A Peek into my Life

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 an...

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 for a few days. Although I have never had a peanut-based gravy before. So I took the veggies lying in my fridge. 3 small carrots, 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 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...

6:30 : We get up and get ready for the ride. The previous evening's drive from Chikmagalur 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 rearrange 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 increased 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....

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 of 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. Af...

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 wa...

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 a 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 against 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 thin...

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.

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.

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, It's not about people, it's 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 idlis and chai. G...

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 at 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 t...

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 a 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 haircut 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 t...

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...

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...

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 ...

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 especially 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, doesn't it? ;) So on my walk back home from the office...

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 the 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 indistinguishable 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 leave...

I have been craving for a break..read a bike trip for 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...

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 an 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 ...

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, supermarkets, 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 ridin...

Another weekend has 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 meantime, 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 wen...

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 a 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. A...

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 ...

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 the day before yesterday, after finishing my swimming class, I felt feverish with a 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... a weird dream! It got me thinking that only young people can dream of becoming kings/queen...

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 ever...

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 mouthwatering, 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 quit...

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 ...

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...

Well, I think they don’t. I haven’t come across a single software engineer who is 'very' happy with his job. Maybe 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 com...

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 i...

Eat Happy - the tagline 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 your table but you do get food served on the table. That was a new one! But the menu is so exciting that...

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...