When The Ship Comes Sailin' In

Once upon a time, I used to find, "I love you" very easy to say. In fact, I would say it at the drop of a hat.

Why is it so hard now? Why can I not say it as often as I used to? Why do I just say, "Thank you", when it is said to me? And no, I don't like to imagine your expression when I say that. When it comes to reciprocity now, I am guarded. I am frightened. I play safe. I instead smile back, savour the twinkle in your eyes, your smell floating like a happy cloud around me, the wrinkles and furrows I would love to smooth away and I hate myself a little bit more for being such a huge coward. For running away. For not facing reality. For being an escapist when all I actually want to do is be with you. So, I just choke back my tears, and say something silly. I would rather have you scold me or get annoyed with me than have to say what you expect me to hear.

I'm sorry for the disappointment. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm a cracked porcelain jar now that would break with a mere tap. So, instead of knocking on my heart again and again, just make me laugh now. Do your impressions, turn cartwheels, be my performing seal. One day when I have been glued together, I shall shout and scream and tell you just how much I love you. I always have. You know that, don't you?

I Don't Want To Know

I'm very stressed out and tired. My neck is hurting, my head feels it will burst into a million pieces and I'm running out of time again. I want a break, I am going to get a break and in anticipation, my body and brain are going into severe withdrawal. Does that happen with everyone or is it just me?

BLT Minus Toast and Bacon

Most days I am too tired to even want to cook. Mostly I have a salad and thaw food I always have in the freezer (which accounts for the large quantities of food that I cook). This is my favourite salad and I normally tweak it with whatever is available. Normally, it is just lettuce, tomatoes, onions. Sometimes, I also chuck in crispy bacon (when I have enough energy to crisp the bacon, i.e.) or some cooked chicken (if I have any leftover)or fried or boiled eggs. This one doesn't have anything but lettuce, tomatoes and onions, but it is beautiful, satisfying and tasty.



The Simplest Salad Recipe on the face of earth:

Lettuce (or any salad leaf) - tear into shreds
Tomatoes - Slice Lengthwise
Onion - 1 is usually enough, slice lengthwise

Chuck all of it in a salad or large bowl.

Dressing:

3 tablespoons thick yoghurt/ dahi
1 tablespoon mustard (I ran out of dijon so I used full-grained)
1/2 tablespoon virgin olive oil
Salt to taste
Pepper - about 1 teaspoon
Sugar - 3/4 teaspoon

Mix the dressing ingredients and whisk until it gets smooth and creamy and the oil blends completely.

Topping:

Parmesan cheese

Pour the dressing over the ingredients and shave loads of parmesan over the salad. Mix and eat.

If you have bacon, chicken, eggs, just mix with other ingredients. I also sometimes use olives, tuna, capers, small radishes and apples, depending on what I have in the fridge.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

According to my sister, my blog is read by a lot of people. I don't think so. I get a lot of traffic from people looking for "June Maliah boobs", "June Maliah Nude" and "June Maliah hott pics". So, the babe must be doing something to the scores of people who land up on my blog, and sorry folks for disappointing you. Who would've thought madam pumpkin-face was such an object of lust? Anyhow, my sister thinks a lot of people read my blog but don't comment because I've turned word verification on. I don't plan on turning it off, because I was getting lots of spam and it was getting redirected to my blackberry with disastrous consequences. Anyway, if there are any lurkers, do say hello. I bark and I bite but as the days go by, I'm turning milder.

Midnight Carbs Caper

Vermicelli with Eggs and Veggies



Mung Bean vermicelli
Boiled/ steamed/ cooked Vegetables (I used diced carrots, french beans, peas and corn)
Garlic - chopped into tiny bits (as much as you like, I like lots, so used 5 cloves)
Shallots - chopped
Eggs (I used 3 large ones)
Groundnut Oil
Fish Sauce
Light Soy Sauce
Lemon juice - I used 2 lemons
Green Chillies (as many as you can handle - I didn't have any, so I used chilli oil)
Coriander - Chopped
garlic shoots/ green onion shoots chopped fine


Yesterday I was watching Seinfeld and Kramer ordered Chinese and I had this sudden urge to eat garlicky noodles. Exploring the pantry did not yield any noodles, but I had loads of pasta and packs of mung bean vermicelli. So, vermicelli it was to be. I was happy because cooking this vermicelli is child's play. Thats just what I want at midnight. So, I heated some water, dunked the vermicelli in for 5 minutes, boiled the veggies, smashed the garlic and chopped it into tiny bits, chopped the shallots. Boil the vegetables until done. Chop the coriander fine, juice the lemons. I didn't do either because I discovered that the vermicelli required the lemon juice and coriander right at the end.

For final assembling, Take a large wok, heat the groundnut oil, add the garlic bits, cook until light golden, add the chopped shallots, cook until translucent, reduce the heat to medium, crack the eggs, keep stirring, add the fish sauce, soy sauce, green chillies/ chilli oil, boiled vegetables. When the eggs are firm/ cooked depending on how you like eggs, add the vermicelli (keeping the vermicelli in for more than 5 minutes will make it soft and awful), keep stirring until it is mixed uniformly. You may add more soy sauce now if you feel you want it saltier. Turn off heat. Add the lemon juice, coriander and chopped garlic/ onion shoots. Mine looked like this -



Thats it. Settle in front of TV with bowl of vermicelli, watch travel and living.

RAPID CHANGE - New Food Blog Hits the Internet

Heh! I love food, eating and cooking. Though my blog has been good for ranting and raving and getting the bile out of my system, I have been toying with the idea of starting on food posts mostly. I do plan to rant and rave, but with food in focus.

I mostly start cooking late at night when the fancy strikes, because I am a singleton and I can do weird things and I finally have a niceish kitchen that allows such madcap ventures. I don't have an oven yet, and I'm yearning to bake, but that will have to wait for atleast 3 months now.

Anyway....

The theme of my food posts will always be the same - cooking after midnight to relieve the stress and to unwind. However, I shall also post restaurant/ food delivery/ catering reviews mostly of restaurants in Calcutta and also wherever my job takes me.

I'm too impatient and mostly crap at plating, so I'll give that a pass, but since I do have a camera, there will always be pictures, even though I mostly suck at food pics.

I also can't follow recipes and I keep tweaking them, but now, I am realising that sometimes it pays not to tweak and am trying to stick to original recipes as far as possible. Most of my recipes would be original or stuff that is cooked the way my mom cooks (which is ironical, because now, she doesn't cook being a pseudo VIP and all that) and so would be an amalgamation of cooking styles from UP (Uttar Pradesh), Bengal and a hint of Punjab. That said, I love South East Asian food and so what I cook would be a crazy mixture of influences. I like to call it "Indian Cosmopolitan" but this is meant for fun, so we don't need to get too het up, do we?

This also doesn't mean that I won't write about other stuff, but food would be definitely be the focus.

Dada Solidarity

Sourav Dada has support from unexpected quarters - The Tollywood page 3 brigade. Yesterday, ye olde faithfuls organised a press conference to "raise a voice about the harassment being caused to Sourav Ganguly".

I am still recovering from my laughing bout.

Another One Bites The Dust

I have completed 2 courses successfully this year. Phew! I've passed in both. I just finished an online exam and I'm relieved that my grade was more than passable. That too with only 1 day of revision. One more to go now. This year is not so bad afterall.

AND I don't have any malaria or any similar illness, I was just exhausted and the doctor's prescribed rest. What could be better?

Underweather

I have fever. My doctor suspects malaria, but I think it is my tonsils playing up again. I hate being laid up like this. Life sucks sometimes.

Singles' Party

I am having a party for Single Women ABOVE the age of 25 next weekend or the weekend after that. All should be working, NO students and definitely should NOT be married.

Anyone interested? The venue of the party would be either my home or any well-known club in Calcutta.

If yes, please email at plumpernickel at gmail dot com.

Ten Reasons Why Indian Women Should Reject Desi Engineers in the USA

1. Wearing Sneakers all the fucking time. Nothing screams "Desi Engineer probably working as a Software Analyst in the USA" louder than a gleaming pair of Nikey sneakers.

2. Lack of any perceptible hobbies other than supposedly cool ones. This is a recent phenomena, though. Most desi men have realised how cool Jazz or deep sea diving sound. Stepping on a cruise liner sadly does not even come close to deep sea diving and owning one CD of Duke Ellington can not be called a hobby.

3. Deeply hypocritical standards. Somehow it is ok to screw American/ "foreign" women and to view thus screwed American/ "foreign" women with "respect". If an Indian woman/ girl has had sexual experiences she is filed as a slut/ immoral reprobate/ filthy and totally reprehensible. Standards for women of Indian parentage in the USA, also known as ABCDs is somewhat laxer, but funnily, they too are viewed as flawed since they haven't been brought up with good, Indian "values". I'm not making this up, it is applicable to 95% of Desi men.

4. Very annoying food habits. Though this can be a very personal thing, but I seriously feel annoyed with people who have weird food habits and are fussy. I mean, I understand the tenous connection Indian food may have, but how can anyone look down on stinky cheese and oysters? How???

5. Being stingy to the point of embarrassment. I should club this with simultaneous dollar conversion. Also while shopping need you be a human calculator and convert every fucking amount instantly? I know most people have had to struggle a lot, but sometimes when I see people who are pretty well off round of the amount of froot-loops eaten, I feel sick. There is something seriously wrong with that.

6. The constant need to be in Indian groups and to hang out with other desi engineer sorts.

7. The Amma-Mother-Mummy-Mom-Ma knows best syndrome. When, God, When will Indian men leave the suckling breast?

8. The total lack of sexual experience. I know of Desi guys actually ask their project leaders how to er... do IT just before they got married. Which is why most Indian men are still crap in bed. Women, you have been warned!

9. The hang-ups with women revealing skin. I don't even want to analyse this. That said, I feel annoyed with Indian women going all demure and sati-like after marriage when they used to be hott chicks earlier. Who does this to them? Huh?

10. The total inability to experience and respect closure.

Bah! I could go on and on and on. I really dislike desi men, especially the ones from the USA.

Plane of Situation?

I sympathisize with those who do not work in English and I'm tolerant of bad English from non-natice speakers. This one took the cake though. I was looking for a road map of a certain place and the website link said, "Click here for Plane of the situation of X"

Shelter From The Storm

Freight Train Blues

My feet are itchy and want to wander again. So, I'm posting some pictures of places I have been to and were fun.

Old Town, San Diego



Tivoli, Italy

Visions of Johanna

This is the sole annoyance I have in museums - Teenagers and idiotic kids.

Inside the Forbidden Palace

Fruit


Ducks


Dragons


Trees

Black Cabbage

My nephew and his mom (my sister) are very serious about craft activities. So when he made my mother buy some craft paper to make some crafty thing that he saw on pogo, my mother was suitably impressed. My mother described his craft as, "thin strips of paper like chopped cabbage". When she asked him what it was, the kid said, "I haven't made up my mind yet."

When The Going Gets Tough

I sincerely regret envying my brother-in-law popping in stress-busters and wondering when I would get there.