Rather this, than shut eye.
BOOKS
While my husband jokes about placing personal ads seeking a new partner - preferably a book and internet hater, my current book list actually grows longer
(Its never current, it’s me, either catching up with all the books I THINK I’ve read but never actually have, or re-reading my favourite.
The Constant Gardener - By John le Carre
Harry Potter - By J. K. Rowling(Its hard to pick out a favourite. The more I re-read them, the more I love them.)
One Hundred Years Of Solitude - By Gabriel García Márquez
Aunt's aren’t gentlemen - By P.G.Wodehouse
Hopefully, the computer will never replace books, but i find most people spend more and more time reading online. Blogs, Web magazines, comics etc.
Magazines Online:
http:// www. slate. com/ ?reload=true
http:// www. infotoday. com/Online/
http:// www. sciencemag. org/
Calvin & Hobbes is an all time favourite ever since it started in 1985. Calvin with his active imagination and hobbes, his blood thirsty, borderline dangerous tiger and "pet" and their hillarious adventures that usually land Calvin in the dog house.
http:// www. calvin- and- hobbes. org/
http:// www. progressive boink. com/
HE MAN AND THE MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE - This was something i saw growing up and has stuck to the inners of my greying skull, like good pasta to your ribs. Sadly, these comics are not very easily available and thanks to a fan we at least have access to this: http://castlegrayskull.org/
EpiCurryOus Me
When I’m not thinking about colours and designs and layouts, I’m thinking about cooking. When i was India, cooking was enjoyable but then i never got to do it often enough. Like any other spoiled and pampered Indian girl, my mother did all the cooking and I was only ever the sous chef.
After I came to the US, my interests in life changed almost as dramatically as life itself.
I started cooking every meal, every day.
Then came recipes.
As an Indian, it’s a LONG WHILE before you need to start inventing recipes to make food more interesting. There are simply that many recipes that already exist that you need to try out before you get to that point!
South, North, East and West, the cooking is as different as the languages, did I mention there are 24 of them? Not to be mistaken with dialects:
Chinese has dialects, Indian languages, are just that- Languages. Starting with the script, everything’s different.
Imagine that same diversity in the food.
While this is true of every country in every region of the world, it cannot be truer of India, almost 1/6ths of the world’s population.
So armed with ideas, great cookbooks from my motherland and an ideal guinea pig, my husband, it went from just plain old cooking to passion.
FLAVOUR OF THE MONTHAPPLE PIE
Prep Time: 18-20 minutes
Cook Time: 45 minutes
Yield: 6 big wedges or 10 smaller wedges
CRUST:
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
4½ oz of butter
¼ cup of castor sugar
1 pinch salt
3-4 TBS cold water
1 egg, beaten
FILLING:
3 medium sized apples
2 pears, firm variety
3/4 cup combined, chopped, dried figs, apricots, raisins
3/4 tsp corn starch
3/4 tsp Cinnamon OR 2 TBS Cinnamon Sugar
1/4 tsp powdered Cloves
pinch Nutmeg
1 TBS butter for sauteing Apples and Pears
2 tsp Sugar
1/4 Lemon of big lemon or lime
1/2 cup Asiago cheese (or any tangy/sharp cheese), grated
Preheat Over
* Electric Oven- 180Deg Celcius (or 400 deg F)
* Gas Oven - 165deg celcius (or gas mark 3-4)
Mix the flour with salt and sugar, Then cut cold butter into small bits and pulse in Mixer (or mix by hand) till you get a mealy consistency that resembles bread crumbs. Add water 1TBS at a time and add just enough so the dough combines but is not wet. The dough should still fall apart if punched. Do NOT over work the dough. Cover with plastic wrap or damp cloth and set aside in a cool place or refridgerate.
In a big pan, heat butter and saute apples and pears together, till just soft. Add the cornstarch, sugar and all the spices. Sprinkle in the dried fruits. Add the lemon juice at the end.
On a floured surface, divide the dough into two.
Roll out dough with rollong pin to fit Pie pan up to sides. Cut off excess with a knife.
Pour the fruits into the pan. Sprinkle cheese on top.
Roll out the second piece of dough and place gently on top.
Take a fork and crimp the edges together to seal tightly.
With a small knife, make cross slits int he center and another 3 or for, to allow steam to escape (or you'll be scraping apple pie fromt the oven cieling)
Brush the top surface with egg white.
Place the pan in the center rack of the preheated oven for 40 - 45 mintues (varies with ovens), till brown on top, or till toothpick comes out clean whn inserted.
This is an authentic Dutch Recipe.
http:// foodgoat. blogspot. com/
http:// onehotstove. blogspot. com/
http:// weblogs. thingsasian. com/
http:// www. creampuffs in venice. ca/
http:// www. culiblog. org/
http:// almostvegetarian. blogspot. com/
http:// www. obsession with food. com/
http:// www. bakerina. com/
There are plenty more but I’d rather not enter the realms of the imponderable.
http:// www. jacquespepin. net/
http:// www. todd english. com/(this one is particularly decadent)
http:// www. alton brown. com/
http:// www. sanjeev kapoor. com/
http:// pauladeen. com/(While the recipes are very southern, comforting and homely, some of them will clog your arteries faster than ice forms in the Arctic in winter, but yummy none the less.)
http:// www. daisycooks. com/
One Ticket Short
Thanks to the wanderlust that exists in my gene pool (unique only to my nuclear [my parents, my brother and me] amongst our entire families on both sides) my family and I, have been to a few places. He took us on a trip when I was about 10, that covered (as extensively as possible, with time-limitations and 2 quite rebellious kids) England, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Switzerland and America. It was a long trip, spanned almost 2 months and a trip that none of us would ever forget.
We have since made quite a few trips and there are too many places that come to mind when i think "favourite". But I’ve picked out the ones that stand out unparalleled within my memory. One of them is the city i grew up in:
Bombay : IndiaHow ever much i rhapsodize about this place, it's not enough. To most everybody, the place they were born and grew up, is the best place in the world. I agree, and this quaint thought perhaps just blinds me a bit :) Although a few of my closest friends who live there say things have changed rather dramatically over the last 5 or 6 years, and in my last visit i have seen testimony to this, it still will remain my dreamland. It’s a city that has something for everyone.
The cosmopolitan population here, is as poor as it is rich and luxurious. It has the Taj Mahal hotel and also has the infamous Slums. People from all over India migrate to this city in the hope that in THIS place they will find their dream job and make all their money (the ever famous - ROTI, KAPADA AUR MAKAAN - food, clothes and a Home)
Name it, its there in this city.Doesn’t matter that trains are packed at 5 in the morning, there’s no place for people to walk on the streets because of cars, trucks, vans, Motorycycles, handcarts and there’s no place for cars to be on the road because of people. The ever increasing dust, pollution and traffic are only worsened by the fact the thousands of people continue to make it their new home.
To me, it was the place which taught me how to be independent, how to survive, how to be brave, how to make friends, JUST how TO BE.
Ha! Biased? Me? Never..
München : Germanyis the capital of the German State of Bavaria close to the Germany's border with Austria. I kid you not when i say that there is nothing fake about this fantasyland. Thought to be founded in the year 1158, what really put this world city with a heart on the modern map, was the “mad King”. The King, Ludwig II, called the "mad king" (not too kind, but most true) squandered the royal gold with much abandon literally in building his famed castles - to replicate medieval architecture and to pay homage to the operas of Wagner.
The Nueschwanstein (link to pictures), a great Landmark and a breathtaking beauty, is rumoured to have cost 3,236,000 M between the years 1869 and 1886(the year he died).This real life, dream come true castle traps its visitors in a sort of time warp, a vision almost foreseen by its founder. His treasury may not have supported him in funding his apparently mad vision and not that that stopped him from spending on it anyway, but what the government is earning from its legendary tourist value is anybody’s guess.
Waldshut - Tiengen : GermanyA friend of my father, Mr.Cana Naidu, was then living in this little town, which lies at the edge of the Southern Black Forest, right on the river Rhein, a hop into the Swiss border. A magical place where simplicity and the geographical wonder simply wins you over. We were there for all of 3 days during which time we travelled into the Switzerland a lot. For some reason we were'nt as liberal with photos here as we were in so many other places, so there’s just the album that’s inside my brainbox.
Brugge : BelgiumWalking on cobbled pavement, at ‘t Zand Square Eating chocolate Cake, at the age of 18, with my then best friend on a sun drenched late afternoon, Brugge, Belgium is a placed burned on my memory as one of the most romantic places I’ve ever seen.
I think the entire setting has something to do with it. Some very rare times you look around and think, this is it, this is as perfect as it gets and that’s what that afternoon was to me.
This quaint city, also known as the "Venice Of The North", mimicks a medieval time with its romantic canals and cobbled alleys. Also known as the Chocolate city, Bruges is also home to some modern culture and art like the new Concert Hall.
As you walk around its intimate, winding alleys you realise that one lifetime is not enough to experience a city that has a history approximately 2000 years old.
Qiqihar : ChinaThe original idea of a favourite place is related to the memories it brings - the people, the food, etc. There are very FEW places where nothing but the PLACE itself makes a mark somewhere in those grey cells.
One such place is Qiqihar, China
When one hears the word "China", there is a certain picture that forms, the ancient music, the weeping willows and the pointed hats of the rice farmers, women with painted faces, ornate carvings on jade, etc (this could go on for ever) and also a more modern picture of the strikingly contemporary cities like Shanghai that set the new standard for emerging cities.
Qiqihar is the closest city to "yuShu'tun" the village i was in. I was lucky to visit during spring and in summer, because the winters here are brutal. My parents and i have never had a more wonderful time than there. It was magic, the whole thing- the place, the fresh, clean country air and even the people. We could have been there a thousand years ago and things might have still been the same.
Just when your eyes are used to the pleasant and most natural view of farmers, growing crops, livestock etc, a half hour drive away, and you suddenly come face to face with modern buildings, malls, and seven storied IT Malls!
This city is a strange, yet reconcilable mix that is at once both frozen in time and an example of modernisation in the remotest places of this earth. Qiqihar is in the Heilongjiang province, China, a port on the Nen River near the Da Hinggan Mts, the northern most province in China bordering Russia on the east and Mongolia on the west. Rated no.50 amongst Chinas many cities, this is a moderately poor place with its main inhabitants as farmers.
How i got to be in this place is a story for another day.
Need tickets to go to :Japan
Interior China
Spain
Moroccol
Italy
Rock On
October 2004 will go down in memory forever. I was in Dallas then and Metallica had announced they were doing a tour. By a freak cosmic intervention one of their stops in that tour was DALLAS and my life suddenly made sense. It really was a dream come true. Godsmack opened, followed by Metallica for nearly 2 hours straight, no breaks.
My love affair with James Hetfield’s voice began the second I heard “Nothing Else Matters” a gazillion years ago. But to see that Demi God on stage, was something else. He always reminds me of a Lion, the way his face is shaped and his voice, and there definitely was a very König-like look to him. Metallica ROCKS. Any day…give me another concert like that any day..
My very varied list of favourites -
Metal and Rock:Metallica, Pearl Jam, Floyd, Eric Clapton, Beattles, Godsmack, Cranberries, X-treme, Red Hot CP(too many more to name- the above are just the favourites)
Alternative rock:Stained, Breaking Benjamin, Green Day, Tool
Easy Listening:Sarah Mc Lauchlin, Brian Adams, Christina Aguilera ,Enya
Classical & Instrumental:Vivaldi (the four seasons my absolute fav), Joshua Bell.