn't prepare this at home so I had it only when friends and neighbors used to send them to us. I am thankful to all the people who introduced me to the delightful tastes of Gujarati food. I hope everyone gets to taste it. It will remain with you forever.

Experiments in Cooking and Me..

2007-03-30T00:11:00.000-07:00

I am writing this post because I am happy I concealed the lauki (bottle gourd as they say in English) in a dal and had my husband eat it with relish. But mainly because I knew all of you are missing me. I can get quite self-praising (is that the word?) at times, as you can see.
Is your husband a fussy eater? Husband species are meant to be fussy, I believe. I had chanced upon a wonderful methi matar malai recipe on the net and also had methi at home. But I didn’t have enough time to prepare it, starting with separating the methi leaves. I saw a nice, small and tender lauki at Nilgiris’ newly started vegetable section and I knew I had to buy it. I was looking for some vegetable which will be fast to cut and this lauki fit the bill and making it tempting was the fact that it was so tender and without seeds. I don’t like lauki seeds. That is not being fussy. Ok?
But the problem was making my husband eat lauki. I thought of mixing it in dal. He really likes dal. I went home. Took out a cup of toor dal, then I thought let me mix in a bit of masoor, then a bit of chana dal and then yellow moong dal. The dals look lovely and specially the masoor adding orange to yellow. Washed them and kept it soaking in water. Ok, now I am telling you the recipe so that you can get your husbands to eat lauki ;)
See, now I consider myself a recipe guru. Yes, the continuation of the self-praising phase.
I cut the lauki into small pieces and added to the dal(s) and cooked it in pressure cooker along with salt till it gets mushy. You can see the lauki pieces among the dal if you look hard. Till then I put rice to cook and went about tackling the methi which needed immediate attention. Till the dal cooked, I got all the methi leaves in Ziploc bag and hoped they will stay till I get time to cook them. I also got 2 small onions, 3 garlic cloves, 2 green chillies and 3 small tomatoes cut into small pieces. Now take a kadhai and put some oil, add mustard seeds and jeera and hing. Add the onions, garlic and chillies.
When onions are done, add tomatoes and haldi and let it cook till tomatoes are almost mashed. Add this to the cooker. I did this coz adding the dal to kadhai was more difficult :)
Add everest garam masala, little bit of sugar and chopped coriander. Let it boil. This is quite thick in consistency. We had it with paratha and curd and rice. If you are wondering, where did the parathas came from, well, I had the dough ready in the fridge and my experience says old dough makes better roti/paratha. Maybe its just one of my weird beliefs.
For once, I got a good result from my cooking experiments.

Similar thing can be done to brinjal, karela. But this will be more of sambar style with tamarind, jaggery and maybe sambar masala instead of garam masala. I am yet to try it with my husband. This will be more challenging than the lauki.

Babies

2007-03-05T05:43:00.000-08:00

This weekend, I happened to meet some babies. On Friday evening, I went to see my friend’s baby who is three and a half months old. On Saturday, we went to my cousin sister's house. She has a 10 month old baby. Everyone thinks babies cute. Even I think so, but only if they are other's babies. These little creatures are good to see from far but I am not sure if I would want them in my close vicinity. Babies are cute but only till they don’t start crying, till they don’t start peeing and till their moms are around. Left alone with a baby, I don’t know what I would do. You might think what kind of a girl wouldn’t want babies? Before marriage, I didn’t have any views on babies. At that time, I thought of it as a natural phenomenon -> "All married people have babies."But now, I am not able to figure out why people wish to have babies in the first place. My husband says, people feel it as a miracle that a woman can create a new life and bring it to this world. But I fail to see the miracle part of it. I mean, yes, it might seem like a miracle to someone ignorant but we all know the science behind it. right? And after all, this world is not such a good place to feel proud about bringing someone else also to suffer in it. My husband says, children would be company for old age. We would have somebody for support. This seems good. But I am not sure how much will the next gen support their parents. Somehow I feel pretty sure; they would run away in their teenage, never feeling a thing for their parents. We should be prepared for the worst. Even if by luck, they turn out to be good. Good is again relative, few years ago, marrying someone not selected by your parents was considered bad, now it is ok. Who knows few years later, living with parents might not be considered ‘good’. Why would people want to live their entire lives just for their children so that they can leave them in their old age? Once people have children, I have seen them living, thinking only about the children, never about themselves. I would rather live my life for myself and spend all my money on myself. Yes, I know I am selfish.

Do software engineers love their jobs?

2007-02-28T02:02:00.001-08:00

Well, I think they don’t. I haven’t come across a single software engineer who is 'very' happy with his job. May be I know only these types of software engineers! If there is a sense of accomplishment by doing a job, maybe that would result in job satisfaction. My cousin sister is doing her post-graduation in Gynecology. Once she told me that the job is extremely hectic with work hours going up to 36 hrs at a stretch but still when she comes home at the end of the day, she feels very happy and satisfied. Maybe she saved some lives, brought some little ones to this earth. That looks exciting. But as they say, the grass is always greener on the other side. If by chance, a doctor is not able to save a life, may not even be his fault, I can’t imagine what a dreadful feeling that would be. Thank God, I am not a doctor. It is too scary to deal with life and death.But I can’t bring myself to say "Thank God, I am a software engineer" either. It is a much safer profession compared to doctors. Study less, Earn faster. What more can I ask for? Looks like something is missing or maybe everything is missing. Every morning when I wake up, the first thing that comes to my mind, "What day is it today?" Oh no, it’s a Wednesday. 3 more office days before I get a break. Everyday I get up waiting for Saturday to come.
The kind of excitement that can be expected at a typical software job is :
a. Getting your code to work
b. Completing your job before expected/in a new (better) way than usual.
Oh yes, then there is the excitement of getting the salary revision letters. That is exactly what I come to office for. I like the independence money gives. It’s nice to have your own money and yet have your husband take care of most of the expenses.
Sometimes I think I should consider change of profession. But then, there is nothing I know other than sitting in an air-conditioned office and typing away at the keyboard. Sometimes, I think I experience a lot more stress than my colleagues do, in similar situations.Learning something new causes a lot of stress for me and this is what every software engineer has to continue doing all his life.
Have you ever wondered why are so many people living on this earth? Hey...I have started going on a different track but its ok, after all, it’s my blog. Some people have said that everyone comes to life with a purpose. Well, what's the population of this earth? And if we consider insects, fish and all living creatures, are there really so many purposes to live? I have no idea why I am living. Well, my husband will have a tough time if I am not living. If that's my purpose then why do I have to work, I mean go to office. If I don’t go to office, I will get bored at home. And of course, I won’t get money. I can always get it from my husband but it’s not the same. Hmm...Looks like money is the only reason I come to office. Then whether I like it or not, I have to come to work, and actually do some work with the hope that it might help somebody. And also with the hope that it doesn’t make life tougher for someone else ;)

Time flies or does it?!! To-do task lists

2007-02-05T22:04:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wonder why I don’t ever get time to do the things I have been intending or resolving to do from quite sometime. Does time fly? Sometimes I think it does, especially on weekends :). Before you know it, it is Sunday evening and you start getting Monday morning blues. But then if I think some more (something I rarely do), I think time doesn’t fly, I let it fly. Now today is Monday and I think the weekend got over a bit too fast but if you ask me what I did on the weekend, well, that’s a tricky question ;) Hmm.....coming to it...I am glad at least 2 tasks could be finally done. One was getting the gas connection transferred from my friend. Oh well…this task was not done completely coz we didn’t take the gas regulator with us. But still, a good start! Hopefully, next weekend will see the end of this task from the to-do list. The other was to get my husband buy some trousers for him. He wants to wait till all his trousers are torn or damaged to buy new ones. At least this task is off the to-do list. But alas, the to-do list keeps growing at a faster pace than our ability to finish it.
There are some tasks which require taking decisions. These are among the difficult to complete tasks and remain on to-do lists for ever. There are some other types of tasks which are among the front-runners for the oldest members on to-do lists like studying, tasks involving going to govt. offices :) Discussing about future plans is one another task that never really takes off leave alone reaching a conclusion.
Looks like the unfinished tasks are due to lack of willingness to complete them. Brings me to the saying "Donkey can be brought near water but can’t be forced to drink it". Am I calling myself a donkey? That’s ok but completely unacceptable if others call me a donkey.

eat happy

2007-01-31T07:10:00.001-08:00

Eat Happy - the tag line of a very happy looking eating place called "Mast Kalandar". For some reason I really like this place coz whenever I go there, I never return anything less than ‘happy’J. I remember when the place had newly opened on Bannerghatta road; a very café sort of look with bright colors used everywhere, lot of orange and yellow…the chairs are orange too. It looked like a good place to go to if you want to get into a sunny mood. I hadn’t gone there for a long time as I was not sure about the kind of food there.
I went there for the first time some months ago after I got married and after I was tired of cooking dinner every weekday :). As soon as I entered, I realized it’s a ‘hatke’ (different) place…starting from the menu to the method of ordering. The menu is put up on a colorful wall behind the counter. You don’t get your menu and don’t get to order from table but you do get food served on the table. That was a new one! But the menu is so exciting that it compensates for the inconvenience, if at all you can call it that. There is a parathas section with some interesting parathas called Tom, Dick, Harry or Healthy Sprouts, Cheesy Spring Onion and more… Then there are combos with kulcha or rotis in combination with some sabzi, dal, salad and chutney. Then there is a rice section with the likes of rajma-chawal, kadhi-chawal, biryani. You also have a few starters, few drinks like aam panna, mango lassi and desserts.
As you would have guessed, it is a completely North Indian vegetarian restaurant…one of the few in Bangalore which serve authentic North Indian food at affordable prices. There are times when it’s been a hard day in office or I feel like eating something really nice, I end up coming here. The dal makhni which they serve with most combos is really good. I never had the parathas. I am not much of a paratha fan coz of the oil and ghee layered on it. There are healthy options available too. There is also the saag, makke ki roti combo.
The food served is piping hot and has a very fresh taste. I can go on and on about the food. Before I forget to mention the other good things about the place, let me tell you about them. The place has a friendly feeling with the waiters very good at their work...neither ignoring nor crowding you. There are magazines, newspapers kept there and people spend time here relaxing over a good and healthy meal. You might even be reminded of 'maa ke haath ka khana'. It is an ideal place to go when you want to eat food which has a home cooked taste and at the same time want to go to a proper clean restaurant.

trip to pondy

2007-01-31T07:09:00.000-08:00

It was the Republic Day long weekend. 2 days before the weekend, we started thinking whether we should go somewhere. Deciding now would mean going on the Bullet. And we were quite glad we don’t have other options open. Because the excitement of going to new places on a bike is matched only by few others. Finally, Friday the Republic Day arrived but we were quite lazy to get up early in the morning and so the day went on. By evening I was getting restless and missing what would have been a good trip somewhere. So I started dropping hints that I want to go to Pondicherry. And my intelligent husband picked up the hints and by night after dinner, we decided to start by 5 am and go to Pondicherry.
As always, the alarm went off. I switched it off and went to the bed again. Tried to wake up my husband and went to sleep. But this time, the desire to go was strong and I got up again after half an hour and so did my husband. We did everything starting from packing in a little more than an hour and finally we took off to Pondicherry by 6 am. Petrol and air stop at Hosur and we were on our way to Krishnagiri on a good 4 lane highway. Early morning rides are even great. To see the dawn breaking and the day setting in slowly while we are riding away amidst great looking landscapes is a real pleasure. Took a diversion to NH66 from Krishnagiri. Here the road was not that good. Some potholes surprise you as you go on an ok looking road. Look out for crows sitting on the roads. We were at a considerable speed and few crows were sitting on the road and they flew a bit too late and one of them hit my husband’s hand on the bike's handle. Poor bird broke his wing I suppose. But it was better than hitting our helmets or the brake. After the patch of about 40kms of the 'not so good' road, we were back on smooth roads and the next destination was Thiruvannamalai. We were there by 9:45 and decided to stop and see the temple and also have breakfast. Yes, there isn't any place before this where you can expect a decent breakfast. There is a Reliance A1 plaza after Hosur where you can stop for breakfast. But nothing after that or before Thiruvannamalai.
The temple at Thiruvannamalai is huge and quite nice. It is a huge complex with temples in it and also a pond. There was a small queue and we had to wait for darshan. But the temple can get very crowded if there is some festival related to Lord Shiva or on Fridays. There is an elephant in the temple who blesses people with his trunk. There seemed to be a significance of red color coz most women were wearing red sarees and men wore red kurta and lungi. We went to a nearby restaurant just outside the temple. As soon as we sat, we were given plates of idlis and some sambar. That was the only thing they had at the restaurant. We were hungry and ate the idlis for the first time without a spoon or fork as the restaurant didn't have spoons. By this time it was 11:45. We got back to the Pondicherry road. On the way there is Gingee Fort, some old ruins of a fort. We stopped to take pictures. The fort looked quite good and if it wasn’t for Pondicherry we were tempted to explore it more. But we satisfied ourselves with pictures and went ahead. We were in Pondy on the beach road by 1:30. The view was so great that my husband just parked the bike and without locking it, went to look at the ocean. I took the keys and followed. Clear green-blue water and huge waves hitting the rocks made us forget whatever tiredness we had.
Our landlords in Bangalore are basically from Pondicherry and they were there at that time. We called them up to ask about a good hotel where we can check in. Aunty and Uncle came and took us to Ashram guesthouse but both of the guest houses were full. We tried few more hotels but everything was full. Looked like half of the people from Bangalore and Chennai were in Pondicherry and we were also a day late than the others. Finally all of us went for lunch and after that Uncle gave us his relative's newly constructed house to stay. We went there and slept. In the evening we came to the beach road again. It was full of people, good music and it was very lively. There were "Freedom Jam, No Bread" concerts going on all over the place. We took a stroll on the rocks placed facing the sea. Then we sat on the rocks, listening to the waves. It was heavenly. But the sea doesn’t look so friendly at night. But believe me; you would want to come again and again just to sit there looking at the sea and listening to the waves and letting the ocean breeze run thru your hair. We had dinner and went back to our house (we could call it our house even it was just for a day).
Next day we had breakfast and again went to the beach road to get a morning view of the sea. It was beautiful in the morning too but we couldn’t spend much time there as there were other places to see also. We went to a boat house at Ariankuppam about 7-8 kms from the beach road in Pondy. It is a nice picnic spot. We did pedal boating in the backwaters. Speed boating also available there. Then we took off for Auroville. To reach there we need to go towards the East Coast Road which goes to Chennai. On the way we saw a taxi with Auroville written on it and we thought we will follow it. A little while later I realized that Auroville might have been left behind and the taxi was going elsewhere but the road was so good with the sea on one side that we followed it. The taxi turned down onto a mud road and we could see a beach in the distance. It turned out that the taxi was going to the Pondicherry University guest house and the beach was behind it. But we were not a bit sorry for the wrong route and in fact quite thrilled to see the virgin beach. It was a beach like we hadn't seen before...not even in Goa…pure, clean sand, clear blue water and huge waves. There were crabs on the sand. And nobody except a very few locals on the beach. We went into the water and enjoyed the waves hitting us. It was fun.
Finally we reached Auroville. Unfortunately, Matrimandir which is the major attraction is open only till 12:30 on Sundays. So we couldn't see it. But even otherwise, Auroville is a very peaceful place full of greenery. People from 30 different countries stay here. It is the vision of The Mother and is a township dedicated to experiment in human unity. Go through the site http://www.auroville.org to get details on timings for visiting and to get an idea about Auroville.
There is a cafeteria at Auroville. And I have to mention this. The homemade kulfi which they serve here is something out of this world. Never had a kulfi like that before. It was so soft and tasty...just melts in your mouth. The walnut cake and chocolate brownie are also good. On our way back from Auroville we wanted to see the beach with rocks one last time before we left and so we took that route to reach home.
We left Pondy at around 4 and took a night halt at Thiruvannamalai. The hotel Anurachalam had quite a descent rooms considering the place looked like a village. We set out to have dinner at the restaurant belonging to the same hotel. It was an experience in itself. The waiter, if we can call him that, was scaring us more than serving us. :) He gave us banana leaf and when he came back with dosas, he ordered us to clean the leaf with water. Then he stood just behind our table as if to see how we are eating. And when we gave him money, he said something angrily in Tamil which thankfully we couldn’t understand. We were still hungry but we left from the place. All the restaurants in Thiruvannamalai seem to be serving only idlis and dosas. We went to a more inviting restaurant and it seemed much better compared to the previous experience. We had another dosa there and went back to our room thinking no more dosas for at least a week. I really missed the Bangalore style sambar. The sambar here looked like it didn’t have the sambar masala and had just the dal.
I was fast asleep before 9. My husband was busy watching TV as he got to do so after 2 days.
Next morning we left at 5:30 and were in Bangalore by 9:30 braving the traffic near Electronics city and BTM. It was a great trip and we look forward to our second visit to Pondicherry whenever it will be.
Some Precautions before taking the trip -
1) Avoid going in summer as the weather here is very hot. Even in January. People from Mumbai might be reminded of the weather there :)
2) Book hotel in advance specially if going on a long weekend.
3) There are big mosquitos in the area. So use mosquito repellents.