Party time

Lunch party tomorrow. One of my friends (we spar so much that it is a joke in our project that given a chance, we would end up killing each other) is going back so i decided to throw a party for him. i have been making preparations for it. The menu would be: Kelichana, duck vindaloo, matar paneer, dal and mishti doi. The mishti doi is baking in the oven right now. This is the first time i am making mishti doi. i don't know how it is going to turn out. The recipe said 'don't open the oven during the whole process". With my impatience, i am finding it so hard not to take a peek and check if everything is OK. i will find out tomorrow morning.

i am feeling sleepy. And i have to wake up early tomorrow and do all the cooking before they turn up.

We went out today for lunch with our clients to a thai restaurant aptly named "Thai cuisine". The food was good. We were talking about different cuisines. There is actually a Filipino dish with coagulated pig blood. They say it is really nice. They sell coagulated pig blood in the Asian store i frequent. They have pig feet, cow's tongue and an assortment of such oddities that i love gazing at in wonder. They sell live frogs too!! In dallas, we went to this chinese store and he had to drag me away because i insisted on pointing out every item to him. It is exciting to know there are so many varied, exotic recipes out there. i want to try out a dish from every country.

Ok, off to bed i go and try to wake up early and see what i can whip up for my guests. What if i oversleep and they come to find nothing ready? That would be quite something and i will never hear the end of it. But knowing them, they would start cooking themselves!!

(Un)Healthy eating

As i munch on chips worth 200 calories, i think about my eating habits. Summed up in one word - unhealthy. It is more so in this "land of milk and honey". Since i wake up with barely enough time to make a respectable entrance in the office, breakfast is a thing of the past. And then lunch. Fussypot that i am, the cafeteria is a place i have shunned since the stuffs on the menu are things i don’t want to eat. Going out for lunch everyday to the Chinese/Thai and my favourite dhosa joints is not something I can indulge in everyday because of the time (and yes, yes, money) factor. Unlike my colleagues who bring ‘tiffins” of home cooked food everyday, i don’t feel like bringing lunch to office for the simple reason that, more often than not, i would end up eating the same things for lunch and dinner (We believe in cooking in bulk so that we don’t have to come home from office every night and cook. But this is a theory he does not subscribe to but since he is not here, well, i can have all the leftover i want). Yuck.

So the solution? Of course, the vending machine, which, for a few quarters, will spew out my choice of chips/cookies and what not. And then we have popcorn almost everyday. Now add to this the fact that my diet is mostly meat or fish and not enough vegetables. The people i stay with are as health (un)conscious as i am. There has to be meat or fish on the menu everyday. And i never drink enough water. When he calls up, he reminds me to drink water. i actually have to be reminded to drink water!!! (Guilt made me gulp down a mouthful of water a few seconds back). All this despite the fact that i know i should include fruit and veggies in my diet, cut down on red meat, drink gallons of water to flush the toxins from my body, exercise daily. Maybe because i never have to worry about my weight and my skin, i guess that makes me complacent.

i have started following the adage “ An apple a day blah blah….”. So i have a green apple every day, green apple because it is crunchier tastier than the red one. And yes, yoghurt too. And, of course, chips on the side! To a healthier and fitter i.

Hurrah, we lost again!!

We lost 16-17. Again. But since we played so well, i am happy. i made two runs, got struck out twice (aw shucks!) but it was sucha terrific game that it didn't hurt that much to lose. i guess we are gearing up for the tournament. And anyways, there is always the next season when i would be a novice no more. Hope springs eternal in this little black heart of mine!!

On the work front, all is well, surprisingly. The code is almost done so i can afford to laze around. i was so worked last week that we might not meet the deadline but we are one week ahead. So we have ample time to go play "seek the bugs", squash them and have a bug-free code!!

i need to start making candles again. But i have packed up all my moulds and i am feeling so lazy to get them out! Sloth, that should be my middle name.

i am empty of words now. Let me sit back and watch those inane rona-dhona serials now and let my brain vegetate.

A cake well baked!

i baked my first cheesecake today. i woke up late (as usual). And then started on it. Spent about an hour getting everything together. And it is de-li-cious!! i kept it in the oven to cool down and it got a bit more browned that i would have liked. But it is yummy.

i made kelichana in the morning. i don't know what possessed me to put tomatoes in it. It was OK but somehow it didn't live upto my expectation. i will try again without the tomatoes. Why would anyone put tomato in kelichana??!

i was thinking about the many manipuri dishes i don't know how to cook. i mean, i can do briyani, ilish paturi, vindaloo, malai prawn curry, barbecued baby pork ribs, beef nihari...ok, ok, i am blowing my own trumpet!! i trawl the net for recipes and try out the recipes i take a fancy to. i wish i could prepare "pakora thongba", or "chagem pomba" (i love chagem pomba even though i am not a fan of "hawai zar"-fermented soyabean..go figure) or ooti with ushoi, or "kanglayen paknum". i think this time when i go home, i will get the recipes from my mother dear. You know, i never liked "ngari" (dried fish) when i was a kid. Somehow, i could never get used to the smell. So i missed out on "eromba" for the first 16 years of my life. The first time i had eromba was some thousand miles away from home. Can you beat that? But i can cook real good "sareng atoiba", "porong" and "ukabi thongba". i miss all those yummy dishes. And i miss home.

i decided i would not work in the weekend. i need to rest. As it is, i know the coming week is going to be a killer. So i might as well loll around when i can, sleep with books and wake up with a hangover of dreams.

i dream of you
And wake up drenched in your love
i reach out to touch you
And empty space is all i get

Musings of an exhausted mind

It has been a long, long week. And not a moment of respite. A deadline met. Another looming ahead. And the next week is going to be the same, wake up, go to office and slave away, code, test, come home, work till your eyes smart. By the time i drag myself to bed, i am half asleep. i am trying to recharge my batteries this weekend. By the end of July, i think i should be dying of exhaustion. Well, i get paid for this so should i be complaining?

i walk to the office everyday now. It is refreshing. As it is, i don't exercise these days. i think i should start going to the gym again but i am lazy. Oh well, i can't have everything, can i?

i am searching for a recipe for cheesecake..i am going to bake one tomorrow and take it to the office on monday and feed my colleagues. i love cooking. i love trying out new recipes because he loves eating. i remember the weekends we used to spend trying out briyani, some african chicken recipe with peanut butter (that turned out to be something i have never tried twice), trying to replicate a Chinese dish we had at our favourite restaurant (the one where we went for our first lunch together)... We both love eating good food. i am very fussy about food. It used to be a joke in my family that the number of dish i could eat could be counted on one's fingers.

i managed to find a decent recipe for cheesecake - ricotta cheesecake. i think i will make it with strawberries or raisins, whichever i get. Lets see how it turns out. Too bad he is not here to taste it. He always makes fun of the way i go running to him with a spoonful of whatever i am cooking and ask him to taste and tell me if everything is OK. Whenever we are together, i never let him cook, even though he is a decent cook. My sister says i have this phobia of letting anyone cook because i think they are going to spoil the dish!

Right now, i am watching a movie called "Dhoop". It is a sad tale of the corruption in our society, about a father running from pillar to post to get a petrol pump allotted to his dead son's name. It is so depressing. Sometimes when i watch sad movies, i surreptitiously shed tears and hope no one is watching. i do that when i read gloomy stories too. Maybe that is why i love animation films. But i digress...The film ends on a hopeful note, justice is done. But as i sit here, listening to Jagjit singing, "It is not impossible to change a regime", i think about it, about the way the system is now. i think about the way we have accepted it as something that cannot be changed. When i hear about how much you have to pay to get a job back home, about how everything is rigged, there is this feeling of impotency. Will things ever improve, will we ever start thinking for ourselves and not accept everything as inevitable? When will we start fighting for things really worth fighting for? All my life i have fought against doing things because everybody else is doing it (Would that explain why i try too hard not to be a part of the herd?). i am notorious for being the most pigheaded person around. i am a very difficult person to be with, i guess. Because i always keep asking why, what and how. i have been told so many times not to question and just listen and do whatever everybody else is doing. But my reasoning is when i have been given a brain, why shouldn't i use it? Why should i accept everything that is told to me as the truth? i want to find my own truths. You know, sometimes your elders tell you "we are telling you because we know, because we don't want you to make the same mistakes we did. We have seen life". i tell them, let me make my own mistakes, let me learn from them, let me live life, let me stumble and learn to pick myself up. i have made mistakes in life, learned from them but i have never regretted my mistakes.