Another whirlwind of shopping is what has happened over the past week... and as I see I am going to be in all probability decked in gold such that on wearing a saree the only skin visible would be on my face! I guess as my mom says, gold is an investment and do not see it as gold and jewellery, then I wonder why am I made to wear all of it! Anyways, there is nothing that can be done about it, so I shall not fret! Breathe in... breathe out ...

In between all this, to keep my sanity, I have been reading Wolf Hall. I thought why not, when its based ona very different setting and with a fair amount of history also embedded within. In fact I ordered this book a day before she got the Booker and since then I have been very thrilled and been wanting to start with it, and being at home just provides the perfect opportnity to do so. I must admit that I have really liked the hundred odd pages which I have read. I think I shall do small review on this once I am done with it.

To end this post, a snap of Whisky

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Organizing events and functions is not every person's cup of tea/coffee. This Diwali, so many friends are organizing parties and get togethers and I sit and wonder whether I shall be able to do the same if want to.

There are some who are very good at it, to understanding the nitty gritties and also using all the surrounding people in their organizing agenda and making the whole event a grand success, where as there are some who just feel lost when you are left with the reins in your hands. I think, I belong to the latter kind, where as I know some amazing women who certainly for sure belong to the former.

A marriage is an event which requires large extend of logistical precision,and even in site of having wedding planners in many cases, there seems to be many issues which crop up from right under one's foot! There are always some requirements which have been forgotten to be mentioned, or worse still,wrongly understood. There have been marriages in the family, and I have always seen how the parents of the bride run around in a flurry trying to be almost at all places at the same time, trying to ensure every guest is taken care of.

Now with the preparations for my wedding on at full swing, I see and understand the numerous tasks which have to be completed and taken care of prior to the day of the wedding. These things have to be thought over and meticulously planned to ensure that the least number of glitches shall happen on the fateful day! Apart from the venue, caterer and decorations, there are also things like travel and stay arrangements which have to be taken care of. These arrangements to be done for the relatives and guests also differ to a great extend, else that too shall call for undue talks at a later point in time, most of which you shall hear from some third party and not directly. These things tend to irritate me, but I see amma just dealing with it as a mere reality and the way things are to be. I am sure I would have been more bugged and hence not getting any work done by the end of it all.

When I see amma doing all these things single-handedly, I am thoroughly amazed at how she manages them. My dad is not free, loaded with work stuff, which ends with amma having to take care of so very many things. And, to top it, the fact that she is not used to getting work done in India, makes the difficulty factor multiplied by 10! She has been at it for the past month, and I know she has had a fair number of problems, but the happiness of having to arrange for her daughter's wedding has pretty much erased all feelings of irritation at the snail's pace at which things are happening. All I pray is that it will turn out as beautifully as she has envisaged and she will be showered with compliments on doing the perfect wedding for her daughter.

Love you Amma!

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Egg Factory is a small quaint place located off St. Mark's Road, Bangalore. This is one place which I have been frequenting lately for breakfast on many Saturday mornings after I came across Egg Factory on Burrp when I was looking for some place to go other than Koshy's for a brunch on a Saturday. We went there and were so suprised to find so many variations with just eggs and vegetables as the prime ingredients.

The have omelettes, frittatas, pastas, sandwiches, biriyanis, bhurjis and rice and curry preparations. The options in each of these categories in itself are numerous. They open at 8 am for their early breakfast crowd, and are open till 11 pm. Over the many visits, the one favourite amongst us, is the Canneloni (tube pasta) stuffed with egg and bell peppers, this is certainly one item to visit this place for.

They also have some real interesting specialities all the way from the university town of Manipal. The various items are unique and the names are something I have not heard of not even once!

Here is the Parsi special egg bhurji called Akkuri

This is the Spaghetti with scrambled eggs, this was also yumm!

This is called the Keshto, a Manipal University special. They say it might have got its name from some ingenious student!

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The weekend of October 2nd, we went to Pondicherry or as known in the surrounding areas, Puducherry. We did not start early, nor had we planned anything what we would be doing there on reaching. We had just made the reservations at Le Maison Blanche.(This was the only place we were getting rooms at such short notice) The rooms were ok, but the A/c was not working and that was not a good thing as its quite balmy in Pondicherry, not what I expected maybe in the month of Sept - Oct. I heard that the weather rarely goes better than that and it usually is struck with very humid and hot summers and the time period from oct - dec is the most comfortable for walking around a a visit. Apart from the A/c, the rooms were good, breakfast was very sumptuous and the swings and outdoor areas of the house was to die for. The plants and old furniture really did add to the whole place and each room had pictures of Hindu gods ( I do not know why). The only reason for this I could think of was , they got these pictures with the house and decided to evenly distribute it through the house.

We did not get to visit too many places, but what I did see was the beach, the Promenade ( Hidesign hotel), L'Orient, the lovely amazing shopable market, and a sand statue of Gandhi to commemorate Gandhi Jayanti.

I shall not go to into too many details, but here are some pictures of our lovely vacation. One thing though I should say is that there were these toy lights which were being sold at the beach, and you can just swirl it behind someone and make it look like a halo!

And, that is exactly what is happening here :)

Here is the sand statue of Gandhi ji

The church on the beach side.

Something interesting to remember and very apt for a coastal town I thought.

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I was sitting and watching Fashion TV, and got me wondering, how do these girls who are mostly 16 or 17 walking the ramp all from Eastern Europe and Russia. I have always heard its because of the economic conditions, which make these girls leave their homes young, in the look out for money. Many of them even drop out of schools to leave the country and join the glamour world. Is the situation so bad? How come the state of these countries were never in the news as compared to the Koreas and Afghanistans of today?

All said and done, there is some wow factor when you see some of these models, maybe the ones which finally came out victorious from the thousands who enter this modelling world with all the dreams. When I think of models, I think CIndy Crawford, Heidi Klum, Tyra Banks, Madhu Sapre,Mehr Jessia and Sheetal Mallar. When I see the VS models, I think how is it that these women can replace the people above so easily, or is it that these top models of yester years did not want to be a model for life.

There was a time when I was so enthralled by the whole glamour world, that I thought that after graduating from college, I should give it a shot, if not anything else, get a photoshoot done. Neither did I do it, and I don't think I would have been any good in their world also. Do you know what is the daily schedule for a model when they are working? I guess many would have a fair idea post the movie , Fashion. When I saw this movie, I truly loved it, and felt it touched so many lives, and sought to show the face behind the glamour that we see, admire and lust over on every magazine cover or billboard. There are so many things which we never even think about, and now atleast every girl with the model dream will have a better idea to what they are stepping into.

Its a difficult world, but when they do make it big, I think its worth it. Every profession has the risks involved and the ones which have the greater risks are the ones which do end up serving the bigger returns back to us.

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Recently I was sifting through my many drafts and I saw that there was something which I started off sometime back, but never got down to completing. So on this occasion of my 150th post, on this blog which I started way back in 2007 (after being initiated into it by a professor of mine from college) I shall be continuing this post, though completing should be the better word I think. Also, I think with the past two years in Bangalore, there have been many more points made which makes it easier to trace the foray that I have made into the kitchen. Now when I look back, I think I did certainly inched my way into it, with many puddles to jump over and at times getting my feet ankle deep in muck too!

I think it’s most appropriate to inform that all that most of these items have been made over a period of years and many people have been subjected to it. One very calming effect is that in spite of that, I think the items not mentioned here (and which came out much better) must have compensated for some of the effects, as one person in spite of all the yuck tastings, has decided to stand by as my tasting partner for life.

Now, here I take a deep breath and bare before you all, the N number of mistakes that I have committed through these years.

Paneer Capsicum

The first time I made this, I had no clue that I was supposed to be frying the masala and following which the paneer is added. So, you must be wondering, what exactly did I do??? Well, I just sauted the onions till pink and then the tomatoes, after which I dumped the capsicum, poured some water and added all the masalas which I thought appropriate! After a few minutes, I added the Paneer and promptly switched off the flame after a few minutes!

Now, here I had a very raw masala tasting, almost uncooked paneer capsicum!

Bottle gourd or Laukhi

Everyone told me that this is one of the easiest veggies to make, due to its almost negligible cooking time, and I was Oh so thrilled with this piece of information. I fried the requisite masala this time around, in a pressure cooker and then added the laukhi when the masala was done. Now I added quite a bit of water (no one told me not to add water when cooking laukhi) and then closed the lid to cook it. I opened it after 5- 7 minutes and I see a complete kichdi form of the laukhi, which barely was looking edible.

Simple Masoor Dal

I wish to believe that everyone should have burnt dal atleast once in their lifetime. It’s a very satisfying experience of screwing up something which is deemed one of the simplest activities in Indian cooking. With my dal, I not only burnt it, I also spoiled the pressure cooker, by blowing off the safety valve! The water was too less for the quantity of dal I was intending to cook (as per my mom).

Bringal aka Baigan

My recent disaster involved trying to make something similar to bhindi masala using brinjal. I do not know why I thought by just frying the brinjal, it shall take a similar appearance, which it gracefully did not and finally ended up even with less salt and chilli so that one could not even pass it off like medicinal capsules! This is one the few things which had to completely flipped into the garbage in! :(

Now with all these interesting details which I have gained knowledge in, I hope that the following years shall be a tad better than the past two in terms of cooking :)

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