A Peek into my Life

This was our first trip after coming to the 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 didn't keep up the promise, here's 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 dal didn't 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, a 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 mu...

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 br...

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 stopover 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. A...

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 ...

I didn't know what title to give this post written in the middle of a Sunday night (if 11 o'clock can be called the 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 for a few years, some people would be sad if I am not here b...

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 roadside 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...

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 eggless 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 separate from each other. I boiled potatoes in it and also roasted peanuts. I made mint flavored 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 rec...