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Could Be Anything!

CIF Kitchen Khiladi

I had a unique culinary experience recently. I made something (food presumably) that has very little semblance to what one actually eats as food. I tried a combination of speed, innovation, novel ingredients and completely wrong ratios.

The evening tugged at me – the weather was bright, and the daughter and I wanted to play football with our hands. Perfectly normal so far you’ll agree. The evening however hard you try to stop it, marches on into the night with a steady trumpet blow. Then one is left with dirty football hands and a hungry stomach. So, I figured I will just make something that smacks of speed, health and aroma. A touch of Thai and Chinese would not hurt, I added as a mental note to myself. A smear of turmeric here, a touch of soy sauce there, and a whisp of basil.

I don’t know if there are competitions for the greatest flops. But that dish with the Indo-Chinese-Thai-Italian flavor just smacked of failure – on a colossal level. I think it even smelt Mediterrnean when the winds blew in a south westerly direction.

Given this performance, it is almost impertinent that I should be hustling you all to a cooking competition. But, I would like to salvage my position by saying it is for a good cause, and the important thing is to try something new.

So here goes. Cancer Institute Foundation is conducting Kitchen Khiladi – the brave, the creative, the explorers of unchartered soups and medleys, gather ye. Make a difference to cancer care while having fun.

Limbo between Roti Land, Poori Land and Parotta Land

I tend to agree with Vasundhara Chauhan. Who is Vasundhara Chauhan? Why would I agree with her? These are valid questions and deserve to be addressed. V.Chauhan penned this article in the Hindu where she deplores the flood of standard dal makhani, butter chicken, and naan wherever one looks for good indian food.

http://www.hindu.com/mag/2010/04/25/stories/2010042550280700.htm

Imagine my surprise therefore when I stepped into an Indian restaurant, and they asked me whether I wanted Naan or Chappati to go with dal makhani and mutter panneer. I went in for the Chappati – the old jaws need a break sometimes and soft chappatis would fit the bill nicely. The chappatis arrived, and if anything, they were worse for the jaws than a bunch of sugarcane chunks.

The chappatis did not stop me from taking a mental trip down the Cauvery river, however. Yes, the chappatis were a sturdy breed that is the hallmark of the South Indian Chappati Making Foundation. You see the folks of the S.I.C-M-Foundation have a process:

1) You first sit on the floor with a huge bowl of flour, and one leg outstretched from beneath the saree.
2) You tip a generous serving of oil in the flour.
3) You knead it to a rubbery consistency that is bordering on hard. Sort of like those mock cork balls.
4)  You take up approx 323 sq ft with spread out magazines, and flour and generally shoo the crows and children wanting to play with the flour away.
5) Then, you proceed to roll out triangular chappatis that have a tendency to shine with oil
6) Once this arduous process is done, you can proceed to the actual task of putting them on the tava. Oil should be used again and poor triangular blighters have to be flipped back and forth till you have a coloration that tells you not to expect something soft.

The SICMF does not like to see soft chapatis without oil. The chaps have to be mid way into being poories, stop short and decide in the last minute to become parottas, and stay in the limbo between Roti Land, Poori Land and Parotta Land.

The process takes a brisk 58 minutes for 15 chappatis, and is usually served with ‘Gurma’.

For the records, I was not scarred excessively with the chappati-poori-parotta treatment, since my mother broke her ties with SICMF early in her career, and we had fantastic, soft rotis instead of chappatis.

Is there a gene for this?

I honestly try to keep my nose down and go about my own sincere business. Everytime, I do that, I swear that some guy makes it a point to throw something like this at me and taunt me, just for the sake of it.

So, here goes. Apparently, a bunch of drunk humor challenged drunkards(did I call them drunk already? I must have.) So, where was I? Yes, humor challenged drunkards, did this to a fellow human being. They shoved an eel up a person’s a** as a joke.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/03/man-dies-after-eel-is-ins_n_560842.html

I am not one for macabre scenes, and take this opportunity to express my disapproval. But seriously, how does one think of these things? Forget all the negative psychological effects on the eel for a moment, and ponder on the sickening psychological workings of these men.

I grew up in a boarding school where ragging was rampant. I never understood the bullying mentality. I’ve read books and listened to spirited discourses from the father, who particularly disliked bullies.

Coming back to the eel episode, I think the fact that they were drunk was not the cause. I’ve seen drunk men doubling up as mild entertainment for the sober ones. For being able to hurt someone, the instinct may have nothing to do with being drunk. In this case, being drunk is an attribute. There must be a gene that wants to hurt people, and that is the gene to be squashed for all of mankind. Yet for all the advances we have made, we have not been able to isolate this intent to hurt and treat it.

Is there a gene for this?

Daffodils and AT&T

Every once in a while, I am in the middle of an eloquent sentence, and just letting the poetic slide from my tongue.You know how it is.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,

Silence. I realise there is no reciprocation. It’s as if the other person isn’t there. Okay, I agree that wasn’t me it was old Wordsworth with his silly daffodils, but it could have been me with the ripe troubles of life, like the vast canvas poem I once wrote.

Why? That can’t be right. I mean, that thing that I just said was pretty hot stuff, and the folks I am talking to aren’t that insensitive to my needs of dialogue. I reach for my handkerchief, to wipe away the tears, when I find my call failed.

Call Failed. Try again? The phone looks at me with a touch of innocence.

Well, I can try again, but you should know that hot stuff like daffodils don’t just roll off the same way again. What comes out is a dull, and slightly drooping daffodil, just wilting by the window in the sun. Just imagine what humanity would have lost if Wordsworth had tried calling in the poem to his fiancee to write down immediately before he forgets, and AT&T dropped the call? (One could argue of course that the vast canvas poem was worth being dropped, but that is entirely a matter of perception. )

I have an iphone that I love for all of its features except its signal quality. I thought it was just me till Jon Stewart endorsed my view on his daily show. I have to say that I totally love his jab at AT&T and Apple.
http://www.dailytech.com/Jon+Stewart+Goes+After+Steve+Jobs+Apple+ATT+and+Appholes/article18263.htm
Excerpt:
I mean, if you wanna break down someone’s door, why don’t you start with AT&T, for God sakes? They make your amazing phone unusable as a phone! I mean, seriously! How do you drop four calls in a one-mile stretch of the West Side Highway! There’re no buildings around! What, does the open space confuse AT&T’s signal?!

Today, I was sitting and minding my own business when AT&T calls and badgers me about some random thing like plan changes or something, and AT&T drops their own call. HA! And HA! again.

Justice.

Snow White & Shanta Sakkubai

No. Thanks. I am not nuts yet, but I am quickly pushing those around me there with this song. This is a song that appears first in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs movie by Disney.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY3aljAO7qU

This movie was one of Disney’s first movies, and is very like Shantha Sakkubai (an old Tamil movie that appeared around the same time.) Allow me to explain.

Poor Shantha Sakkubai was hurled at us when entertainment options were limited to the state-owned-and-deemed-appropriate era of Doordarshan. I assure nothing else could have made me endure “Jai Panduranga ..” from Shantha Sakkubai.

http://beta.thehindu.com/arts/cinema/article257245.ece

Shantha Sakkubai’s plight was one of misery, yet she never quailed in her belief of Krishna. Her mother-in-law ill-treated her. What did Shantha Saks. do in return? She just belted out a melody in retaliation. I tried telling Shantha Saks Baby that if she stopped this infernal singing, her mother-in-law might go easy on her. But you know what happens to wise people. I was hushed and bundled off to “play”.

I was jarred to see that Snow White seemed to have followed a similar tactic in her days. The Queen throws her out and has a huntsman set after her. She runs through the forest – horrible beasts coming after her. Pretty thick situation to be in, if you ask me. But, Snow White asks the birds and squirrels what she should do, and they tell her to sing.

No wonder, it is a tradition in South Indian arranged marriages to have the girl sing.
https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/singing-vs-almirah-assembly/

Just whistle while you work.
And cheerfully together we can tidy up the place.

Warm milk

Any coffee lover seeing me order a coffee prefers to shrivel up and die a slow decaffeinated death. I find a size that isn’t even on the charts on the board, and order one smaller than that. As if this embarrassment were not enough, I would stress on the extra milk and 1/2 shot of coffee.

“There ISN’T even a half shot of coffee available!” the husband would say looking embarrassed, and shuffling his feet. Clearly, for a macho coffee lover, it is uncool to be seen in public with a coffee douche. In fact the general consensus on the male coffee lovers club seems to be that bad enough the spouse is a coffee-douche, but is shamelessly admitting it? It could be a blow to any male’s ego.

I now know how a peacock must feel. Going around strutting with all those colorful feathers and generally trumping up the importance of color in life. Even the far off rainbow seems impressed. Then, the female of the species comes along, in a stunning white, and still looks graceful as hell without any of the colors. That must have ticked off the peacock a good deal.

What I am getting at is…The male is proud of taste buds, yada yada yada, female blah-blah.

A few months ago, I decided to make matters worse and cut coffee. ‘I’ll go for Tea’ I announced high-handedly. It wasn’t like I was making a sacrifice. In fact it is documented fact that my brain reacts to tea like a camel spotting an oasis. The welcoming cup in the morning springs on the new day, and the whole day just goes on, basking in the warmth of the morning tea.
 
When the oracles of stress relief pounced on my ounce of tea in the morning, I decided to let go. “Caffeine is the worst!”, they proclaimed. Reading about caffeine one day, I decided to cut the miserable loner of a cup of tea in the morning and rough it out. I bunged in the Philosophical line “What is life without a few sacrifices?”, and had a warm glass of milk in the morning instead.

I might as well have popped a few sleeping pills. Not one of these folks told me the effects of warm milk on sleepy brain cells. The cells went into a kind of a stupor. I was snoring with my eyes open, and at one point might even have been drooling.

That wouldn’t do. I mean I still have to make a living and snoring droolers don’t make a living. I think I’ll stick to the cuppa tea in the morning and battle the effects of caffeine. Or I may switch to decaffeinated tea and see how that goes.

Tamizh Padam

South Indians are a pretty sordid bunch. Generally, merry-making is scowled upon, and any kind of revelry involving loud laughter is treated with disdain. Stares on such occasions can get a pouncing tiger to stop mid-air, and tuck its tail between its legs and retreat in shame.

Comedy is a joke. If you’d like proof, I would just like to direct your attention to one of two avenues:
1) The evening ‘entertainment’ that clogs up the average Tamil household. Hard hearts weep, children weep because they ask for Tom & Jerry in between and their wishes are not granted. Who has time for a cat chasing a rat when Leela is being beaten up by a goon of a husband, and one’s heart is wringing in sympathy?

2) Or attend a Brahmin wedding. While selecting the marriage, please make sure you pick a wedding where there is at least one oldie who prides him/herself on being pious. It is easy to identify. The pious oldie will have been removed from society and placed on a chair with close proximity to the priest, thereby allowing him to frown on the frivolous pair chatting during the solemn process of getting married. There is no merry-making – you could refresh yourselves with wedding chronicles again here

https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/2008/12/31/a-condensed-version-please/

Not to be outdone, Tamil movies have gone ahead and created a genre that has yet to obtain a classification. One might call it fantasy, but fantasy is enjoyable, and the first paragraph categorically proves one cannot enjoy. There is a doctrine that is liberally preached in Tamilian homes, usually by the aunt who has had her laugh genes snapped off cruelly by the dances of fate. ‘Don’t laugh too much , for one will cry later, if one laughs now.’

Therefore, while watching the “Tamizh Padam” movie, I tried stifling my laughter for a while. I did not want to cry later. I forgot to check the latest psychological journals for ratio.
Do you cry for the same amount of time you laugh?
Do you cry as hard as you laughed?

The movie was a brilliant spoof of Tamil movies, and I must say I haven’t laughed like this in a long while. I have my box of tissues ready.

The world’s craziest drives

The article lists the most thrilling drives in the World.

http://www.bing.com/travel/content/search?q=Crazy+Drives%3a+Splugen+Pass%2c+Switzerland+and+Italy

I don’t believe this list is complete. For one, it does not consider roads such as the Mettupalayam-Ooty highway. I don’t even want to comment on the Himalayan trails, having seen some of them at heart-stopping angles from automobiles defying at least some laws of Physics as they navigate the steep hairpin bends. Not to mention how scenic these drives are.

You know how it is when you plod your child to recite the alphabet in front of reserved strangers merely to break the ice? I used to find the analogy quite apt for the Ashok Leyland buses staggering up particularly trying roads while chatting up unresponsive cliffs. The buses go (Gulp) “See rock face? I can climb” The blighters would outperform themselves as they navigated the steep roads, where visibility boasted near 0, while the Ashok Leyland engineers watched on in admiration as their little babies shone.

These roads sometimes had parapet walls warning them about the road boundaries, but they weren’t much to write home about. They were barely a foot high and helpfully broken in several places. Lane discipline – well, have you driven in India?

How do I know you ask? Let’s say that I have navigated these roads from the view point closest to these Ashok Leyland bus drivers. The buses would be crowded by Indian Standards, not Western ones, and I would nestle up close to that huge blob of an engine by the Driver’s seat. The buses would start from Coimbatore – the plains , as we hill folk liked to call it. The sweltering heat at Coimbatore made folks shy away from that spot because of the warm benign waves the engine generated. Moi, being the brave soul and all that, would stand there dumbly – simply soaking in the heat. As the buses started the steep 14 hair-pin bend ascent into the hills, suddenly, the heat became a good thing. The mists would come rushing in, tingling your senses and taunting them with a cold brush against one’s skin – exposed or otherwise.

I must tell you, the peril seems multifold if you are not the one holding the steering wheel. Nope, you just stand there wishing Friendly Driver Dude  turns the steering wheel at the right moment.

There have been times when I’ve gone in for the scalded bottom phenomenon and sat on the engines. The viewpoint from there was equally fascinating. Thrilling I tell you, simply thrilling – some drivers have driven me to scalded bottom ectasy simply because I could not bear the tension of their last minute maneuvers.

Yet, this road does not make the list – sigh!

Croaky gets Raspberry

Something has been bothering me. Rather some things have been bothering me lately. Mr Throat decided to act up. (I really should not say Mr Throat when I am a Mrs/Ms should I?) I could, on the other hand, argue that I can use Mr.Throat as I sound like a ballistic male frog.

I hear my deep, raspy voice go – “*Croak* May I have some water please? *ribbit ribbit*”

Honestly, all that’s left is for a mole to come out with a sprig of parsley, and I can hop my way into Fantasy Land.

I always knew chemicals were used as preservatives in Milk and sprayed on vegetables etc. I remember my mother picking a bone with Gauri-ma or Kulukamma, or whatever her name was, (I don’t feel like wracking the brain for this) that the milk she had given us the day (t) before must have been drawn from Moo on the eve of (t-1) because the milk curdled. Imagine the sacrifice we had to make? We had to settle for Panneer.

I made peace with the fact that milk was being refrigerated and usable for a couple of weeks, but I notice cans of milks with use by dates over a month and half away, and that makes me squeazy ..er.. squeazier than ever. On Mar 1st, if I see a can of milk telling me to be used by April 25th … (Best sentence completion wins an “Awesome sentence” award from the NourishNCherish blog)

Suddenly, the croaky throat gets a raspberry because I don’t feel like drinking the milk from that can. I’ll just wait for it to age and pick it up closer to Apr 25th and feel good about fresh milk.

Happy 134th Birthday

Google has certainly taught me about the relevance of a number of days I would not have registered in my otherwise dull life. I wonder why they did not tell me yesterday that March 10 1876 was the day Alexander Graham Bell invented the first telephone.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/mar10.html

I brought it up, since I am sure everyone has had the illuminating experience of corresponding with these automated telephones. I had an interesting encounter with one of these yesterday, and I might have considered not cursing the phone on it’s birthday. I don’t think I might have gone so far as to get a phone shaped cake with 134 candles on it, but I certainly would have been kinder in my criticism.

I pick up the phone to talk to a normal person, and I was, as expected, received with an abnormally crisp tone. Listening to the tone with which the message started, one would have thought, the machine senses how important this phone call is, and is certainly going to put me straight through to an Indian in a call center rightaway. Life can be cruel that way.

It launches into its melodrama without further ado.
IF YOU ARE STANDING WITH THE PHONE, PLEASE FIND A PLACE TO SIT, THIS COULD TAKE A WHILE. IF YOU HAVE NOT USED A RESTROOM IN THE PAST 30 MINUTES AND YOUR BLADDER USUALLY POUNDS WITHIN AN HOUR, PLEASE HANG UP AND USE THE RESTROOM.
You get the gist. Now, I am twiddling my thumbs waiting for the operator to pick up. The machine senses that I am getting complacent, and pounds me into action. My senses pick up like an accelerating porsche on an empty road, while I listen to the choices offered.
IF YOU LIKE ICECREAM PLEASE PRESS 2
IF YOU LIKE BADAM CAKE PLEASE PRESS 1
IF YOU LIKE CHOCOLATE PLEASE PRESS 1

Readers might be confused that the second and third choices viz. choosing badam cake and chocolate implore you to press 1. I state that merely to drive home the point that it does not matter what you press, the choices are only to sharpen your outlook. Merely testing to see if you are alert. Sometimes people fumble into a drooble riddled sleep induced by inactivity, and that causes delay to the others callers in the queue, because the unfortunate operator, now not only has to wake himself up, but also wake the customer up.

The system, meanwhile continues relentlessly.
PLEASE NOTE WE RECORD PHONE CALLS TO ENSURE QUALITY ASSURANCE.
PLEASE STATE YOUR NAME
Damn it
SORRY! I DID NOT GET THAT. PLEASE STATE YOUR NAME
I am randomly jabbing things on my keypad to see if anything works as a shortcut. #)0

The phone sees what I am trying to do, and laughs mirthlessly. I can hear it boasting to its co-automatic phones that today another customer joined the long lines in the telephonic Hall of Punishment by trying to jump the system
PLEASE STATE YOUR NAME
All right – Julius Ceaser Cleopatra Masilamani
I AM SORRY. DID YOU SAY <all right july cider clear mass ill>?
NO! Julius Ceaser Cleopatra Masilamani. * inwardly cursing that at this rate cider or no cider, I will be ill by July.*
PLEASE SPELL YOUR NAME

I would have bought a towel and thrown it into the arena in a dramatic gesture symbolizing that giving up is better than this, had it not been for the thought that I would have to undergo the previous 20 minutes again, no matter when I start. I summon all the inner strength that is the hallmark of the homosapiens and hold on.

The system then tries horrendous music, cheesy dialogues, mildly affectionate – “YOU ARE AN IMPORTANT PERSON. JUST NOT IMPORTANT ENOUGH FOR US TO CONSIDER. PLEASE DO NOT THINK YOU ARE BEING IGNORED BY ALL, JUST BY US.” etc at me. I hang on. If anything, we alphabet soup names can hang on. No way are we repeating our kindergarden syllabi over the phone again (A is for apple, B is for Bat)

Finally, a tired sounding human voice breaks in. I could cry with relief and joy. The rationale is, if you are willing to put up with this much, you must really be interested in talking. So, they put me on hold while they transfer me to the relevant department.

Happy 134th Birthday Dear Phone.