A Peek into my Life

Last week I had my first surgery for removing my gall bladder. This is apparently a very common surgery and it has been made real simple these days. Single incision, little to no scarring and you are back home in half a day. I had a really good team of doctors and nurses at Charlotte Medical Clinic and I am recovering quite well. I first found out about my bad gall bladder while on my India trip in September. Maybe all the "eat all you can" attitude caused the gall bladder attack :) I am glad I got time to come to terms with it before losing one of my organs. I had time to adjust my diet and really think about the food that I eat and serve my family. I always thought we eat healthy food and it was reasonably true. But anyone who has tried to understand food and what is healthy, what is not, knows that information out there is so conflicting in nature. What was seen as absolute truth a few years ago is now a very questionable truth. There were times when I didn't kno...

This week, we celebrated Makar Sankranti festival in our own small way. That meant making Til Gul as prasad and sharing it with each other. The daughter is just about old enough to understand about traditions and I am trying to expose her to whatever little tradition we follow. After all, these special days and special foods from childhood traditions are what warms the heart later in life. When I was a child, Makar Sankranti was called Uttarayan (because we lived in Gujarat). All around us, there was this party atmosphere with everyone up on their terrace at the break of dawn : playing music, flying kites, cheering for the kite that cut the sharp thread of the other kite. There wasn't much cooking done that day because no one wanted to leave the party on the terrace and spend a lot of time in the kitchen. In our house, it was different. We had the elaborate meal starring gul poli (jaggery stuffed roti) with the supporting cast of vegetable, kadhi or dal and rice, maybe a koshimb...

The weekend before Christmas, we went to Stone Mountain National Park. This was totally a last minute trip. We had been thinking about it for a while but with the husband's work schedule, it was difficult to plan ahead. On Friday morning, we decided this weekend would be spent in Atlanta. I checked Stone Mountain website for tickets. We decided on Snow Mountain and Christmas Combo Family Value Pass. For 50$, we had 2 hours of snow tubing, snow play, all stone mountain attractions along with a meal, hot chocolate and drinks. This is the best value ticket if you want to do both the snow and christmas parts of the park. After that the hotel (Wingate by Wyndham, Norcross) was booked, which turned out to be really nice for the price. It was already lunch time by then. So after lunch, I had to just dive into packing. We had planned to leave by 5 in the evening. Yeah, fat chance! What with the husband leaving office on time to come home and then go back to pick up a rented car and come ...