Season's Greetings

One perfect light to lead the way....with Happy Holidays, A Merry Christmas...all the way to a wonderful New Year!

Chinna Chinna aasai....

Ok, here I am, I'm it...again...and thanks to HHGMom. Nope, cannot be refused.

So she asks me to reveal 10 things I want to do before the next decade.... sigh! (Aside, I refuse to divulge my age :D muahahahaha). She doesnt realise I dont even plan 10 things I wish to do in one day...so this is such a monumental task to ask of this...poor planning mint.

But give it a shot, I will.

- I wish(or hope) to add just one more degree to my academic scroll.

- I would get on with that EU tour idea that I've been wanting to do since I was a teenager.

- Learn to dance; I am tired of calling myself two-left-feet.

- Spend more time with my writing projects that have been languishing for a while...script writing, graphics etc

- Invest time and money in my camera, improve my photography skills

- Learn good money-management skills. I suck at finances and that isnt a good thing. Specially when one is required to balance one's checkbooks all alone.

- (I believe 6 of them above are serious, thought out ones, and from here-on, it took me ages to come up with more...hence I cannot vouch for its authenticity :P) I want to go on a cruise, a short 4-5 day one, just for the experience.

- Its a vague to-do to have, but I do wish to contribute to more charities and be able to lend more hands-on support.

- (...phew two more to go...) I would like to fly to the moon, some day :)(ok, ok not a valid one...I mean in the next decade, hardly likely). Hm, more reasonable would be that I'd like to maintain a clean driving record(erm no embarassing q's about how trashed it is, right now, puhleeease!).

- (...grunt, groan... I've never given this such intense thought about my future ever...so...and lastly....) To develop a positive outloook....I've begun to realise the power of positive thinking and influence!

Amen!

So, since its this close to a new year, these will automatically convert into new year resolutions, so taggers, if there is another tag asking for it, I've already done it.

To be forewarned is to be forearmed, no?

Footnote : As the year comes to an end, as Christmas peeks just around the corner, its time for lunches and dinners with friends that havent been in touch, with ex-coworkers to catch up on gossip, with that stray acquaintance that hasnt been seen around in days.....a relaxing period at work with everyone in a festive, casual mode.....yes relaxed is the operative word. And I am at peace with it, cos one needs the hibernation to be all charged come January.....2008

Kuch nostalgia ho jaye?

To do as they say and to get what they get

To be forewarned : In this post I will be complaining about my disasters in the kitchen(fortunately with no pictures to prove), thanks to the dishes posted by food bloggers that make it so easy, simple and quick to make, that tempt me endlessly to dare to attempt.....errrr not so much!

I love following posts from food bloggers. I am terribly impressed by the hard work they put in, their unflailing enthusiasm to participate in blog events, to untiringly innovate and simplify. Yes, this Thanksgiving, I had wished to submit my humble thanks for all their efforts. I bookmark some of the interesting(and simple sounding) recipes on ye faithful del.icio.us(how wonderful a coincidence is that! food posts bookmarked on delicious!) and try them at my leisure. Some are successes and I immediately leave a comment thanking them for producing such gems, some are disasters like this following episode. But none the less, my rss aggregator is alive on a daily basis with posts from these master chefs. The ones that probably will read this post are two of my favorite bloggers Jugalbandi and Asha. Of course, who in food blog world, has not heard of them? So I will stop mouthing eulogies about these two greats.

Coming to my story. After I returned from my India trip, while I lovingly unpacked the myriad podis and thokkus, sorted them into containers, refridgerated, stocked, air-sealed, I unwittingly launched into a pantry audit. You know those times when you have no clue what ingredients co-exist in your own pantry and some fancy sounding recipe calls for a particular item and you go and buy them instantly, dish gets done and you realise you had two packets of the same item languishing in your pantry after all? Has this happened to you too? No? Well I must be the only inefficient homemaker. So thus I cleaned the containers, made a pretty list of all the items that I do possess, whats in excess, what is needed and so on and so forth.

So, cutting a long story short, I found 5 of these containers. I am sure each of these items were bought with a purpose....one or another recipe that I oh-so-desperately wanted to try. Now I dont remember which recipes those were, or how the dishes turned out. But in this country, with having to buy at least a pound sized bag of anything....I have 5 bottles of "whole green gram", "split green gram", "whole black urad", "moth dal" and "masoor dal".

Now my regular, weekly cooking consists of rotis, daals with vegetable(of the kootu/kurma fame), sabjis, salads/raithas and an odd dessert-like item. Since these 5containers dont hold ingredients that I need/use on a daily basis, the recipes that demand their use dont belong in my weekly repertoire of culinary projects, they've been idling in the pantry for as long as a year, if I remember right. I am now tempted to start a contest-challenge to these food blogger experts. To make a dish with these 5 items and show me a winner. So these items feel useful, and not gossip at night about what a waste and a terrible cook their owner is.

I do enjoy baking, though. For others. Like if someone's birthday is coming up, one would find me measuring and mixing and baking a decent tasting cake. But in general I suck at the decorating part. Most times, the receiver is disappointed at the sorry looking cake though will immediately rave about the taste....cos all said and done, it does taste good. And again, these baking recipes are all thanks to different food bloggers, whose recipes, their writeups and irresistible photos drive one to immediately don an apron and do the needful.

Cut to chase, our jugalbandi pair recently posted this d.e.l.i.c.i.o.u.s looking, simple-sounding cake. I mean, all said and done, it says its a war-time cake. No one stocks up on fancy ingredients right? So it must consume simple ingredients, be simple to make and hence an easy challenge for us types, right? Wrong, Wrong and Wrong. I have a good mind to parcel this to Bee herself, with my best season's greetings.

This is what happened, I mixed and matched, sifted and sorted, blended and pulsed...followed the recipe to the T...T-shirt I mean(the apron was in the laundry, so it all landed on my T-shirt, silly!). And then it all went into my prize possession...my 6-speed mixer....my one-stop solution for all well-rising cakes. After a good amount of mixing, it went straight into a well-greased baking dish, then into the oven....and all was left was a 30 minute wait for the wonderful warm aroma of "fruit-and-nut" war cake. A decent amount of good dried fruit and nuts had found their way into this creation.

40 mins later, when no smells wafted from the oven, I peeked. And what I saw was a disappointing, flat pancake-like thing! I poked a fork into it and it was quite done. I pulled the "item" out, left it to cool. Some hours later.....do you know how a cardboard mixed with fruit and nut would taste? I do....cos thats what my "cake" had turned into.

And the very next day, I tried out another cake, from another blogger lady. Needless to say, that was a disaster as well. Hence I will refrain from baking any cakes for the rest of the year. Most likely my cake baking jinx has been turned on.

Cookies though have turned out pretty well. I shall stick to these, while the going is good.

Footnote : You know, about those cakes....shhhhhhh......lets let the food bloggers continue to squirm....but it was really cos I mixed up labels for the "all-purpose" and "Bisquik-pancake mix" containers....yea, I know- I suck ;).

So, how YOU doing?

For some things, doors need to open by force

She deserves to have her only sibling surface from self-imposed "sanyaas" for this doesnt she?

So here goes,

No mushy pomes,

No blushing blooms

Just a few lines of verse

To wish the best that life offers

This year and for ever

May the star of fortune fade never

Happy Birthday Seren!

Closed

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
~Helen Keller

Seasons greetings! Have a great holiday season and a wonderful new year ahead.

See you all next year, with new beginnings and hopes for a great start....

Early morning notes from back home series-4

And a significant milestone as a blogger

• Last leg of the trip is a mixture of bitter-sweet thoughts. Bitter about the long(that seems longer by the thoughts of going away from home all over again) trip back to that far-away land which has suddenly become second-home.

• Visiting friends and family, avoiding lunch/dinner invites to preserve whats left of a working stomach.

• Eyeing all the shopping done in a frenzy during the previous weeks and the TWO suitcases it all needs to fit into.

• Walking is back. Walking as an exercise, walking to get chores done, walking for shopping...so easy, so convenient...and oh so good. Yesterday I had a bunch of odd jobs to do right before lunch time. And what fun. I shop-hopped like a kid, walking up and down a familiar bazaar like I used to for many years, from many years ago. And the steaming hot lunch that Amma served after the shop-walking was worth every step of it.
  

• This leisurely, nostalgic vacation schedule will soon end. And then its back to the work-gym-cook-clean blah schedule. There's bills to be paid, mail to be sorted, laundry to be done and all the rest, to be executed in robot-like automation. Sucks!

• Weather here has been so pleasant, its almost saddening to note that one has to return to cold weather and a dark, gloomy 3 months of severe winter weather.

• Ok, time to stop whining and lamenting over "the return".
  

• Just as quietly as this blog came into existence, without the usual fanfare, with no statement of purpose, with its owner not having a clue about blog ethics or purpose; except the wish to write what the heart felt.....the blog has now reached its 200th post. This one, as I write. For my faithful readers that keep coming back, a million thanks. For those that chance upon my posts thanks to google :), welcome and do come back. For the anon readers and lurkers, well, you are all welcome too- to come, read and stay just the way you like. The blog and its owner need no surveys, readership stats or marketing techniques...I like to write, hence this blog exists. If you share the same sentiments that I write about, do take some time to comment. Else pet my kabbu, feed it some green, put up your feet, pick up some popcorn, sit back, relax and enjoy the reads.

How about some authentic matka kulfi?
Cheers!

This thing about tags...

....price tags, I mean!

There's this popular handicraft store here in Bangalore where I always get small gift items to take back for friends and co-workers. Its mostly local crafts and specialties, unique to this region. Hence my affection for this store and its wares. And I visit the store every single trip and I have this gripe every single time.

That is with their price tags. Nope, not the price itself. Since these are gift items, I pack them lovingly sans price tags. And therein lies the problem. Most times these are small items-like keychains, paperclips and the like. And in India, since most stores dont install CCTV surveillance cameras and barcodes on each item, its hard to protect from shoplifters. Hence they stick price tags directly onto the item. No complaint there- one's got to do what one's got to do.

But try peeling these off....and then come talk to me. Geez. They never come out altogether in one attempt. So one resorts to scratching and tearing it in pieces...end result- firstly, there's a glue stain on the item. Secondly, however long you try, there's always bits of the white sticky tag debris. One is so hesitant to use sharp objects to scrape the tags out, for fear of leaving scratch marks on the gift items.

I have a plethora of these small, cute and pretty gift items with ugly white scrape marks on them. Ugh!

Anyone else have this problem? And what does one do to avoid them? I hear, water softens it out and wiping it cleans it up. But I am leery of resorting to this water treatment, specially for wooden items, and definitely not on sandalwood.

Hmmmm.....

Celebration

Hope lovely surprises
Are coming your way,
To make your
Birthday a
Wonderful day.

Happy Birthday Tharini!

Early morning notes from back home series-3

Trip down memory lane

Read a center page metro supplement article about BMTC woes. Apparently BLR Metro will not be fully functional to a reasonable extent, servicing major localities till 2020! So until then Bangalore commuters are to survive on the mercy of BMTC- which till this date- does not service all localities, that does not have enough stops(even with multiple promises from the BMTC officials that noone should have to walk more than 1/2 km to their closest bus stop), the rash driving is enough to make one stay off the roads for extended periods of time.....and the list goes on. Sigh!

Groundnuts are here in Bangalore. Yes, its the famous(or less touted?) 'Kadlekai Parishe'. A lazy Sunday evening stroll along Bull temple road, with this festival in full swing ended up being a not so lazy stroll-but a busy, buzzling street buzzing of good ol' jaatre(fair) fun.

For those that didnt know, here's the story behind Kadlekai Parishe(as always, thanks to wiki).

In the past, Basavanagudi was surrounded by places like Guttahalli, Mavalli, Dasarahalli and other places where groundnut was cultivated. On every full moon day a bull would charge into the groundnut fields and damage the crop. The farmers then offered prayers to Basava (Nandi) to stop this and pledged to offer their first crop. Subsequently, an Idol of Basava was found close by. It has been said that, the Idol was growing rapidly, and the farmers nailed an iron peg on the head of the idol, which is visible in the form of a trishula even to this date. Later in the year 1537, Kempe Gowda, dedicated a temple to ‘Dodda Basava’ on top of the Basavanagudi hillock and installed the Idol. This temple is known as Bull Temple. Eversince, the farmers from surrounding villages come here every year and offer their annual harvest of groundnut as offering to Lord Basava. This is accompanied by the annual fair, which is known as the Kadlekai Parise.

• It was fun to walk along casually, with random requests from young and old alike to take pictures of themselves.

• A stop at Dodda Ganesha temple, despite the crowds, was a must.

• Also, a must-do was a stop for a quick glass of sugarcane juice at Cane-o-la(if anyone hasnt tried this, pleaseeeeeeeee do asap). They have some wonderful variations to good ole ghanne ka ras-like ginger, chaat masala, salt/pepper, nimboo and mint and of course, just plain, natural, sweet kabbina rasa.

• And last, but certainly not the least, a short stop for fingerlicking, butter dripping benne masala dosa at 'Shri Sai Sagar-Davangere Benne Dose'. Yummmmmmmmmmmm!

What could be better than an evening spent in apna ilaaka, amid apne log, savoring apna khaana- familiar sights and sounds and smells. Bliss!