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.