Stop! I will give you the password!

A friend of mine, who has been following my blog for some time now, complained recently that my blogs have become too girly now a days. Here comes one more girly one. The ones on which he has complained were on cooking, which were not really that girly, considering there are as many male cooks around as there are female ones, or more. But this one is going to a beauty parlour, can it get any more girly? Dedicated to you, Mr.

I go to the beauty parlour once in 6 months. I have established here already earlier that I am an extremely lazy person. Remember, my friends told me not getting my hairy arms waxed is sacrilegious to the very idea of being a woman? But I haven't started doing that yet. But on every fourth visit I decide to do a facial. That is every once in 2 years, see I have done the math for you.

I like the shoulder and upper back massage she gives me. May be next time I will just ask her to continue doing that for the whole one hour. But then she turns me over, starts chanting the name of all the concoctions and starts applying those on my face.

Torture weapon

Then comes the comedo extractor (I figured out the name of that recently). That is when I become the protector of the worst nuclear device. I am the only one with the password which can launch the device. The lady starts torturing me by trying to loop the extractor through my nose walls and lower lips. I grind my teeth and refuse to give the password. Arggghhhhh... She gives me a nasty look and continues. After the ordeal is over, I come out of the room huffing and puffing, when she looks at my upperlip and asks me, "Shall I thread?". Oh no! One more time I need to hold the password in. I am really surprised that that night I don't wake up shouting, "Stop! I will give you the password".

I get out of there swearing and promising myself that I am never ever going to put myself through this torture again, only to come back after 2 years trying to get the password out to those people who want to destroy the world!!

And the award goes to.....

It is a funny feeling to get an award for blogging. I have seen a lot of the blogs I follow, having awards they have got posted on their blogs. I always thought of them as professional bloggers. I am just an amateur. I blog for the fun of it, nothing more, nothing less. But then I still got the Versatile Blogger from Malini Rajesh. Thank You so much Malini.

But then, this is kind of a chain award. Bloggers pass on this award to other bloggers. Now the disbeliever and the digger I am, I wanted to figure out who has started this award and how long it has been going on. I went searching in google and the earliest I could reach was May 16th 2010. The blog from which she has got the award had gone defunct and there the trail went cold. So, I decided to just play along.

There are rules too, to be followed for this chain to stay alive.

1. Nominate 15 Fellow Bloggers
2. Inform the Bloggers of their nomination
3. Share 7 random things about yourself
4. Thank the Blogger who nominated you
5. Add the Versatile Blog Award picture to your blog post

So here is my list of 10 versatile bloggers, either I consider them versatile or their blog versatile or both.

1. Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen
2. Gayatri of Life. Unordinary
3. Anupama of Easel and Bytes
4. Divya of Easy Cooking
5. Janaki of Sincro Station
6. Priyanka of Slice of Life
7. Shaheen of The Purple Foodie
8. Nehal of Bibliophile
9. Nags of Edible Garden
10. Ria of Ria's collection
too lazy..

I found 10 versatile blogs and 5 of them are exclusive food blogs (versatile in their cooking, though). That must be telling something about me, burppp.

Now comes the hard stuff. 7 random things about me. Huh!
I asked Shyam to tell me 7 random facts about me and the first one went "You are weird" and then "You are straight forward". So I would rather make my own list, he is of no much help here.

1.When I start talking to some one new, sometimes I can go on talking for about 4 minutes before he or she cries, "you are a mallu".
2. When I go to a buffet meal, I first go check out the dessert counter to see how much starters or main course I should eat.
3. I have watched the movie "My cousin Winnie" 58 times.
4. The senior girls in my school used to call me 'half nut' and I still don't know why.
5. My favourite colour is lilac and so is half my wardrobe.
6. I love tattoos and getting tattooed, but... :(
7. I am the laziest person I have ever seen.

In a Sunburned Country

I liked the book 'A short history of nearly everything' and liked the author's style. So when I asked for recommendations on any other books of his, my friend suggested 'In a Sunburned Country', a travelogue on Australia. I didn't waste any time in ordering it and got the book in 3-4 days time (thanks to Flipkart). This is the book through which I fell in love with Bill Bryson and his humour.
Of all the types of humour, I like the self-deprecating type. Bryson scores there, hands down. Here is an excerpt about his jet-lagged self falling asleep on a trip to see the city of Sydney.

 

"I am not, I regret to say, a discreet and fetching sleeper. Most people when they nod off look as if they need a blanket; I look as if I could do with medical attention. I sleep as if injected with a powerful experimental muscle relaxant. My legs fall open in a grotesque come-hither manner; my knuckles brush the floor. Whatever is inside - tongue, uvula, moist bubbles of intestinal air - decides to leak out. From time to time, like one of those nodding duck toys, my head tips forward to empty a quart or so of viscous drool onto my lap, then falls back to begin loading again with a noise like a toilet cistern filling. And I snore, hugely and helplessly, like a cartoon character, with rubbery flapping lips and prolonged steam-valve exhalations. For long periods I grow unnaturally still, in a way that inclines onlookers to exchange glances and lean forward in concern, then dramatically I stiffen and, after a tantalizing pause, begin to bounce and jostle in a series of whole-body spasms of the sort that bring to mind an electric chair when the switch is thrown. Then I shriek once or twice in a piercing and effeminate manner and wake up to find that all motion within five hundred feet has stopped and all children under eight are clutching their mothers' hems. It is a terrible burden to bear."

 

I haven't laughed rolling on the floor reading a book for a long time. With this book, once I started I couldn't stop. So when my neighbour called up and menacingly told "satham podathe" (don't make noise), I really thought I was laughing too loud. Only after a few seconds it occurred to me that she was telling the name of the movie which we were planning to watch the next day.

 

The conversation which followed after the author was asked to take photograph while looking at a 56 feet giant lobster perched at the side of a highway:

 

'You can tell people it's an engagement photo,' I suggested.

He liked the idea. 'Yeah!' he said keenly. 'Meet the fiancee. She's not much for looks or conversation, but jeez can she scuttle!'

'At Wauchop there's a Big Bull,' he added.

I raised my eyebrows in a way that said: 'Oh yes?'

He nodded fondly. 'It's testicles swing in the breeze.'

'It has testicles?' I said, impressed.

'I'll say. If they fell on you, you wouldn't get up in a hurry.'

We took an extended moment to savor this image. 'It would make an interesting insurance claim, I suppose,' I observed at last.

'Yeah!' He liked this idea, too. "Or a newspaper headline: "Man crushed by falling bollocks".'

'"By falling bullocks' bollocks",' I offered.

 

I can keep writing more from the book, but then that's not the idea. So go ahead, get it. It is worth having in your library. Or call me up and come over and you can borrow my copy.

The best pizza ever!

So Naples is off our list of places to visit after some deliberation. We read in various reviews that the place is still filthy and the garbage problem is still not taken care of. But fate would have it that we land up in Naples for our connecting train to Sorrento on a day of strike and we were stranded there for a few hours. So we decided to make use of the time as effectively as possible. 

After dumping the luggage in lockers we decided to go in search of pizza. Our guidebook suggested Pizzeria Sorbillo Antonio E Gigi as the top one. We decided we didn't want anything lesser than the top one. We found the place in the map and started walking. It was a pretty long walk from the railway station and after asking 18 people for the way, we ended up in front of the place. We were tired after the long walk. The place was densely packed, with a lot of youngsters making merry over pizza and beer. 

Live band inside Gigi Sorbillo

Eating out with 2 vegetarians and one pseudo non-vegetarian is painful. I decided to order a pepperoni pizza. That means I have to eat the whole pizza. Once we started eating I realised, the whole walk, the wait and the ordering of the whole pizza was indeed worth it. I not only enjoyed the pizza (look at the size of it), I enjoyed even the last bite, though I knew I was eating more than double the amount of food I usually eat. I told my friends that it was the best pizza I have ever eaten in my life and I had to tell this to the chef. So while walking out we watched the handsome duo in action. One stretched the dough, made the base, filled the sauce, toppings and cheese. The other moved each of the prepared pizza into the wood oven and out of it. They posed for us and with us and I also told them that it is the best ever pizza I have had in my life. I could not have been the first one to tell them that, but that made them happy still. 

I did the walk back to the railway station in a dream and promised myself that I am going to come back to Naples to eat pizza again. So if you ever end up in Naples you know what to do. We indeed saw garbage piled up sky high on the streets of Naples. But when you can eat the best pizza ever in the world, you forgive and forget.

Here is the address:
Antonio e Gigi Sorbillo
Via Tribunal, 38 Napoli,

80138 Italy

Resolutions those were not meant to be!

It is another new year. Another resolution time. Long time back I have taken the mother of all resolutions that I will never make any new year resolutions. It had made life so much easier. But this year suddenly I felt like breaking the old resolution and making some new resolutions. What do I want to change! Hm, good question. Let me think.

1. Refurbish the house. I moved into my new house in 2003 December. May be it is time I furnish it properly, put up proper drapes, make the under the staircase aquarium. Phew! That indeed sounds like a lot of work. Let that wait.

2. I used to read a lot of books earlier. But it has fallen over the last couple of years. May be it is time I made sure I read at least 15 pages every day. That way I might finish all the books I have bought and kept in the next 4 to 5 years. Too much work? May be not. What if I ended up travelling again, can't commit. Let that wait too.

3. Too long since some wax has seen my legs and a thread has seen my eyebrows. My friends with whom I have traveled Europe have told me after seeing my hairy arms that, it is sacrilegious to being a woman to have hair on arms. Oops, I really didn't know that. May be I should start waxing my arms too. Ooh, that really sounds like too much work again.

4. Half my garden is empty. May be I should fill it up with some really beautiful flower plants. Ooh, too much work.

5. I should finish up the half finished painting, the half finished bead and thread works. Now you sort of get the point. Too much work.

6. Stay away from the laptop after reaching home. Really? Should I?

7. Exercise. It seems, this is the second most popular new year resolution. I am surprised, I thought this would be the most popular. Anyway, after my badminton partners have started showing "attitude", I have stopped playing regularly. It is not that I am bad, I do beat them once in a while, but then they are, you know, "men". There went the only exercise I could do without feeling I am exercising. Finding another one, again looks like TMW indeed.

8. Have a baby? TMW.

9. Start the school. TMW.

10. Dulce Cuppy Cakes? TMW.

I think, the lazy bum I am, is better off really just continuing how it is now. The mother of all resolutions will stay. May be let me go through 2012 like this itself and if the world doesn't end on December 21st, I will think up a list for 2013.

I always say "When the pain of not changing exceeds the pain of changing (read TMW), you will automatically change". 

Things I learnt today - 2

Let me not cheat, these are not exactly things I learned today, but happened over the last few days. But when I saw the blue butterfly's life cycle, I just couldn't stop myself from writing about my kids also.

1. This is the butterfly story. If you ever thought the whole birthing process in human beings is complicated, read this. 

 

Large Blue

The below is an extract from Wikipedia on Large Blue (butterfly)

Large Blue caterpillars feed on wild thyme or marjoram flowers for the first few days of development. Once well fed, the caterpillar secretes sweet fluids to attract red ants of the species Myrmica sabuleti. The ants then take the caterpillar back to their nest and proceed to feed from these secretions. The caterpillar then hibernates inside the ants' tunnels. On emerging from hibernation, the caterpillars will then begin to eat the red ant's eggs and larvae for up to 3 weeks. It will then hang itself by its legs on the nest's roof and build a chrysalis around itself. The caterpillar will spend a further 3 weeks transforming into the Large Blue butterfly adult. After its change from caterpillar to butterfly, the insect emerges from its chrysalis and leaves the red ant nest to find a mate. Usually, red ants will escort the newly emerged butterfly to the surface, taking it to a low plant or shrub nearby. The red ants will encircle the butterfly and ward off any predators that attempt to attack the butterfly as it dries out. After the butterfly is ready to fly away, the ants will retreat back into their nest.

(Picture and text are from Wikipedia)

I thought the whole process of egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly itself is a complicated process for a life-cycle. But this mutual association as a part of the life-cycle makes it so much more complex.  No wonder this butterfly is almost extinct. 

My kids on stage

2. Children never forget; at least not for a year. I keep getting that odd call from my kids still, telling me some story or other from their current class or their marks and ranks when they think it is good enough to make me happy. Few days back I got a call from my last year's 7th standard boys on their annual day. They were not part of anything and they were pretty upset about that. They were remembering the  drama I taught them and their performance and all the fun we had. I could feel their disappointment in not doing something similar this year.

Pumpkin flowers for lunch

female and male flowers of pumpkin

It is just one vine of pumpkin, but it is like an obsessive thought, it totally takes over one side of the garden. Then the flowers started blooming and I was waiting for a female flower. It came much later than I thought and by then the thought of cutting off the vine also passed my mind (who needs a male pumpkin vine). So when I saw the first female bud I was happy and felt a little guilty too. Then everyday I saw many male and female flowers blooming and wilting. Then on a Sunday morning while deliberating on what is for lunch today, I caught sight of those flowers and said 'let's eat them'.

I have never eaten pumpkin flowers earlier though I have heard that all parts of a pumpkin plant is edible, may be except the roots. So I started searching for a recipe for pumpkin flowers and came up with a lot of deep fried ones. The flower petals looked so delicate deep frying them sounded so brutal. So I went in for my own simple recipe.

I collected 16 flowers and they were quite a handful. I chopped them up and then the quantity looked even more. But it went inside the pan and started heating up and started shrinking and leaving water. By the time I managed to evaporate all the water and get it into the consistency I wanted, it was just a very small bowlful. Since it was only Shyam and I for lunch that day, we each had enough to taste the flowers properly.

When I started cooking I was expecting the taste of the rest of the ingredients to make up the taste of the dish. But I was pleasantly surprised to find a delicious flavour added by the pumpkin flower to the dish.

Pumpkin flower recipe

Coconut oil             - 1tsp

Mustard seeds         - 1/2 tsp

Curry leaf                - 1 sprig

Red Chilly               - 4 to 5

Onion                      - 1 medium sized

Ginger                     - 1/2 inch piece, made to paste or finely chopped

Turmeric powder    - 1/4 tsp

Chilly powder          - 1 tsp

Coriander powder   - 1tsp

Pumpkin flower      - 16* (only petals, cut into to 1cm wide strips)

Salt                          - 1/2 tsp or to taste

Grated coconut        - 1tbsp (optional)

Heat the coconut oil and add the mustard seeds. Once it finish spluttering, add the curry leaf and then the red chillies. Fry till the red chillies are starting to brown, add ginger. Add the onion, fry till the they turn translucent. Add all the powders and fry for a minute. Add the pumpkin flowers, it will turn very watery once the flowers start cooking. Stir to mix and leave it in low flame for the water to evaporate, stirring occasionally. Once it reaches the required dryness add the salt. This is important since the volume reduces tremendously, if you add the salt earlier it could turn to be more than needed. Sprinkle the grated coconut over and serve hot with steaming hot rice. I sprinkled the coconut only for my photography session, but that gave a nice crunch to the dish.

*The female flowers are bigger than the male flowers. I had 14 male and 2 female flowers. If you have many female flowers you count extra 2 female flower for 3 male flowers.
No pumpkin flowers? What the heck, call me up and come over on a weekend. If the pumpkin flowers are still there, I will make it for you :)