Sunday, February 21, 2010

Two more down!!



As you can see above, we had some snow and some sunshine for lunch today....the combination of the mellow sweetness of the coconut rice with some tangy tart lemon rice was yummy and filling. For the recipe and some more pictures, look here & here...

Saturday, February 20, 2010

My Maiden Attempt...

...at GULAB JAMUNS!!!!!


I do not really have a recipe here. But definitely have a "Tried & Tested" certificate for the folks at Gits. I followed the recipe on the back of the box. Used whole milk instead of water as suggested, fried the Jamuns in ghee instead of oil and voila!!! The Jamuns turned out great and DH, junior and I pounced on them right away!


Some notes:
The dough took some serious kneading to become soft and pliable.
I had to be real careful not to leave any cracks on the surface when moulding them into balls.
I added some saffron to the syrup to add fragrance and color.

Evolution

As much as I would like to think that my generation of women are extremely accomplished and have survival instincts to get through any tornado that life throws at us, I do not feel confident enough to say that we have "evolved" into a stronger breed. My generation, for the most part, comes fully armed with top class education, tremendous self esteem and a very limited threshold for unfair treatment. We are capable of multitasking 10 jobs at once, confident enough to handle the family's finances, have a say in every decision and the place in society to attract awe and attention.
However, we really seem to lack the soft skills our previous generations had. Although they probably had those skills because their situation drove them to develop those for survival through their times, i believe that all the tools that the women of today have, to make them stronger and independent people have actually kind of diminished the capacity to have the soft skills that make a big difference in the harmony of a family. The level of humility, patience and tolerance that paves way for spiritual growth is subdued by the demands of the busy routines we impose on ourselves.
I believe that genetically, humans evolve with modifications to every version. Any tool that is not used or is getting in the way gets wiped off from our DNA. Fish lost their gills when they evolved into amphibians becuase it was not needed anymore for survival.As soon as humans evolved a strong spine, they lost the tail. It was getting in the way.
I do not think we need a male dominated society of the previous centuries to teach us these soft skills but I do firmly believe that these aspects of a woman's personality are what separates us as the emotionally stronger gender. We have the capacity to ease anyone's pain with compassion and unconditional love and we need to keep these skills alive and not let the fast paced lives we speed through take these away from our genes.
We need to make room for compassion and tolerance in our lives and maybe then we can claim to have become a stronger generation than our ancesters...
I wonder if my kids will have the same compassionate image of me that i have of my mother and grandmother. I hope that beautiful memories like these do not get tainted with images of frustration and intolerance in our childrens' minds just because we did not take the time to understand that sometimes a kid just needs to be kid..

On a lighter note, we have one more rice dish done....check it out here.

Friday, February 19, 2010

One Down!!!

Alright...so I managed to make Tomato Rice last night...check it out here...

Thursday, February 18, 2010

A Goal for me!

When I started this blog, it was purely meant to be a record of all my recipes for me to refer to without worrying about my computer crashing. Believe me; I have learnt that lesson the hard way! I used to save all recipes on a folder in the laptop and keep backing them up in disks I could never find later. So having them stored on the WWW seemed like an easy solution to my paranoia of losing them someday. And ever since I have them uploaded, it is so much easier to share them with friends and colleagues. But now that I am making it a public blog, it really seems so dry with only a few pictures and no text at all. Just a couple weeks ago, I saw the movie Julie & Julia and am kind of inspired by the marathon cooking Julie undertook to give herself a purpose. Although I have my hands full with a home, a toddler and a full time job, I do feel that I should undertake a marathon cooking challenge to update pictures on all my recipes. (There is no way I will get around to it otherwise!!!) So I am going to pick each category of recipes and give myself a time frame to cook them all and take blog worthy pictures.
Since both I and my DH are suckers for rice dishes, I believe I have found where I need to begin. So here goes....

Target: All rice dishes on the blog to be cooked and photographed.
Time Frame: Finish by Sunday 2/29/10

Wish me luck!!!