Castillian Hot Chocolate: The microwave version

I had a few people commenting on my blog telling me that either they have tried or they are planning to try my Castillian hot chocolate recipe. Those who came back after trying it, had good things to tell. So this time when I had excess milk in the fridge, I decided to make it again, but this time in the microwave. My sister came back asking for the measures in cups and spoons as she doesn't have a weighing scale. So I halved the recipe, measured with cups and spoons and weighed the ingredients.

I mixed everything in my half liter milk bowl. I knew it was going to overflow if I dint pay attention. My maid suddenly decided it was the right time to show her dismay with my overflowing cutlery drawer and wanted me to help her pick the things which I don't use regularly out of that so she could store them somewhere else. I moved from in front of the microwave for less than 30 seconds and the hot chocolate was overflowing making my microwave a mess. So make sure you use a one liter bowl or bigger for this recipe.

Castillian Hot Chocolate 

Milk                  - 2 cups

Cocoa powder - 4tbsp

Sugar              - 1/4 cup

Corn flour        - 1tbsp
water               - 1/4 cup

Mix the corn flour with water without forming lumps. Mix the cocoa powder and sugar in a deep microwave dish. Pour the cornflour mixture into this, mix well. Pour the milk to this, mixing all the time till there are no lumps remaining. Microwave on high for 5-6 minutes, stirring every one minute. The mixture would thicken and look glossy and coat the back of the spoon. Serve hot.

Yogurt vs Curd

Sour Curd from my kitchen

The whole discussion started with a colleague’s obsession with B12 vitamins. So while we were discussing the sources of B12, he mentioned curd has it. Seeing another colleague having a Danone yogurt cup in his hand, he told that even better is yogurt. When I asked what is the difference between yogurt and curd, he mentioned that they are different, but he doesn’t know in what way. The quintessence of curiosity that I am, I can’t settle a discussion like that and I went searching for what is the difference between yogurt and curd. I always thought they both are the same. After checking Wikipedia and few other links, I came to the conclusion that they both are indeed the same. In Wikipedia it is also mentioned in the curd page that in India the word curd always means plain yogurt and is called dahi in Hindi. I have heard people calling it as ‘curds’ also.

Actual curd is the product from the process of curdling milk in which the whey separates from the solids in milk and is usually done by mixing lime juice or vinegar into hot milk. But in India what we call curd is what in English is yogurt. The only difference I still can think of between the yogurt in India and from somewhere else could be the strains of bacteria found in them.

Even after presenting these facts to the colleague, he was not ready to consider the possibility that they could be the same. He wanted me to prove it by making curd out of yogurt. I forwarded the link for ‘Adamant in ignorance’ to him. I told him that if he can manage to get me a cup of yogurt in which there are active cultures, I will be able to make curd out of that and show. He also mentioned that the texture and consistency of both are different. The commercially available yogurt is not plain yogurt most of the time, there are thickening agents like gelatin and starch added in. It is also mentioned in the Wikihow for making yogurt. I also forwarded this link to my colleague. So after deliberating for a few days he told me that I might have a point in what I am telling. So we rested the case.

A few days later after coming back from lunch he declared that all except one agree to my view on yogurt and curd. And this new entrant thinks that it is so different that it is not even worth discussing.

NE, as long as you think it is not worth discussing let’s not discuss. But let me tell again, what most of us Indians call as curd is same as yogurt. Now it is up to you to come to me and prove it that it is not. I have stopped being adamant in my ignorance some time back, so I will not be surprised if you prove to me that they are indeed different, I am open to such a possibility.

In the meanwhile, my readers please let me know what you think.

Mango Badam Smoothie

After I had a bout of stomach problem which didn't seem to subside even after the course of antibiotic I took, Shyam declared the next day to be a fruit diet day. We can only eat fruits and vegetables. I was a little apprehensive as I am used to eating 3-4 meals a day, stomach upset or not, and have never done any kind of dieting in which I have to skip meals. The next day after we finished eating the coconut dosa, he remembered about our fruit diet and the rest of the day was further declared as a fruit diet day. So when I got tired of eating papaya and mango, I decided to do something more than just eating cut fruits. I dint have my D90 charged, so I decided to take pictures with my mobile phone instead. I later realised how bad that idea was, you will realise too when see the pictures.  

I inaugurated my recently bought wine glasses by serving the smoothie in those. That was not a bad idea indeed.

Those cardamoms are from my garden, can you believe it :)

Recipe

Mango           - 1 medium sized (400gms), peeled and cut into pieces
(I used a Banganapalli)
Low fat milk   - 1 Cup, chilled
Sugar            - 1 tbsp
Cardamom     - 3
Almonds        - 15 small, blanched
Saffron          - a few strands (optional)

Grind the cardamoms together with the sugar. Add the almonds and make a paste by adding a tablespoonful of milk. Add the mangoes and a make a smooth paste by adding the milk half cup at a time. Pour or spoon them into goblets and sprinkle the saffron on top, if using.

The smoothie was licked out of the glasses. May be next time I will make it thinner and call it mango badam milkshake, that way there is no danger of broken wine glass in anybody's mouth.

The class syndrome

Yohan's Xmas tree in the making

I usually sit there reading my book, how much ever long the flight is. It is not my cup of tea to chat with my co passenger, I am too introverted. But when I sat there and read a 7th grade text book in a flight and my co passenger made his curiosity obvious, I would not be the one to say no to a short chat either. So I explained to him what Teach For India is and what I was doing. I was just returning from my summer vacation and I was reading the text books I needed to teach the next academic year, so that I could prepare my long term plans for the year.

My co passenger found it all very interesting and was more curious to know what kind of kids I taught. So I gave him the profile of my kids. When he asked me why don't we provide them with vocational training rather than teaching them Math and English, I explained to him that there is nothing wrong with these kids' IQ or capabilities and given the right education they will come into the mainstream. That's when he shocked me by asking why do you want to bring them into the mainstream. Then he went on to explain that there is already a lack of opportunity, scarcity of jobs in the market. By bringing more people into the mainstream we are only making it more difficult to everyone. Now there will be more people fighting for the same jobs. If these kids learn Math and English they will not be interested in doing what their parents were doing and those jobs also need getting done.

I was fuming by then and still tried to reason with him telling that what we are doing is trying to create a level playing field, where no one is having an undue advantage just because he or she was born into an affluent family. If the people who are forced to do menial jobs disappear, then technology will have to take some part of their work. For the rest the dignity of labour and the wages will improve, so no one will feel bad about of doing them any more. 

He just wouldn't rest his case even when we were walking out of the flight. At the end of it he looked almost angry at me. I don't get angry with anyone very fast. But he had managed to tick me off. I asked him about his kids and he told me he has 2, one is 8 years old and the other 4. I told him that I am very sorry that his kids will have a tough time getting a job, as we are so damn bend up on making the kids of the rickshaw drivers and vegetable vendors also capable of being Engineers, Doctors and much more. I walked away wondering whether it was that same thought which made him feel so angry about what I was doing. 

RTE and my blue aluminum lunch box

Ankita's 'I want to be a teacher' poster

I have more questions than answers. But I will start with a small snippet from my yet to be written autobiography. 

May be more than half the 2nd standard has done the migration from aluminum to steel lunch boxes. I am talking about the year 1980 -1981, no one brought plastic lunch boxes to school at those times. I still carried my blue aluminum lunch box. That lunch box might have given me a feeling that I didn't belong to the majority who carried steel lunch boxes. I don't remember now, but it is quite possible that I sat and had lunch with others who had aluminum lunch boxes. I do remember my lunch box every time I see any car in a particular metallic blue colour and get a sinking feeling in my tummy even now.

Some might think otherwise, but kids are a gang who is acutely aware of class division. So when we place the kids from a low income background with the ones from high income background, do we expect automatic integration of both. I don't think anyone is naive enough to think that it will be easy to integrate them when the 25% low income students are welcomed into the high income schools. But how difficult would that be, do we have an idea?

I have met and interviewed an awesome lady who has started a school in which she takes half of the students from affluent background and the other half from the other spectrum. She has started the school 4 years back. But she agreed regretfully that she is still struggling with the problem of integration. The rich kids and poor kids hung around separately from each other and she just didn't have an idea how to solve it. Remember these are kids of parents who are fully aware of the noble intentions of the school and have decided to send their kids to this school possibly because of that or at least irrespective of that. 

Now when the rich schools are forced to take poor kids, with all the resistance from the rich parents, will there be any integration at all? Are the poor kids going to be treated differently than the rich kids? Are they going to be segregated? Shouldn't someone really figure out the psychological aspects of this move before we push forward with this in the next academic year? 

As I said in the beginning, I have only questions. May be someone out there has the answers! Do you?

To B or not to B

While discussing with a few of my friends my post on 'boob watching' by men, the question came about the cup sizes. These women in question have much more than 'barely there'. I was really surprised to hear that they all are Bs. So who ever has named B as 'barely there' do not know the technicalities of the sizes. It looks like a size B can also be quite sizable based on the size of the body they are fitted on. Narrating this to a friend inspired her to draw this cartoon.

Adamant in ignorance

"Oh sure! Water can explode!" I exclaimed after hearing that water which was taken out from a microwave oven after heating, exploded on some one's face. I might not have even gone and searched it on the web. Then one day it happened to me. I heated the water in a beer mug in the microwave. After I opened the door, while I was just about to take the mug out, my phone rang. I went and got the phone and was walking towards the oven while answering the call, the water burst out from the mug drenching in and around the microwave. I just stood there shocked and reported it to my friend who was at the other end of the call. This was a very humbling experience and made me look at 'knowledge' in a completely new light.

I remembered about this incident when I was talking about 'Tuberculoid leprosy' to someone very close to me. His immediate reaction was there can't be anything like that, as tuberculosis is a lung disease. May be the fact that I was talking to him on April 1st also had an effect as in the previous one hour I had heard 'April fool' at least 13 times. He might have thought that I was also trying to pull a fast one on him. Then I realised may be he has never had a 'water explosion' moment in his life to think that anything is possible.

That was a mild reaction when compared to how two of my colleagues from Singapore reacted to the pins on the power plug of my laptop, when I reached their office for a meeting. They almost rolled on the floor laughing and telling 'round, round, round plugs'. In Singapore the plug pins were rectangular. I was amused by their reaction as I had seen various shapes, sizes and pin alignments on power plugs by then.

I have won money, play station games and whiskey bottles (for friends of course) by telling 'bet' at the right time with some of these people. Then last week while discussing cars with a friend, we were talking about Volkswagen Beetle and he commented that it is bigger than the Volkswagen Vento which we have just passed by. I argued for a few minutes and left it thinking he will figure it out or may be I am wrong. He indeed figured it out and told me a day or 2 later that I was correct. Then I realised that after my 'water explosion' incident I am not even sure about things I am sure about, my being adamant in my knowledge is diminished so much that I have stopped telling 'bet' any more. May be it is a good thing, may be it is not.

Refer Hoax Slayer for more details on microwave water explosion.

Read about different types of power plugs in Wikipedia.