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Monday, November 16, 2009

The joy of getting it right

These days i'm becoming experimental with cooking. Now you need to know how my cooking evolved to appreciate the experimentation.

2006, Bangalore
Breakfast - Bread sandwich.
Lunch - Dal, Subzi, Rice
Dinner - Kichdi or Rotis with left over dal
Breakfast - Yours Truly. Lunch & Dinner - Roommate's generosity.

2009, Danbury
Breakfast - Cereal/Muffins/Idli,Dosa/Pongal
Lunch - Veg Curry, Sambhar, Rasam, Curd, Rice & Pickle
Dinner - Rotis with Kurma or Subzi.
All - Yours Truly

If this is not evolution what is. Atleast for me these are giant steps where cooking is involved. C'mon i make kurma, not in the likes of navrathna kurma but Egg Kurma and Peas Paneer kurma.

Cooking started with amma's e-adichan copy recipes. Or reading and somewhat memorizing Mallika Badrinath cookbooks. Now i can google a dish, surf recipes, pick and choose ingredients that i find most alluring and combine them all. Best part - the end product is still delicious.

Making muffins, Chocolate cup cakes to Mexican flan has elevated me into a seasoned chef. I can make onion sambhar without referring to recipes. Improvised to ginger kuzhambhu which sets your throats on fire and even have facebook friends who want my recipes.

There have been two inspirations for this cooking quest. First when you are trying a new recipe, there is a thrill and when it comes out delicious, you are soaring high in the air. Second when the hujband takes one puddi and says "Man your food is to die for"... SIGH!!(I know, too much illa)

Glossary
e-adichan - copy cat kill the rat.(somebody can volunteer with the exact explanation)
puddi - one mouthfull.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

A peek into the future

Disclaimer: After hearing a lot of unflattering responses about my blog template, i finally set forth to change it. Hopefully this one is more readable. I admit there is a lot of work to do but atleast the wheels are in motion.

The new template had widgets which made things easy. I dint have to dig through the html code and replace bits and pieces, all i had to do was click on Add Gadget and everything was done.It took me all but 3 mins to figure out that(i know) and in that three minutes i was panic-striken!!!

It was like your entire life flashing in front of you in five minutes - Haven't you watched Armageddon or Gladiator? I can't bookmark my favourite blogs, can't link the labels in my post, can't tell the world that am a budding photographer.... This is a wee dramatic. But thats how things are told these days. If you dont scream, you wont be heard. Now is it the same everywhere or did living in the US rub it on me?

But back to Widgets. In that ignorant three minutes i was able to comprehend the helplessness and frustration my parents feel when i tell them they can watch Sun TV in a laptop.

When i taught my father how to start mailing,read news online,chat using the webcam, view photographs online, i thought it was an information overload and the minute i disappear he is going to abadon the laptop. But as always, he proved me wrong. He is doing his own research, marking his websites as favourites, helping my mother choose online magazine subscriptions when she comes to the US and am sure he is going
to tell me that he is bringing his laptop with him during his next visit. My parents have become tech-savvy alright. The bubble has embraced them or have they embraced it?!!!

For my mom, the laptop was the sign of technological leaps and bounds. She viewed it with aversion and blamed it for the distance between people in the same room.Ofcourse it was in stiff competition with the mobile. She completely disapproved of children below 10 using it and never understood why it kept us hooked on for hours. Its the same way i look at teenagers typing furiously in their cell phones racing against time.I think she has finally made her peace with this mini-idiot box while i continue to stare at the fingers that would fly on keyboards. (I'm not that old and i've been there, done that. Its impolite to stare but you cant help it esp when you have nothing else to do in a crowded train).

My efforts at keeping abreast with technology are going to fail at some point. My kids are going to call me backward and wonder how long it would take for me to catch up. I can hear them sighing and smirking at our rather slow pace of advancement. They would call us old-fashioned, look at Iphone, Ipods, Droids as antiques.

These days generation gap exists between siblings so the rift is going to be more pronounced. But like my parents, i would learn to make my peace with techonology. If you cant fight them, Join Them!!!