Trip to Atlanta

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

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

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

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

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

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 ...

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!