Food dreams

I'm hungry again. So hungry that I'm weighing christmas menu choices. I have come up with these options to guarantee a food baby:

Ideally, I would have a breakfast of chilaquiles with fresh tomatillo salsa, crispy taco chips and a dab of sour cream. Lunch would be a relatively laid back affair with some form of pasta rounded out by a bowl of heavenly brownie-icecream. Around evening-ish, when it's starting to darken outside, some hot chai and pakoras would sit well. And dinner would be a 4 course monster of a meal with gobi manchurian, cutlets, tomato soup, dal makhni and bhindi masala with some garlic naan.

Alternatively, it could begin with some hot idli-vada-pongal for breakfast with some filter coffee followed by a lunch of potstickers, scallion pancakes and fried rice. Evening could entail a fancy cupcake or two and dinner could be lentil soup, a steaming falafel dish with fragrant rice and baklava.

Other options to throw into the mix are some cheesecake, a pack of kurkure with aforementioned chai and mulagurasam.

P.S. Screw the baklava. It always sounds way more appetizing than it tastes and is waaay too sticky.

True Story

You spend your childhood being the tomboy, the errand runner, the mischeif maker. You are defiant, independent and breeze though life. You have standards and are picky.

And then life catches up with you. You get a job that you didn't want in the first place. You try to fit into the mold that you never thought you'd belong in. You get married and have kids.

Defiance gives way to contemplation. You struggle to make peace, but put up a brave front so that your parents don't feel guilty. You compromise. You lie to keep others happy, something you thought you'd never do.

You focus on getting through each day, and forget the dreams you once must have had. Go without. Try to be good. Get amazing at cooking. Get constantly berated and take it all in. Be the only source of true love for your kids. And think, was it worth it?

Past me

I saw a question on the interwebs today. It asked whether past you would think present you is cool.

6 year old me would be in awe of the fact that I have the ability to bestow a box of assorted fancy chocolates on my cousins whenever I visit India.
12 year old me would be super excited that I have gone whale watching (Just like on the discovery channel!) and visited the Grand Canyon but would be slightly put off that I work a 9-5 ish job and not some mash up of marine biologist-explorer-travel show host.
Summer intern me would be jumping from sheer joy that I have the ability to go on long drives and own a god damn car.
3 years ago I remember marvelling at someone knitting a scarf. That actual clothes came out of a ball of yarn and patience was astonishing to me. I finished one last week, I think past me would be proud.

It sometimes helps to review your past perceptions. Because they change, like everything else. Don't let current you be the only one that calls the shots. There's a lot to be said for spontainiety, but there's something to be said for healthy self reflection too.

Of Finance, craft and animation

Watched a boatload of animated movies this weekend. I forgot how hilarious Finding Nemo was. Anybody remember those crazy surfer dude turtles? I mean, they sure were high on something.

Being ill forces you to stay indoors and in bed. Times like these are when you miss home the most. Even the smallest chores like deciding what food to order felt like a Herculean task. Slept a lot, berated the lack of a thermos flask and a mom to make me some piping hot filter coffee.

Couldn't do anything productive that required any mental/physical strain, so opted to crochet myself a beret. Picked out a nice bright blue yarn, hopefully will get done with it soon, my thumb is getting quite sore and my patience is on it's last legs.

I have early morning customer care calls to look forward to. Damn you Experian for billing me for five months for a subscription I did not take out! And damn me for not figuring it out earlier. I've got to be more fiscally responsible.

The great, but crowded outdoors

For Labor Day weekend, I went camping. Why I chose to go camping in another state, when California has such gorgeous state parks? Because I haven't flown anywhere recently and I missed airports. Result of all the flights (and of the fact that we put off reserving a campsite, as good procastinators do), we went camping for one night. Still major fun though.

Did some touristy things before the actual camping, drained the rental cars battery by leaving on the headlights and took lots of photos and had a fancy chocolate fondue the night before. After parking the car at the campsite, we walked to the firewood shack and then realised that we didn't have enough arms/muscles between us to take back an entire stack of firewood. Luckily, the campsite 'host'(I wonder what his job description is) drove up in his mini lorry and offered to take the lumber and kindling to our campsite for us.

After a 2 hour hike to nowhere and back, we decided to start the fire and boy did it take a while. It had rained the day before and so the ground was damp-ish and the firewood wasn't completely dry. So it was a super smoky fire which took forever to start. Damned weather. It wasn't particularly cold, so we could have done without a fire, but I wanted smores and was unwilling to let all the campfire food planning go unfulfilled. Despite blowing at the embers till I felt my lungs would give out and carefully burning our ration of newspaper and kindling, the logs just wouldn't catch fire. They just sat there and smoked, like a bunch of chain smokers on their lunch break. When the first log caught fire, I almost wept with joy, though it might have been all the smoke in my eyes. I added another log and had to start revving up my lungs again  because the fire dwindled. While prepping the burgers and the potatoes, I realised that we had a whole block of butter. And we weren't planning to use more than a smear for the potatoes. And then I had my eureka moment. I started greasing the logs with butter and man was it effective. At that moment, I felt like I deserved my own Survive-in-the-almost-wilderness TV show. I was meant to be outdoors! Guess I get it from my grandma, who insisted on drying her own firewood and using that to boil bath water even after we installed water heaters in our house.

So there you have it folks, if your fire just won't catch, add a dollop of butter. Expensive fuel indeed, but when push comes to shove, I say throw in a stick of butter.

P.S. Don't the coal embers look like rock candy?

Bucket list item #7

I want to go to Hawaii. To sit idly by the beach sipping fruity drinks, yes, but also to make popcorn in lava. For those of you who eat meat, there's even a recipe for lava roasted chicken on the web. All you do is scoop some lava on top of your chicken wrapped in leaves, and wait for it to cook. Don't count on using your shovel ever again though. Me, I figured I'd just stick to popcorn.

American Idiots

A slight digression: My blog is going through an existential crisis. So its title has been temporarily replaced by an almost quizzical 'Eh, what?' It will be re-christened with ceremony as soon as it 'finds' itself.

The American Idiot musical was less than spectacular. I found that all the parts of the musical I enjoyed involved me mouthing the words to the songs with gusto. The cast's version of 21 Guns is what prompted me to attend the musical, and in that bucket, they did not disappoint. But when they were performing the songs which I was not familiar with, I was too busy trying to like the musical to actually appreciate it.

Truth is, the story was cliched as far as coming of age stories go, and the dialogues and acting left a lot to be desired. Before I went to the musical, I read up about it online, as any half-decent bastard child of the digital age is wont to do. There was someone out there who was complaining that they had taken their children to the American Idiot musical and was shocked at the amount of profanity and obscenity. The person is clearly tech-literate enough to leave a review on a website, and is obviously concerned about the content their children are exposed to. What I fail to understand is why they wouldn't check if a show, any show, was suitable for children. I mean, each song in the album has a minimum of 3 censoring beeps for crying out loud! Blaming a show for having inappropriate content when you didn't bother to be careful is like seriously stupid. Worse than me trying to convince myself that I eat chocolate for health reasons.

All through the musical I was hoping that Billie Joe Armstrong would drop in like the internet proclaimed he might, but all I got was a very talented (voice wise) cast, a really bad script and about 30 different sized displays flashing at me, not unlike the creepy rooms where people are locked up and forced to watch propaganda till they are brainwashed.

The choreography wasn't brilliant, and mostly involved head banging in different formations. It has now become obvious to me why I am not part of the stage. That much head banging would find me popping at least 3 aspirins a day and my liver would prematurely give out. I appreciated how they maneuvered the props in and out of the scenes without making it clunky or obvious, but that is just a drama rookie's opinion. I suspect that fancier zig-zagging happens in other, better performances.

I like to think that there were many subtle references which I did not get, either as a result of not being American or of not paying enough attention to the story. But a sneaky little voice in my head tells me that I am just looking for ways to justify my uncanny enjoyment of the show despite it being utterly mediocre.

I kept hoping they would play Minority, but that wasn't in the set list. There was a good post show rendition of 'Time of your life' though which redeemed the show slightly in everyone's eyes. Verdict? It was fun, but only if you make it fun in your head. Otherwise, just be glad that you bought the relatively inexpensive tickets in the balcony and move on.