first steps in cooking

came across this old blog - http://adukkala.blogspot.com/ and it really tuk me to my past when i really started cooking.. The author seems to work with some of the bigshot newspapers and i'm so relieved to know that even such a g8 person cud be stuck up like me!! by the way, i respect writers a lot....the most,i can say...

well to say,,my cooking experience started in room number 24, st joseph's hostel,trv...it was those kewl engineering days and we were always ravenous for anything that came by...

it had been a long time since we had omlette and so we decided to make one!!! ...we faced only one problem!!! no cooking utensils,no raw materials!! well...a little pondering helped us sneak a silver tea plate from the kitchen during our tea breaks and our dividers would replace the tongs!! fire!! yes!! we had it substituted too...........we tuk one of those big candles nayana had bot to burn her midnight oils...........for the rest of the part,,,,we bot one egg from spencers...it felt like a golden egg back then....and the spices-pepper and salt was whisked off from a visit to hotbreads,,,,,,so there we were ..all 6 of us..tired from a day of watering over the omellete and just as the bells rang for the study time, we sprang into action......the intelligent one amongst us..he he not me ofcourse had managed to bring along a matchbox ..:)

we then lighted the candle,held the plate above it and poured out the egg...all those tiny splutters and blisters gave us immense pleasure......we dint need much cajoling to finish off the last bit and as we stood there,relishing on our fete, we heard the knock on the door.....as we opened it, the stands our mother superior with a sniffing face,,,,she demanded to know the cause behind the smell in the room and we gladly attributed it to jisha's pile of unwashed clothes...well.the sister was not entirely convinced but there was not much that she could do.......so she gave us a final warning and gave us our quota of advice for the day :)

the 6 of us were so proud of ourselves and kept bragging about our omlettes to our neighbouring rooms for the rest of our stay there.........

there was a brief break from cooking as we shifted to our new house in patoor as we had a cook.......but then those study days before the exams got the better of us and we decided to venture again..this time toh, we included dayscholar friends too and had a egg party :)......soon this was followed by maggis, masala mixtures and horlicks(just to boost up pur brains)

those days were a treasure and we used to find immense glory in every single thing we did no matter how stupid it was!! weell i guess thats the factor about being young :)

Musing again!

last week has been tough enuf with all 5 days at mcdies with an average 7 hours each day :( ..My poor shoulders weighed down but it gave me a chance to examine people from different countries....

the french people attracted my attention first...i can make out only french girls toh....they are very pretty damsels(suits them very much) with often golden brown hair. Pearls are a strict must to them and all of them wear at least a pearl earring if not for a necklace..However, they are not a confident enough bunch and are usualy timid . The way they shrink back on hearing the order repeated is amazing ;) (oops,,i'm not a pessimist!).

now for the chinese part, as one of my colleagues joked, they are always confused...he he...i felt it true enuf as they spent a major part of their time in making up their minds...

as for the african kinds of people, they are pretty much sure about what they want and are very quick in placing their orders. However its difficult to grasp their orders from the hip hop rhythm in which they speak......

ok enuff of comparing people ...its turning out to be a bore......

hmm now wot? friends?? aaa Yes!!!got a couple of them there...the best is Ayeesha,whos from Uganda and has a cheery face always , then comes Prabhu from Coimbatore(doing MBA here), who the people here call Problem as they are unable to pronounce his name properly and then comes Hiran from Ahmedabad who was a s/w tester back in India and is here to get a start with a career...

Theres also Iqbal from Pakistan,who i consider like a chacha and always greet me with "Kaisi Ho??"...He finds my name amusing toh i cant understand y ??

all my life i have felt that i am not good enuf compared to the people i work along with esp in Novell where i felt it was a talented bunch and always used to wonder how i made it into there.......someday i hope i would be like Jane in Xmen3 who was finally discovered to be a wonder.... :D he he i've not yet overcome day dreaming :D

adios amigo!! (as often heard from Pablos, an Italian guy in Mcdies)

fully falthooooo

mtv fully falthoo was one of my fav shows wen i was at home....the name struck me bcoz i recently had a fully falthoo exp..well rak's bday was coming up and i had decided to surprise him.....so yday i went off shopping on all the stuff i needed and came home around 5..rak had called up in btwn to say that he was coming home but i dint quite believe him......he normally says so and comes home after some 1 hr .......so there i was sprawled comfortably on the living room carpet and wrapping up the gifts...some stir in the window made me look up and there stands my grinning rak.......i tot he had seen everything through the window,so i dint make any attempt to hide the stuffs....so i opened the door with a sheepish smile only to see him gape at the stuff inside the room........late realizations!!! our window was not all that transparent and i had mistook him!!!! gosh!!! felt so foolish........but still proceeded with the gifting ceremony......thankfully, i tink he liked d gifts and the card......personally i believe he loves anything in red :D he he.........

the sad part was that..he saw even the caking indredients and the stuff i had planned to bake :(....

but anywise with his bday being today, it was not a big loss toh! i shall try to bake the cake today.....

the most abashing event of the day happend at midnight........we had put on a movie and had pleasantly slept off.......the movie was his choice ...(he thinks my choice were really award films..well his are pathetic comedy..!!)...both were almost wafting through our dreams wen suddenly we started hearing knocks on the door,......thinking to be part of the dream, i jumped off the couch and promptly opened the door.......there stood veeru and ballu and i was so happy to find them in my dreams that i called out to rakesh to come and see......by that time they got inside and rakesh and me sat on the couch grinning at them all the while.......it took a while for them to understand that we were in sleep and they had to shake rak to wake him :D.......i followed his path and soon we were looking at them abashed......... :D

the guys had come with the cake(there goes my plan to bake a cake!!) and as in all happy scenes, rak cut the cake while we sang to glory..ballu kept going with the song and veeru and me had to stare hard at him to stop.......rak got his right of cream smeared across his face (i bet my face wash wont last to see this weekend....times have changed....now guys are more calorie and beauty conscious)......veeru gifted rak with a key chain with our pics inside it ( i was planning to give rak a turtle with our pics in it.. :( )

well it was a warm start to rak's bday and i hope his day goes through fine..!!!

happy bday my lazy fellow!!

weekend dhamakas

friday nite we went bowling with rak's friends....ballu n veeru.....comp is always amongst veeru n ballu.......rak ends up 3rd and me last.....got many gutter balls.......played 2 rounds.......had dinner outside...........learnt to eat chicken leg with knife and fork.....was from nandos....a famous one here.........their lightning system was gud...they used bottles instead of light shades.....

then saw a movie.....the dark knight.......batman3 series...i dint like toh .. others liked it...i found it sick........and we had icecream too........was 12.20 wen we finally reached home.......

sat went to do some small grocery shopping in the sat market nearby and evening went to the onam celebration by the malayalee association here....oxford malayalee association....oxmas.....he he......initially i found it funny......then i wanted to get out of it......was mostly people from the medical proff....the lectures were so funny.....tht i cudnt help guffawing......it was like some politic fanatic who was banished from kerala and found a mike here to vent all his holed up emotions....he said that the fact that mahabali was stuffed down to hell was a big political move of tht era........even rak cudnt help it...we both started laufing loud......after our merry was met, we slowly turned around only to find people staring at us........funny tht dey dint find it funny!!! (similies hurray!!)

no no i'm not mad....its just the cold....haa then....it was gud to find mallu kids playing around..we get to see mallu adults now n then but mallu kids were first timers......

the only bad part was that the women and men sat separately....the women and the kids sat in the hall while the men lurked around the corners and outside the hall.......i was so used to stick around rak that wen i had to sit alone, i felt angry at the custom and finally broke it after some 1 hr......i fished him out and orbited around him for the rest of the event......one other amusing thing was that in such events you could wish out your spouse even though both dint have cells.....

there were some dance shows as well.....one father and his daughter played some 5 dances.......one of them duet.....others along with others......(this shud inspire chax.......hes so mushy mushy on having people in the same family performing along with u....he cud with his insider!!!)

was gud..saw the traditional thiruvathira kali as well.....after a while i got so tired by the music but rak wudnt budge......he wanted to make the most of the membership fee he had to pay.(:D 10BGP for each.and 4 GBP per month)......and so we had the sadya......it was a big queue and we were ravenous by the time we got our plates filled....the sadya was ok types...but the payasam was g8.....

we got dropped back by biju chettan.......and again it was 12.30 ......

sun was spent at home with an upset stomach......thanks to the sadya, the water bill would go high this time ;)

called up some of our batch mates around.....

yday went to visit another colleague of rak's who had just had a baby.....anika....goddess durga's another name.......we think the baby looks like her mom.......

we had our dinner there and i helped rashi babhi around......shes younger to me but i got the habit of calling all north indian girls as babhis...so cudnt help it.......

i tried making chappthis like her but i ended up in more world maps....someday my day wud come.......

and today yet another day......last week was adventurous with my job at mcdies......i found it v hard and demotivating at first but i dint want to run away from it......i dont like turning away like a coward and so mind wudnt let me......and now tht i am in control, mayb i wud leave it this week.....initially i was hesitant to even mention it..,,but yes the first day was v tuf.......i expected a friendly and easy atmosphere but the thing was full action packed..........missed novell very much......it was my ideal kinda comp......with the ideal colleagues...........it had all the bits and pieces i needed........:(... got a degradation kinda feeling and the s/w engineer in my head was taking insult in every job i was asked to do......moreover the people there hardly knew english.....they were people from nepal and bangladesh and they spoke urdu and broken english mostly.....thanks to rak's lucknow origins urdu was not all alien to me and i cud keep up but the broken english really broke my spirits.....it was something of the sorts of "i coming,i do that,u no do that" kinds.......it was dampening in the sense that i felt i was wasting my time there......but the fact is that with my visa type i'm not getting any software jobs here and mcdies was a gud start to a bank account atleast(cant open one here without a job),,,,,,my colleagues were rite.....sitting at home is v boring and so i've decided to stick along to mcdies till something better comes along......atleast it wud give me a chance to buy something for rak on his bday from my own pocket(hes too lazy to read blogs......he finds this annoying just as i find his games).....reminding of which ,,,initially it was too tuf to ask for money after all the years i've been independent......but now its easy

chethan bhagath's one day at the call center is being made into a movie starred by salman? saw it from some site yday........lucky chap chethan bhagath..........that was so simple a story and it became a best seller and now a movie too!!!

lazy sat

maybe it was the lazy sat sun or mayb i was too tired .....after packing off rak to office, i set out on my usual sprawl......met Mr.Hal's son in the church courtyard.......i kept talking to him without getting down from the cycle......I wonder if the name is Hal..i dont quite remember clearly but i thought it would be impolite to ask after all the friendly gestures every sunday..........went to the highstreet and lurked around the stalls....went to St.Mary's church..its a v old church built back in the 1600's btu somehow it failed to make me gasp......but it did give me goosebumps wen i tot of the old days it portrayed.....there was a flower festival going on and the kind of exhibitions they put up really amazed me.........those were very simple compared to what we would have put up in India. like some little cloth pieces collected,toys etc..new ideas of exhibiting......

and then while coming back,popped into the empty exeter hall and discovered a new way back home.......oo it was so beautiful and dreamworld like.......shady trees on either sides,,,,,birds chirping.,,open playgrounds on either side......moss rich fences.......he he i'm not shrek toh.......


yday gave the biggest party in my life........it was onam and i dint want to make Rak feel homesick........so i browsed up some traditional recipes and made them.......they were (just to rem in my old days)...

kalan,olan,pulinji,erriseri,thoran,sambhar,rasam,pappadam,
sharkaravaratti(flop),achar,payasam,kondattam......

i'm glad to pronounce that i still dont liei them :D

oo my god i got so many guinea pigs and unluckily only one was south indian...the rest were north indians and they couldnt stand my spices......it was funny to see them eating with running noses and running helter skelter for water........:D...i dint have much(brainy me!) as i wanted to be sure of the output......but i cudnt get any obvious outputs other than a messy kitchen......which tuk me 1 hr to clear........

and yaa the homesick part...........both of us missed our families dearily and it was a lossy try......
but ya i was happy...........

2day while walking down a graveyard........a beautiful one.......not ghostly ones........i saw some grave engraved "to my dearest kenny,i simply love you".............i found it so touching and i felt that its a bliss to be in love.......love is a boon........it comes along with its package of troubles and joy but u shudd maintain a cool head to enjoy the treasure.......

every time u luk into the eyes of ur loved one, u feel something glowing within ur heart..........something warm and deep......i rem the quote i had given during coll days to some contest like love is "the bread and butter of the soul" ..he he i used to be v hungry those days and bread and butter used to be my fav.........but yes......once u r in love, ur soul becomes so dependant on it........without it u become famished......

turning out to be so mushy mushy.........better wind up......

ciao senoritta.....;) wotever tht means!

chilly old day

its been a very chilly morning and for the first time in my life i felt my fingers go numb..cycling was too hard against the wind..the market was also very dull today......but all this bad weather dint hamper the crowd...the crowd was a little less today but the chatri vegetable stall guys were still dere.......

now i have grown accustomed to the salutation young lady as in can u fill in the cycle tube for this young lady? how may i help u young lady? i remember how funny i felt when i had first heard it like in some old english movies..

bot the bday banners for rak..i guess it was a little overpriced but i cudnt resist myself.....

feeling so hungry......lemme go grab something to eat......

Notting Hill Carnival

The first carnival of my life! Notting Hill Carnival is supposed to be largest carnival of its kind in Europe and we were all the most enthusiastic to be part of this great event.

check this link for more details of this carnival.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notting_Hill_Carnival

Monday,the bank holiday is supposed to be the most spectacular day and the preceding day, Sunday is meant for kids.

Rak and me embarked on the journey around 9.45 and reached the place around 11.00. We dint have to search much for the place as there was a huge crowd flowing in and all we had to do was make sure that we followed the herd :)

I almost missed Rak near the carnival entrance only but to see him with his hands outstretched.On closer inspection, my guess was proved right! Free drinks! Not to be left out, i too collected my can and we set out further for more goodies....

The drink was some tropicana stuff and chilled! I wonder how people could drink such chilled stuff on a cold morning..but eager not to waste any free stuff, we both gulped it down. :D

and then where to go next? our herd seemed to come to a stop still with crowds sitting/standing around in groups. Both of us were so proactive enuf that we were lost in this huge crowd with not even a map!

But we dint bother much and decided to follow the universal instinct. People seemed to be oblivious of what others did and everyone just seemed to be taking snaps,eating and drinking.

But as i said, some people kept moving further down the road and so we decided to take a stroll. The roads were crowded by people on both sides and we had to walk right through the middle. I kept getting the feeling like we were like celebrities walking down an aisle with our fans on both sides of the road except for the fact that noone even noticed that we existed here :) . However i felt so bold in walking down the road like that along with Rak.

Occasional stunts were given by one gang consisting of some muscular guys and hip shaking girls who were painted and dressed like some red indian tribes..we tuk some snaps of them and found a bigger crowd in the road to the right of the one we had intially entered. We found some place in a wall near some Indian people(they were speaking hindi). We clambered up the walls which were armed with pointed iron railings to keep off the trespassers. We supported ourselves on the branches of the trees stooping over and awaited our carnival. Rak was so indignant when he found our neighbour Indian girl smoking. He felt that Indians should not forget their culture nomatter which country they are ! Better said than done!

It was funny to hear songs in foreign languages..funny because it sounded weird without being able to understand them and i wondered how we mite sound to others!

Some girls loaded with beer joined us on the walls.. We dint have to wait much and the floats started to float in....The music was amazing and there was not a single soul who dint atleast tap their feet to the rythm. We could feel the pounds of the music in our hearts and that is why Monday, the Bank Holiday and main day of the event is meant only for adults though i did find some kids in there.

The floats were amazing.Rich vibrant colours and costumes added with wonderful music made every scene spectacular.

It was then that it struck me that these carnivals resemble the festivals we have back in India the only difference being that here they celebrate just being alive and kicking whereas in India, even our joys are divided by communities and religions. Yet, when i asked myself the question as to whether i would like my native ones more, the answer was a strong yes. Maybe its because as they say old habits die hard! and moreover they do have a more emotional touch..

ok back to the roads....There were men and women walking on long sticks and their elegance made us hold our breath. Rak kept clicking on and i shall paste the link in this post.

After some 5-10 floats, we saw people milling towards our direction and we couldnt make out a thing. But the sight of a big crowd coming towards you is a little tempting to flee and so we dint resist. We got down from the walls and decided to head the crowd. It was funny in the sense that first, we dint know where we were and 2, we dint know where we were headed.But still we kept floating :D

We found the much awaited makeshift toilets...first timers :D....seemed quite ok i should say..and by then we were in middle of the crowd. We kept going until we reached a junction where the crowd seemd to disperse in 3 directions and we were again confused. But the sign of foods helped us in making up our minds. We headed straight to find many food stalls loaded with delicious aromatic food. It looked very enticing to taste the food and give commentaries like in some travelogues but we were skeptic.Hams were also plenty within and Rak had already confused me that Hams meant the backside of pigs! So better hungry than puking, we moved around.

Jerk chicken seemed to be the star in almost all the stalls and we kept peeping in almost every stalls to figure out what it was. Finally hunger got the bets of us and we treated ourselves to fried rice and a BBQ(thats barbeque) chicken....Wow! i loved the touch ups they have used!

and then we kept wandering along the streets viewing all the activities going around.. On some lanes,loud music was set up and open discos were going on. Got to see the real life DJs...wow the black are really kewl...the way they keep on babbling in the rock and roll rhythm is really amazing..

Finally we chanced upon one more lane where the crowd was mightier. We came across several floats again. These were more vivid ones and more livelier.

Most of the floats were from the West Indies and their energy and stamina levels,both for men and women alike are awesome. They kept dancing and shaking their hips to the loud overflowing music.

The road on which this event was taking place had apartments on either side and some apartments were cashing in on their locality ...they were offering comfortable carnival watching spots. Beers were also being sold and people dint seem to mind the high rates..

Police kept patrolling around ..but people dint seem to be unruly and we couldn't see any police cordoning. They were mainly there to guide people in finding their way to their destination.

Oh, and i saw some people smoking grass......they just wrap some straw kinda stuff in a white paper, light it and keep puffing off it.

6 hours at the carnival started taking the toll on us and we had to retreat by 5.00. There was no difficulty in finding our way back and the police did a mighty good job. Even in a crowd, there was no fear of unwanted poking and so there was no need to loose cool.

we graced upon KFC on our way back and the place was so crammed up. I guess they couldnt manage the carnival crowd and so the place was strewn with empty boxes and ketchups.But we were so hungry to be put off by all this mess and we promptly cleaned off a table and started gluttoning.

However i couldnt finish mine and Rak had me scared that buses wouldnt allow eatables on board. I believed him so much that i made a funny scene by trying to hide the KFC box behind my legs while boarding the bus,only to find people inside eating and drinking comfortably.

I was so exhausted to pick up a fight and so we spent our return journey musing over the carnival.

Rak badly wanted the stamina of the carribean people and i wanted their stature.

Wishing hard on these,we made our way back home and ended up our day with a movie and a round of home food :D

gluttony! long live thy glory!


here are some pics:
http://picasaweb.google.com/geniusinside/NottingHillCarnival?authkey=1wjcbP5gIWo