Aviyal-bit of everything

I am very happy. I am so filled with hope , peace and joy.

Unusually, this Xmas  holidays started off with me in an anxious, unsettled and restless  frame of mind.  Some of my close friends often tells me, God really has plans for each one of us and things happen for a reason ( God, I don’t like your logic really, but you’re  God right!) and God sends his angels to you in the right time. Boy, Am I blessed! HE did send his angels and they did a pretty good job. Angels, please keep doing your work, I need your help to do my things. Thank you Angels!

I feel very blessed.

We went to church for Xmas Night mass. Took a seat close to the choir. kids did not sleep at all. they came home, opened what Santa delivered while we were at church, played with it all till 1.30am.

My family did not do much over the holidays, but we did some important things, spent some great time together. House was a mess( my lack of cleaning) but I opted to play Ring around the rosie. We watched and discussed TV till very late most of the days; wandered in the shopping malls doing no shopping. it was fun.

i made palappamand mutton stew for Xmas lunch; chicken wings and pork ribs for the next day.

In nutshell , it  was great fun.. we haven’t been this happy in a long time.

Hope you all had great Xmas time too.

wishing you all great New Year

My friends,

I wanted to do few posts, but never got around it, this being shorter month, Quarter end and year end. I know most of us are working on deadlines. I can not get too late this post.

So my sincere Wishes for a blessed Xmas to you and your family. And let’s all have a great 2009!.

Take time to relax and enjoy the moment. I will try too.

While talking to mommy today, asked her about Xmas day special. She said, nothing. For one, she is sad that none of the children( and their family) are joining them for xmas( last yr elder brother’s family was there)- except my little sister & family might drop in for sometime. 2ndly, this is the interesting one, what is special these days?. In the past, when we were growing up making appam& stew, biriyani etc were only for festive occasions. Now these are everyday stuff and therefore not ‘special’ anymore. well, I have the same thoughts too..what is special?

I picked up my first ever Tag from Laksh. Write 10things about the letter assigned to you.

Anamika got ‘E’ and complained here that laksh gave her E to take revenge on her for putting too much salt in the dish she served laksh over the potluck. I can buy that. But what about me laksh? I haven’t even met you; just for planning to visit, I get ‘W’?…What?..is that even a letter?

Rules are: You leave a comment on this post, and I’ll assign you a letter. You write about ten things you love that begin with your assigned letter, and post it at your place. When people comment on your list, you give them a letter, and the chain continues on and on.

You can leave a comment and not be assigned a letter if you want. Just let me know if you want a letter to keep this going.

1. Wow!- I am genuinely surprised/happy (or exclaimed)

2. Work- I love my work. I just love it

3. Watch- I love them all, as many of them, all colors, sizes and shapes; formals and casuals

4. Water- necessity of life, cleansing, purifying, natural….

5. WWW. Your virtual world in 3ws. Life got lot easier; friendships are made and places got closer and on and on…. with this. (I am not getting into the evil side of www.)

6. Women- labeled by men as ‘mysterious” to their own conveniences. To me , most women I know are very simple and straightforward.

7. Weather- Never looked at weather forecast seriously, before moving to this part of the world. Now, life is so dependent on weather. And I love the meteorologists’ mumbo-jumbo with a snow storm, hurricane, and tornado

8. Why- Ask why 5 times (in each step) is all you need to get to the root cause of a problem. (I can see UL laughing loud at me. Girl,  I am talking about applying Root cause Analysis –Fish bone technique- at work)

9. Wisdom- like to have some of it.

10. Wanna be- wanna be much more sensible, balanced person. I have a role model to look up to in this department.

11…Oh, sorry I have to do only 10! Wow!

Consume: 100 calories=6 Ritz whole grain crackers(just 6?) =10seconds (very easy)

Burning: 100 calories =   0.6miles running=10minutes (very hard)

To loose 1lb, you need to burn 3000 calories (very very hard fact)

Rest, you do the math.

I am staring at my weighing scale….

One fine morning last week, as usual after changing for our respective places school, babysitter and work;myS,myD and self came downstairs and were saying the 2 minute morning prayer infront of Jesus.”mama, Jesus know Spanish?” asked myS. “ofcourse monu, HE knows many languages including spanish so HE can hear prayers of spanish kids…mmmm…like Dora”.

Prayers done, mama was making toast. MyS then came and asked “are we English mama? because C and I speak English”.

The toast became mama’s priority 2 at that point. “No monu..I mean yes monu….but you know bit of hindi too..ummm”. Alright mama knows she is plain malayali. as for kids, they don’t speak malayalam but english. what does that make them?. “what did you say mama?”.  ” I guess, we are getting late” said mama.

MyS turned to his truck, Mama tried to turn her full attention to the toast..mentally she was still attending to ‘malayali? English?Hindian/indian?

may be she still is…

I watch them closely. They get my complete attention; more than the leads. And they entertain me very well; more than the leads. They are named side kicks.

I watch hindi movies. I have a (weird) habit of watching the junior artists (some standing at the end of the frame) and their expressions. They entertain me a lot. Same with the dance scenes; many of them are better dancers than the leads. They don’t get their due; of course they are way too many to go into the credits roll. But girls and guys, you have my attention, whether it counts or not.

Wonder, if there is a connection to my other habit of eating curry leaves in the dishes, I don’t throw them. See curry leaves that add flavour to the dish and then thrown away with no credit while eating.

Try it they are tasty and fun!

I visit Laksh’s blog almost every (week)day. And this picture appeared in one of posts triggered my thoughts. Well, the post is about how her thanksgiving festivities were, including great food (she is a great cook too). But my thoughts went in a different direction ( people should stop showing me pics..haha. They say something and I take something else out of it). Anyways….

The picture shows all veggies, onion, ginger, coriander leaves too cut and ready on the counter. Now I can see Laksh, with an apron on, putting pots on the stove and cooking out dishes one after another. So she does the prep work and then starts cooking.(or so I think)

I, the survival cook, do differently. I cut as I cook; except meat, fish, beans/cabbage(if these are main ingredients with large quantity like in ‘beans thoran’). I put the pot on the stove, start peeling and cutting onion, by the time pot is hot so add oil, finish off cutting onion, add mustard/geera/add ionion, cut ginger garlic, stir to cook onion, add ginger garlic, start cubing tomatoes, stir again, add tomatoes, grind masala as they get cooked…like me goes. And I have few dishes cooking on the stove at the same time. Because many of the ingredients e.g. OG2 (onion, ginger, garlic), tomatoes are common in my dishes. This is my style.

No wonder Laksh is a great cook and I remain a survival cook.:)

So what is style?

“kee ja up , kee ja up ..body body” goes myD putting the blocks into the blocks bag.Now you get it? it is her attempt to sing the clean up song ‘clean up clean up everybody every where’.

myD is very fond of the TV show Franklin the turtle. At the title song only she starts dancing. And my (thoughtful ) S, who has 2 library days in school gets all Franklin books, so he can make his sister happy( giving up his own preference to get mighty machine books). I can’t be more proud of myS.

“bangalu..bangalu”‘ scream myD on top of her voice at 2am, monday early morning. The bad mama was trying to take off the gold bangles without her knowing it ( or so I thought) before sending her to baby sitter monday. No, she continued to scream till when the bangles back. She fell asleep holding firmly on to her bangalu…(this reminded me of my friend UL’s post on her D asking for ‘mala’ before getting out to go to library)

I can go on.. eh!

Getting ready to make dosa batter. MyS is all set  to help me.”mama, can you upload me?”.  Mamma me puzzled, not for long; his hands are stretched out. Got it,he can’t get on to the counter by himself. I put the soaked rice, he added the cooked rice..few minutes of blending, couple of batches. Batter done, I ‘down loaded’ him on request..from the counter.

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Kids want to snuggle up in the bed to go to sleep. MyD on dada’s side.

MyD” dada, by..tong, dada by ..tong”.  dada “‘what?’

MyS “dada, she is asking you to sing lullaby song”

dada “oh. ok, here you go…mmmmm..ummmmmmmm..mmooomm”

MyD “no dada..No mmm and mooo mooo…ting by tong”.

At that dada starts singing with words this time, mama on the other side controlling giggles.

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After months of encouragement, some cajoling and bit of threatening (don’t leave such long comment on my post..go get your own space;;:)) from few bloggers I visit, here I am stepping into this wilderness with some Aviyal.

Aviyal? you may ask. I like this dish specially the one mommy makes; it has bit of every vegetable in it and curd;and this what this blog going to be..bit of everything ( including typos) excluding profound thoughts and wisdom ( i don’t have those- May be I will acquire some from the blogspace).

Must confess that I am not that disciplined, so got to see how well I do this. so , here to the beginning…