Heart attack grill!

Hello folks! Howz everybody doing? I'm doing okay. I must say I really like the travel channel a lot. Why? Because its mainly travel and food! two of my passions! But that being said- some shows really gross me out. Like there was this show about places to pig out in America. One of the places was 'Heart Attack grill' in Chandler Arizona. This place was started by Jon Basso in 2005. He was inspired when he was writing a thesis about fitness training studios where he learnt about clients cheating on their diets. This restaurant was created with the intent of serving 'Nutritional pornography'- food so bad its shocking. Aptly described 'Taste worth dying for' he serves 8000 calorie burgers with 4 burger patties, cheese, onions, no lettuce, buns with lard on them, french fries fried in lard, whole sugar cola. He calls himself 'Dr Jon, chief surgeon', the waitresses are called nurses, folks over 300lbs are given free burgers and fries. Its like 'here you want this? take it! all the stuff you've been craving for! Most of the people in his restaurant were HUGE! the patrons are called patients, the menu is called prescription and people are actually given wrist bands just like in the hospital

Here's a sample of their menu...



Notice the absence of lettuce and veggies..
jeeeez!!!!!

I am nursing my first 'Pink Eye'. Boy its annoying! First I had a sore throat/cold, the next day I see mucous building up on both the ends of my eyes and hazing out. I wipe and its back!!! Golly! I don't wish pink eye on anyone! (except rapists and murderers!)
I listened to 'Walk the line' on radio one day and I liked it so much that I wanted to watch the movie. It was nice for a one time watch..but the song is lovely!
Yesterday was Freddie Mercury's 63rd B'day. I really dunno why I like him so so much but he gets me!
Seems like everyone is having a great time..which is great!
I'll end my post here. Enjoy remaining Sunday and Monday everyone!
Lots of love
Smitha

Early morning muffin fun

Hello my sweeties! how are you all doing? Gosh, I feel like I haven't written in a long while. But I've been working hard at somethings- finding me a job, learning new things, working out, meeting new people. I don't know what's happening to me from the past two days, but I get very tired and go to bed at 11 pm and wake up at 3-4am the next morning. Its slightly uncomfortable, I try to read something but the focus is never complete. So this time, I decided to have some kitchen fun. I made oat bran muffins! Boy they turned out to be good. I had this mix from Kroger where you just mix it with water and bake it. These were too plain for my tastes, I decided to jazz it up by adding grated carrots sunflower seeds, roasted almond pieces and raisins. You can really see the beta carotene on the muffin cups..feels good that you have some nutrition going in..They don't rise much though, but very yummy! I guess toasted coconut would also go well with these.



Crossection....



I found a picture that I'd lost and wanted to post...

Here's Inky sniffing flowers..is that cute or what? I must say I adore the cat. His actions are so utterly innocent and charming! He's outside and doesn't want to come in. Have to figure out a way to get him in..



I made fresh tomato soup with our garden tomatoes. Its sooooo good and soothing and comforting! I dice tomatoes in big chunks, cover it with water and boil it till its soft and the skin comes off easily and tomatoes are cooked well. Peel the skin and make a smooth tomato puree in a blender. I also added a roasted fine chopped onion while blending. Adjust the consistency according to preference and then boil it again. Since I have fresh basil, I added a couple of fresh fine chopped basil too. Season with salt, pepper and a dash of sugar and its done! For variation, you can also add some roasted garlic. You have to be careful while cooking the tomatoes because Jamie liked it so much and wanted to make it again. She took it off heat as soon as the peel started to come off and the resultant puree was very raw. So have to make sure that the its cooked through- otherwise, needless extra time cooking.

I've been reading this book called 'The Biology of Belief' by Bruce Lipton. Its quite interesting. He says we've been led to believe that genes control a large part of our lives, you know, the Central Dogma- DNA---> RNA----> protein. But according to him, its the environment which influences genes. Genes express according to the stimulus they recieve from the environment. I can understand that- just by studying the Krebs cycle how various enzymes are expressed according to the amount of substrate. So his case is we are influencing our own biology physiologically and biochemically by the way we think, eat and live. You know I always felt that intuitively. Apparently when he introduced his idea that environment influences genes, he met with a lot of opposition from the scientific community. I was kinda surprised.

Other than this, I've been volunteering in Ouliana Zizouzenkova's lab. I'm doing it because I want to learn some additional techniques like Western blots, cell differentiation, I don't like to be at home during the day and I think I like retinoids. Their metabolism is really interesting. BUT it can be very complex and I didn't understand everything that was discussed during lab meeting. But it was heartening to know that it is hard even for folks who are already in the lab like Rumana, Julie etc. Everybody has a folder on the computer and they have to show what they did over the week. Its intense! I don't know why I'm drawn to difficult things!
Speaking of Rumana, she made such a DELICIOUS caramel custard aka flan for the lab meeting. At the first bite, it was eye popping good!! She put some condensed milk and regular milk in the custard. I will get the recipe from her and let you guys know.
I got the movie 'Bridge on River Kwai' and never ended up seeing it coz the DVD is not that great. I really wanna watch 'Julie and Julia'. I love Julia Child- very interesting character. Today on PBS she was making desserts and a french chef- he's a regular on her show. I've always been curious about those stacks of thin pancakes with some gooey stuff in the middle. She made that. But boy! the amount of butter that went into the pancakes was atrocious! 2 sticks of butter!!!! The gooey stuff in the middle was strawberry jam and roasted almond powder. The whole stack was covered with chocolate sauce. Other than these there were a lot of flambe kinda desserts, you know where they flame the dish with some alcohol. Gosh I was drooling while watching the show and I can feel my mouth water as I'm typing this!!!

I'll end here. Gotta read a retinoid paper.

Ciao folks!

Attack of the tomatoes!

Hello everyone! How are you doing? I'm doing good. A tad tired though but good. The sun has been really hot and its getting to me. Today has been a fun day. I went for a workout at noon, I had a good workout with 10 minutes of elliptical, 30 minutes of treadmill and remaining time I did weights on machines for my quads, hamstrings, triceps, biceps and abs. So it was good. Later, I met up with a friend and we went to 'The corner Deli' in Clintonville. I'd heard about the salads being good and my friend really wanted a salad and soup as she had a head cold. We had a portobello wrap, a salad with sesame dressing and miso soup. It was delicious! Later in the evening, we had a block party. Josh and Dava- our neighbours organized this one- they invited all the neighbours to a potluck party- it was at 5:30 in the evening- so more sun! It was good fun. One of my neighbours has a 10 year old son named Rudy. He's so funny and active. So we played frisbee with him and basically its nice to know who are closeby..
Our tomatoes are really peaking these days. We have quite a lot of them..just have a look..


and these are not all of them..there are plenty on the vine too!
So for the party, we made salsa naturally! It was really good



The party lasted till 9:30 and boy was I sticky after all the loafing, playing frisbee, and sitting out in the shade yet hot outside...I took a nice bath after I got home..
I think post tomatoes, our garden will end for this summer. But, we've had loads of fun with it. We grew cucumbers, marconi peppers, lettuce, raddichio, tomatoes and now 'Baby watermelon'!Look at it..



It was really sweet..

There's another West Indian dish that I really like- its called patra. This is made with taro leaf rolled with spices and tamarind paste. I bought it from the Indian store and I really like it.



Its sweet and sour in flavor....
Midnite snack- blue corn chips and salsa. Phew, I'm really tired. I think I'll end here. Wish you guys a happy week!

Meteor shower fun!

Yoohoo people! How are you all doing? I'm feeling soo good, I'm in love with the world! I'm having my morning cuppa coffee and just reliving last night's fun in my head. Yesterday, yahoo said there were gonna be meteor showers early August 12th. Obviously, I wanted to see it. So Jamie and me made plans of watching it. She was of the opinion that if we are watching it- then we have to do a thorough job of it! She's from the countryside and knows what a dark sky looks like. She says, you can see a lot more stars in the country, than in the city because of less artificial light around. First we tried our backyard, at midnite. Jamie wasn't happy with the darkness- so off we went in search of closest country we could find. A brief consultation with a friend revealed that Plain City might be a good bet. Our destination was Cosgray Park. 315N, 270 W, 33, on 161. We packed our blankets and pillow and off we went in search of this park at around 1 am. Plain city has a lot of corn fields. Finally, after half an hour of looking, we found a dark safe spot off the road, spread our blankets and lay down under the darker sky, staring at it, looking intently for shooting stars. Romantic as this sounds- clear skies, moonlight, sky filled with stars, there is a tad pesky reality to it- bugs! Buzzing in your ears, over your eyes. Manageable though. We managed to see about 15 of them. I wanted to sleep the entire night under the sky, I was so excited with the idea, but when bugs started getting in our hair- the plan got aborted.

Ideally, this is what I would have loved to see...


Source: http://www.kokeytechnology.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/meteor-shower-photo.png

But what we saw was this..



I get excited about so many things, but I also realize that I am so ignorant about so many things...this event got me thinking- do I really know what are meteor showers? So I did a search and this is what I learnt..
Meteors are bits of rock and dust that plunge into the earth's atmosphere and produce a glowing trail when they excite gas particles. This is from a website. Personally, I think, the flash of light is also because of the friction the rock particles encounter when they enter earth's atmosphere. The Perseid meteors are bits of debris shed from the comet Swift Tuttle which takes 133 years to orbit the sun and last came close to the inner solar system in 1992. Its fragments hit the earth with a speed of 59km/second- causing most to disintegrate far above the earth at altitudes of 80-120km- around the edge of space at 100km. A typical meteor is the size of a pebble or grain, but creates a column of gas that is ten of kilometers long and hundreds of meter wide. Apparently, earth accumulates about 1000 to 10,000 tonnes of materials from meteorites each day. So my children- there's your science lesson for the day!
Yesterday Jamie and me went to the Indian store. We got samosas and Jilebis. Both are deep fried samosas are salty and jilebis are syrupy sweet. I love these things. More on these things post consumption.I gtg to school now to learn gel electrophoresis, work out and come home do job search, future search, ponder on how to make the most of this life...Have a great day!

Ohio State fair recap

Hi Guys! How are you doing? I'm doing great! I've been having so much fun. On Wednesday me and Nancy went to the Ohio State Fair. I loved it! Boy it was a beautiful day neither hot nor cold- just right. We went to the Natural reserves first saw all the butterflies and birds..the owls and bald eagles were really huge! I'd never thought that they'd be that big! I love animals because I think they are innocent, cute and funny..ummm..not all of them but quite a lot of them

Bald eagle...


Butterflies..


I wanted to pet animals because I'd never been to an agricultural fair before. I loved llamas, piglets, and other marsupials from down under



Then we went and checked out the other farm animals. Jamie had mentioned that horses had arrived when she'd gone but she didn't get to see them. So I was really looking forward to see the horses. But meanwhile I had my moment of public attention. We were eating lunch while watching physical comedy..and this guy needed volunteers...so he picks me and asks me to pretend it was a supermarket and I purchased some Kashi crackers and asks me how much it cost, then he wants me to confirm with the audience that we've never met before...and he pulls a barcode from under a trunk..I didn't think it was a cool trick though..but anyways



The second one was funny though. He was gonna do mind reading. So he goes to the audience and puts the mike on people's heads, guessing their thoughts. Two teenage boys- sports in ones head, I'm a little teapot song in the other kids head. Then he finds a couple and there's a squabble going on in their heads. He comes to our row..and I'm like Oh God! please let him not pick me..you know I'm shy...all the time on the stage, my knees were shaking...but he picks me! and places the mike on my head, there's some sweet music going on, then he places the mike on his head- there's a love song going on! It was funny....

But the most gorgeous thing that I saw for the first time in my life were the horses!! Breathtaking! They were show horses and huge! Well groomed, shiny coats, wearing horsesshoes. oooh!



We were really lucky because the horse show was about to start in 5 minutes and we were at the right place at the right time. We took our seats and out came the first set of horses....they were jaw dropping, breath suckingly gorgeous!! Their manes were nicely held together by what seemed like clips and they were covered in leather belts and buckles. They were walk, trot, change directions and reverse. Pure beauty! pure grace!



Later we went to see some arts and crafts. Some really beautiful artwork by the high schoolers. Finally, some food in this blog!

A carved watermelon!



Ain't it nice?

Another thing I saw.beef cattle.I've wondered what sort of cows ended up on tables..



Have you guys seen the original pink panther movies with Peter Sellers as the bumbling Chief inspector Clouseau? Me and Jamie had seen one recently and we saw a pink panther at the fair. I wanted a picture with it..



Here's our dear friend, the gorgeous Nancy!



Foodwise, I haven't made anything worth talking about. At the fair, Nancy had a pulled pork sandwich, I had a vegetable stromboli- this was filled with broccoli- pretty good! We had fresh fried donuts with powdered sugar...they were sooo good..Nancy mentioned in the end that all the food was American street food..why yes!it was!

All in all it was a fun day! How have you guys been having fun?

.

My mom is in US of A!

Yohoo people! how are you all doing? Its 10:30 right now. My mom was supposed to land at 10:00 pm. I'm so excited she's here! It's been 5 years since I last saw her. Excited as she is to see us- she's also apprehensive about how I'll see her. She's in her mid 60's and says she looks older now and not like I last saw her in person. I tell her that I've grown older too and she'd have to tell me how I have changed. She lives alone in Southern India in Mysore with my brother just a few blocks away from her. When I was a kid, my dad was the dominant personality and he pretty much took care of everything outside the house. My mom was a stay at home mom taking care of us. She didn't know much how to operate in the outside world. So to be like my dad was to be smarter, dynamic, energetic, funny and we did not want to be like our mom. But after dad died, I'm impressed with the way mom has taken care of things. He was heavy into the stock market with such complex dealings which was hard and very time consuming. Mom learnt all that she had to do to unlock our money without any help from us and did it. Talking to her on the phone every week I've got to know my mom. She is smart and funny too and not as naive as she appears sometimes. She does a great job of taking care of her health which is a huge comfort to us. All of us kids have always felt very protective towards her. My mom is gentle and has sensitivity. She introduced me to a lot of good literature, movies and music and I really appreciate that. I want to cook for her because other than accessory help I've never cooked major meals for her. I have a feeling she will like where I live because she loves nature. I want to show her the OSU campus, Columbus Metropolitan library, RPAC, Franklin park conservatory and other places depending on her inclination. Moms are moms- you get made at them, irritated at them, fight with them, but in the end they're there for you.
Events after the last blog post: I had a potluck at my house on Saturday with my African friends. This was really a bad day for me because the potluck got decided very fast and I wasn't ready for it. Originally I had planned for just 3 people, but it turned out to be 5 and I simply was not in the mood for it as it was the first day of my period and I was in huge pain. But I had committed to it so I pulled myself together and decided to give them a taste of South India. I made rasam, cooked beans and rice. Rasam is a sweet, sour and tangy pulses soup made of split pigeon peas. This is a pretty common lunch/dinner and its comfort food for South Indians. Since it was a potluck, somebody bought a pizza so people loaded up on that and did not have much of an apetite for my food and from what little they ate of what I'd made, I'm not sure if they liked it. I have noticed it though- most people outside India prefer North Indian food over South Indian food. South Indian food has less fat, more rice and vegetables, more coconut, different spices, breads made of different kinds of healthy grains whereas North Indian food is richer. People eat more wheat, meat, tomato onion ginger garlic based curries, more kidney beans, chick peas. Personally, I think my taste buds have become international. I can eat tasty vegetarian food and a little bit of chicken from any country. Rice is not a daily need for me anymore, nor is roti or our lentil soup for that matter. I was a little disappointed though because in my opinion everything was tasty and they did not seem to like it. Oh well!

Here's a picture of rasam courtesy pachakam.com



This is how split pigeon peas look like



Sunday, I spent my day sketching the creative genius Freddie Mercury! here it is



This was very hard for me before because I was never able to align the eyes and I got angry and gave up. But I had drawn one eye and still kept it open on my bedroom floor hoping someday I'd get around to it. Then this sunday, it ocurred to me that the eyeballs should be in alignment and slightly slanted coz his face is slightly tilted. So using a scale, I got an estimate of where the eyeball should be and then drew the eye around it. I'm not superpleased with it because eyes are still not perfectly aligned and Freddie has attitude in that picture which I haven't captured. His eyes are darker too. I need to get blacker pencils. But I'm happy with the nose, lips and chin. I posted it on my facebook in case anybody had any new input for me which I hadn't noticed. I'm glad I got at least this far with it. Maybe it will be good when I draw it a second time.

Sunday Nancy dropped by to pick up the books she'd left behind. I love Nancy. She's so interesting with a wide variety of interests. She had attended an 'Art of living' workshop. Since the organization was started by an Indian guy, she wanted to know what I thought of it. Personally, I'm not very comfortable with any organized groups. To me, each person has a different way of dealing with stress and anxiety and it has a lot to do with being able to handle ones emotions. For some its journaling, working out, talking to friends and for some the techniques taught by the organization might work too. I don't have anything against them as long as they don't push it down my throat. I gave Nancy an Indian dessert called Kheer which is rice pudding. It's so supereasy to make! I boiled milk (approx half gallon) threw in a handful of rice and sugar to taste and let it thicken on low heat. Keep stirring it every few minutes so that the milk doesn't burn. The milk did get burnt a bit but the burn added a nice caramelized flavor to it. So it was really good.
Nancy got us some crossiants from Whole Foods. They were so buttery and chewy! awesome! Today we made crossiant sandwiches.



We cut a crossiant in half, slathered mustard on one end, placed some spinach, sliced tomatoes, golden browned zucchini slices, cheddar cheese slices and on the other end of the crossiant we slathered basil flavored mayo. It was really good!

Tomorrow I'm going to the Ohio State Fair for the first time with Nancy. I'm guessing its gonna be a lot of animal petting and I'm really curious about the butter sculpture and the machine which gives my percent body fat and of course food!

So long folks and good nite, sweet dreams!

Love from Smita

Garden fresh

Hello people! Thank you for your words of encouragement. I really appreciate it. I just realized only thing I have in my hands is to try my best. I really have to learn to calm down and not worry so much. As Oscar Wilde said,'The secret to a good life is to never have an emotion that is unbecoming' and I intend to practise just that. Yes m'am!
Our garden is really giving us the fruits of our planting these days. There is a distinct pleasure in eating homegrown vegetables. Everything seems tastier. The other day we had a spinach salad with marconi peppers. These are long tapered sweet peppers. We didn't know about these until we planted them. They taste very good when they are green and are super sweet when they are red. We haven't waited till they turned red but green ones are really yummy!



Our tomato plants have been quite prolific, but the tomatoes are still green. One of my friends told me to pluck the really huge greeen ones and let them turn red inside the house by letting them absorb the sun by the window. Otherwise they bruise because of insects and animals on the plant. We experimented this with a couple of tomatoes and it indeed turned red! Jamie says she likes a tomato when its all red from the inside and it was. So today was a tomato rich dinner. Jamie made bruschetta and I made tomato basil pasta with linguini noodles. I think linguini is my favorite noodle.
We had brought nice thyme bread from the farmer's market. Slice em and toast em and when hot rub some garlic on it. The aroma is simply amazing! Then place fine chopped tomato and basil, parmesan cheese on top and melt the cheese. This is simple and quite tasty. I think my next topping for bruschetta would be red marconi peppers. I have a feeling that will taste great too.



My dish- pasta- it was okay because we were impatient for the sauce to be done. So the sauce was a bit raw tomatoey. I think I would want to cook it more. I put 3 tbsp of olive oil, 4 cloves of garlic, tomatoes- a can of crushed tomatoes and one large diced tomato and towards the end a handful of basil. We grew basil too this time. One of these days maybe we'll make a basil pesto. Pour over al dente linguini pasta and, some moz cheese and voila!



For quite sometime, Jamie had been craving zucchini bread. We decided to make some and got a humungous zucchini from the farmer's market. It was a good size for 2 dollars. We wanted to make it healthy because this bread was gonna be our breakfast. So to lower the fat content, we used homemade applesauce and instead of all purpose flour we mixed one cup of wheat flour with half a cup of flaxseed powder. It's quite easy to make-

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup flaxseed powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 egg
1/3 cup canola oil
1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 tbsp plain non fat yoghurt
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup grated zucchini
1/3 cup fine chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 325 degrees farenheit. Mix the dry ingredients (flour, flaxseed, spices, baking soda and powder, cinnamon) and wet ingredients (applesauce, yoghurt, oil, egg, vanilla, sugar) separately. Mix both wet and dry ingredients and finally fold in the zucchini and walnuts. Bake for 50-60 minutes.

We made homemade applesauce. It was really really sweet- we didn't add any sugar
Peel and dice two apples (we used gala apples), cover it with water and cook covered. Remove when apples are soft. Mash.



Here's the finished product.



Quite moist and tasty. But I have to admit, I did not taste the zucchini flavor. Next time, I'll add more than a cup.

Jamie also wanted to make granola. She mixed 3 cups of rolled oats with half a cup of maple syrup, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp salt, 2 tbsp canola oil, and 1 cup nuts (peanuts and almonds). Mix and place in a preheated oven at 325 F and cook for 30-45 minutes. This was the base. After this was done, she divided it into 3 and first third with raisins, second with chocolate chips and third with both. Very nicely toasted oats and nuts. Mighty good it turned out to be!





I remember I told you about a garden burger from the farmers market. This had interesting ingredients like spelt berries, kale, balsamic vinegar, thyme, ginger, apples, carrots, garlic, onion, black beans oats, salt and pepper (writing this is like a memory test for me- how many ingredients can I remember? umm...I remember half and remaining I cheated). We had this with green beans and bread with sweet mustard salsa



Interesting cancer facts for the day: I met a cancer researcher at RPAC. He told me that within the digestive tract, previously like in 1930's-70's the predominant cancer used to be stomach cancer, but now it has shifted to colon cancer. I asked why? He said because the chemicals we are using these days in foods are different. I never noticed this trend, so it was interesting for me.
Then I'd read about how some cancer researchers believe that there will never be a cure for cancer. He said he was one of those folks and explained why. This is what I understand. At the most basic level, cancer is a disease when cells divide and multiply but do not die. For this to happen mutations need to accumulate (~15-20). For instance, take apoptosis, there are multiple gene products in the pathway of apoptosis. Mutation in one or more than one gene can impair the process and the cell does not die. For two people with the same cancer, the mutations can be in totally different genes. So, in majority of cases, no two people have the same cancer. A question occurred to me as I was typing this, can apoptosis be impaired and oncogenes be activated at the same time? I guess that will be a really rapid spread of cancer. I hope I am clear in my explantion. I really try hard to have clarity in my explanations. Feel free to ask any questions and I can bug this guy.
Researchers/professors I have noticed are very precise and accurate in their conversation. I like this. This guy is a freak though. He has run 20 marathons, broken his knee ligaments thrice, ankle ligament once and got them repaired and still keeps running. He said I should run outside too. I think I have a block against running on a hard surface like roads bacause the impact from it is hard. He said one of his favorite surfaces was snow. I said aha! he is one of the persons whom one sees running in winter and thinks 'what a jerk!'Golly! the things that pop out of my mouth!
I'll end here. Have a great day!

Farmer's market goodness

Cheers Folks! how is everyone doing? I'm doing okay. I have to admit that my spirits are kinda low coz of the constant reminders of how bad the job market is and I should be doing this doing that and the job descriptions that I see on the web seem dull. My sister reads the NY Times stories of gloom and tells me to move in with her and save my money. It's a great offer- she has a nice house, I wouldn't have to worry about rent or living, but I love my space. I function best in my space and I'm hesitant to move. My sister is great and comes up with some very nice suggestions for me, but she can be very intense too and has an effect on me and sometimes, what she wants for me is not necessarily what I want for me. At least for sometime now, I've been trying to break free from my siblings influence, so you have no idea how worried I get at the thought of moving in with her. Even though I know what I should be doing, I'm not doing it. I need something invigorating to look forward to, something imaginative, lively and fun. I'm not averse to working hard, but it should be fun hard work. Then there's another thing I do, believe the negative and question the positive about me, even when I do get positive feedback on my work. Some days, I can really write a book on how to sap your energy. But enough of that, I know if I can affect my moods this bad, then the converse is also true, I can and have pulled myself out of it too. So I need to learn to relax, think positive and not worry so much. All this worry is my creation, my emptiness, and I have to figure out a way to fill it with my imagination.
On saturday morning, Jamie and I went to Clintonville farmer's market. It was cloudy but fortunately, it rained just after we got home. There were sunflowers everywhere- these are some of my favorite flowers because they're big and bright. We bought a small bunch of flowers. Here's the kitty sitting by it..

The bike path has some really pretty purple weeds and white flowers. After the current bunch wilts, I plan to get some weeds. Evening we made some Indian bread called roti and used it as a pita. Look at it swell!

Then we made some hummus with roasted garlic and made this..Roti layered with hummus, fresh cucumbers, boiled egg and diced tomato. It was pretty good.

Then we also got some haverti cheese from the farmer's market. It is so creamy and delicious. We had it as a snack with crackers and tea.

We also got a jam- this is made of peaches and chillies. Its yummy. The chilli hits you in the end in your mouth and its not like your mouth is on fire, but you are aware of its presence.
We saw Schlinder's list on Sunday. I really liked it a lot. It's in black and white. It's about how Oskar Schlinder- a Nazi bussinessman, creates wealth and then uses this wealth to free 1100 jews from concentration camps. It just boggles me how Hitler convinced so many people to commit such horrid crimes. I'm guessing most of you have seen it already. Did you know Steven Spielberg did not accept any money for this movie he made? I love Liam Neeson too. He has a goodness about him that I really like and I think he is sexy. Who are your favorite movie stars?

The cutest cat ever!

Yohoo people! How are you all doing? I am doing great. It was awesome to have Gina-the Candid RD, Emily- the healthnut and Nancy over yesterday. Its much fun cooking when people are open to trying new things and I enjoy cooking for friends. Thanks for all the good things you said about the food on your blogs. I think you've covered pretty much everything. FYI, the snacks I made in order are -Bhelpuri, Dahi (yoghurt) puri, Aloo tikki(potato patti) with garbanzo bean curry called chole, Paani puri and the dessert is called Falooda. The conversation did raise a few questions in my head, like, why is Indian street food called 'Chaat'? Chaat means 'lick' in hindi-the national language in India- so I'm guessing it means licking good food. The other question was why does ever dish have the suffix 'puri'? I haven't been able to find the definition for it yet. First, I thought anything puffed is puri- because the fried Indian bread made from a wheat flour dough is called p00ri and here the rice in Bhel puri is puffed and the puri in paani puri(the puffed water filled one) is swollen( I'm tired of using the word puffed). However, this definition could not justify the flat crackers in dahi puri. I'll let you know when I find out.
Veering off to a totally different subject, I adore Jamie's cat Enky! He is one of the nicest cats I've met- a great innocent playful companion, non smelly, a sweet mew and this is used only when we accidently step on his tail or when he wants to get in from outside. I have to really control myself from picking him up and making him sit with me. Here are a couple of pictures


Enky lazing on my bed


Observation of my each and every move from his vantage point


All out!

Today, we had leftovers from the party. Jamie made a nice cucumber sandwich for dinner- toasted buttered bread, slices of cucumber, fine chopped onion chopped cilantro and mint, salt and pepper and a dash of ketchup. It was sooo good. Most of the times, the simplest, freshest foods are so damn tasty. For dessert we had cake with a dollop of ice cream and raspberries. you really can't go wrong with a dessert like this- it was very good.



Today, Emily had forgotten her gift from Turkey at home. So she came home to fetch it. We were watching Nancy's picture book on Greece sitting on the floor. Of course, the cat tried to be the center of attention by sprawling himself smack in the middle of the book. He was pushed aside unceremoniously. The turning of pages was bothering him I think and he bit into a page! Now the book has two tooth marks on the edge. I was quite surprised. He'd never done that before. It was a nice afternoon with Emily though. I'll miss her very much when she's gone. I really like and enjoy my friends a lot. They make my life happy.
Other than this, I applied for 2 jobs, read about food allergies in the 'nourishing traditions book', listened to a 'Concert for George Harrison' DVD while reading. This was a concert for George Harrison by all the greats like Eric Clapton, Ravishankar, the remaining Beatles (Paul and Ringo), Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Monty Python folks (apparently George was a huge fan of these folks)and Tom Hanks was there too. George Harrison was such a nice soul. I miss him. His son Dhani Harrison looks exactly like him! Jamie introduced me to this. You know you can get music concert DVD's from Netflix. I got a 'Queen live in Montreal' DVD and it was sooo good! Then I also saw one of Planet Earth DVD on Seasonal forests. I confess I slept in the middle. We usually turn our lights out when watching DVD'sand I guess that's what makes me sleep. Then I saw a little bit of Prez Obama's live press conference on Healthcare reforms. I'm not really sure of the details, but from what he says it seems like the reforms will enable doctors to make decisions with the patient in mind such that they do not prescribe treatments with their profit in mind (like prescribing a tonsillectomy, where a treatment with antibiotics will treat a case of sore throat). He also thought highly of the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland hospital. I apologize for my utter naivete in this area- it's so complex with so many tugging forces- doctors, patients, the insurance companies, republicans and democrats disagreeing, and even democrats among themselves disagree. Being a prez is hard- but I guess it's satisfying if you really want to solve problems and get some success. I have good feeling inside about Prez Obama. I'll end here.
Ciao folks! Have a wonderful day tomorrow

Indian comfort food

6/24/09 Good evening people! It's 11:50 in the night. I'm comfortably ensconced on the couch watching scrubs on tv. Life post graduation is being spent on catching up on sleep, taking care of paperwork, learning some more lab techniques from the adjacent lab, plus doing some lab work of my own, working out, watching movies and trying to figure out what to do next with my life. I just need to find that 'yess! this sounds exciting' future plan for me to focus all my energies on it. It's hazy right now, but I'm sure it'll clear up in a week (it has to!).

I met a friend at the gym yesterday who's been trying to lose weight. I gave her tips that work universally-more calories out than in and no need to give up on any of the good stuff- portion control is key. It just got me thinking that stuff that I take for granted, people may not know and need to be informed. Eating healthy is so ingrained in me, that my body gets sick if I eat too much of bad stuff. Like yesterday, Jamie and me went to Easton to buy some stuff for her brother's wedding. We got a piece of cheesecake from cheesecake factory, we split it and eating even half of it was feeling like too much. Oh, we went to Victoria's Secret too and I got an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot panty! So on that note, in addition to recipes, I'll try to include more nutritional information.
Today for dinner we had a typical North Indian spread. This meal felt so good and comforting. I love potatoes and so does Jamie. This time we got yukon gold potatoes and they are really waxy. We had Indian bread called roti, seasoned pigeon peas commonly called toor daal in India and spiced spinach and potato, also included is left over colocasia from yesterday.



Pigeon peas are one of the most popular pulses in India. Nearly each state in India has a unique way of cooking it and it is a staple. Nearly every other meal has to have these pulses in one way or another. The pulses by themselves cook to a creamy texture and taste well either spiced or just plain with salt and butter. These are the source of protein for vegetarians. I cup of this provides 203 kcal, 11.36 gm protein, 39 gm carbohydrate and 11 gm dietary fiber. It is rich in potassium, phosphorus, sodium, calcium and magnesium and also provides a lot of B vitamins.

Roti is a carbohydate source made with whole wheat flour. One roti is less than 100 calories. Colocasia is not a very common vegetable. Its a starch rich tuber. It is gooey when it cooks and takes on flavors well. Ideally, this meal would be accompanied by a cup of yoghurt in the end. But we didn't feel like it. In India, yoghurt signifies the end of a meal- it is the last course because it is supposed to cool your insides after all the spices.
This time, I made my own yoghurt. On Monday, I was invited to an Indian friend's house for dinner. I got some yoghurt for culture from them. You boil milk and cool it to lukewarm and then add approx 2 tbsp of yoghurt and place the container in a slightly warm place like the top of fridge or wrap it in something warm if its too cold and let it sit for 4-5 hours. It may take longer/ shorter time depending on outside temperature. The way I understand the process is that yoghurt contains the lactobacillus bulgaricus and milk acts as a culture medium in which the bacteria grows. Homemade yoghurt also has more water in it ( whey) and this is supposed to be very rich in B vitamins. Here's a picture...

How to make all this stuff?
Daal..
Pressure cook 1 cup of pigeon peas with 1 can diced tomatoes and three cups water.
Seasoning: Take some oil, when hot, add cumin seeds, onions and wait till onions turn traslucent and slightly brown, add 3 cloves of garlic, and grate about a tbsp of ginger. Add a dash of red chilli powder and asafoetida (this is a spice which adds a nice flavor, you need just a dash of this).
Mix it with cooked pulses and tomatoes. Give it a good whisk, add salt and a tsp of sugar and add fine chopped cilantro in the end.
6/25/09
Potato spinach...
2 tsp tsp oil in a pan, add cumin seeds when hot, add potatoes( I used 4 medium sized ones) and let it cook. When 3/4 cooked, add ginger garlic, saute, then add a packet of frozen spinach, let it cook a little and towards the end add 1/2 tsp garam masala, 1/2 cumin powder, red chilli powder to taste and 1 1/2 tsp coriander seed powder and salt to taste
Day before, Jamie made this portobello sandwich..she had some homemade sweet mustard salsa. She cooked the mushroom with the salsa on the pan and placed it on marble bread..pretty good..

Indian cooking is tasty but it does involve a lot of cleaning later.Just look at this..guess what our evening is gonna be spent doing..

I saw 'rainman' the other day. I really liked it. I like both Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. I love Alfred Hitchcock movies. I love the suspense he builds with music, the camerawork, the stories are great too and his actors are very pleasing to the eye. I have two short stories DVD that I plan to watch today...
Workoutwise, I've added swimming to my list. I took a swimming 101 class at OSU and liked it so much that i named one of my email ID's as swimmingfan. At the end of the class I was able to do freestyle but now the breathing facedown is hard for me. I swim on my back which is quite fun. Water makes me nervous and I love it at the same time. I want to include it in my routine of treadmill,elliptical and biking...I did two laps today after workout..quite fun..I also practised underwater breathing on the deep end...
A new thing that we've been doing lately- we've been adding sliced orange to our water pitcher in the fridge, so we drink orange flavored water.quite nice and refreshing...

Hello again!!

Hello people! Its been such a long time. Sorry I've been so quiet but when your nose is in the grindstone and pedal to the metal....well you get the picture. Phew!!! I finally defended my thesis on 12th June and submitted my thesis to grad school on June 19th. I tell you I've never done so many all nighters before. One day I was surprised myself when I was working till 7:30 in the morning and even then I wasn't supertired but I felt I should be and slept for an hour. It's interesting how we are so wired to sleep at night. But I never forgot the blog and kept taking pictures to post coz there have been so many good eats that I have to tell you about it. So brace yourself, this post is gonna be looong. Feel free to read it in sections. I'll proceed in the sequence in which they were made. Then there's our blooming garden which is a source of so much pleasure..ooh let's start!!



First, Jamie made this Cawliflower with almonds and lima beans. It was very good. But the flavors are so subtle that it took some zen meditation from me (whose taste buds are spice hardened) to appreciate the hint of flavors. This recipe is from a cookbook by Madhur Jaffrey. This is what went in:

Approx half a cawliflower
1 cup lima beans
1.5 tsp cornstarch
1/2 cup whole blanched almonds
2 cloves of garlic- fine chopped
2 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp dry sherry
2 quarter sized fresh ginger
11/4 tsp salt

Put cawliflower in cold water for 0.5 hour. Add lima beans to boiling water and cook them for 5 minutes and then drain. Then mix cornstarch, sherry, sesame oil and 2 tbsp water. Heat oil and saute almonds. Stir fry garlic and ginger in the same oil. Then add cawliflower, lima beans and almonds. Add 2 tbsp water and cover with a lid. Cook until cawliflower is crisply tender. Remove lid and add the cornstarch mix made earlier. Saute for 30 seconds and its done. Jamie made pasta with this- shell pasta with tomato sauce topped with bread crumbs.



This is another dish with orzo pasta, sauted broccoli, mushrooms pine nuts, a red chilli, julienned carrots and salt and pepper. Its been such a long time since I made this- I don't completely remember the recipe, but its about 7/8 right.



OMG!Don't judge a dish by the way it looks! When we were making it, both Jamie and me were like this is gonna be a disaster, but it turned out to be soooo good. This is sweet and sour tofu
I made the sauce Jamie fries the tofu.
Make a paste by mixing 1/4 cup cornstarch with approx 2 tbsp water.
Cube extra firm tofu (This is where we went wrong, we chopped it too small)into 1 inch cubes and fry them in 1/4 cup oil.
For the sauce, 3.5 tbsp white vinegar,
1/4 cup water,
2.5 tbsp sugar,
1tbsp soy sauce,
1tbsp ketchup,
1 tbsp brown sugar,
1/4 tsp ginger powder,
1/2 tsp salt,
11/2 tbsp corn starch mixed in 2 tbsp water.
Mix everything except cornstarch on medium heat and add corn starch after everything has dissolved. You have to keep an eye after adding cornstarch coz the sauce thickens and can burn.
Mix the sauce with fried tofu and garnish with toasted sesame seeds. My mouth is watering even when I'm writing about it...mmmmm
We had it with garden fresh bok choy. This was a first. I'd never had this leaves before. We grew them in our garden

In the garden.....



On the plate...



Bok choy has a cabbage like taste. It has a pungent flavor which I did not expect..like parsnips.Anyways, we made stir fried bok choy. Take a tbsp of oil, 1 clove of garlic- fine chopped, 1 tsp ginger, 2 tbsp soy sauce, 2 tsp sesame seeds and we used about 2 heads of bok choy. It turned out to be really good with sweet and sour tofu.

and here's the salad....



One of our dinners was a garden burger. Jamie bought the patties from the Clintonville farmer's market. It was awesome. The ingredients in the patty were so unusual- I'd never have thought to combine these ingredients for a burger patty. It had spelt berries(wheat), black beans, carrots, onions, oats, kale, apples, garlic, ginger, balsamic vinegar, thyme, salt and pepper. I first thought this is store bought patty- nothing much to write about, but then I had a bite..my eyes opened wide and I knew it had to come here..



I love eggs. These are so good when you're busy- they cook fast, good source of protein and you can season them in so many different ways. We made Koo Koos. This is from a recipe book. There's no way I would've thought of pairing together cawliflower and eggs.



Take a couple of cawliflower florets. Put them in boiling water for a few minutes. Then under cold water. Give it a fine chop and saute in oil with a dash of salt and pepper. Meantime, beat eggs with a pinch of baking soda, add salt and pepper and the cawliflower mix. Pour it in a pan. Cook it covered on low flame for 20 minutes. We had it with fage yoghurt.



Have you folks ever had tempeh? We got some from the Indonesian store. I did not like it very much. Maybe because it is fermented soy and it doesn't have a very good smell. We fried the tempeh after coating it with a mix made of 1/2 cup water, 11/2 tsp coriander seeds powder, 2-3 cloves of garlic and 1 tsp of salt. We had it on top of salad made of bok choy, cawliflower and boiled eggs with gado gado dressing( remember? the peanut based Indonesian dressing?). Doesn't even sound appetizing, does it? Well, I think tempeh is an acquired taste.



Deviled eggs! I love it. Jamie makes these. When I was a kid, I hated cold eggs. Now I can eat them. She boils eggs, cuts them in half, takes the yolk out and mixes it with mayonnaise (to taste- if you want more creamy, add more and vice versa), salt and pepper, blends the mix with a fork such that there are no lumps and spoons it on the egg white. For decoration she sprinkles some paprika on it. They were absolutely delicious!

I'll end this section of recipes with a dessert. Since there was a lot of cake around my B'day, we decided to make this cake when we didn't have any cake in the house. This is Low fat tiramisu, totally made by Jamie. Frankly, this is so so yummy, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference from the original and yet it's so low in fat. The recipe is from heart healthy cookbook. The picture is a tad hazy, but I'll give you the complete recipe

Cherry Chocolate tiramisu
You'll need
1 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp instant coffee granules
1 tsp vanilla extract
6 ounces ladyfingers
8 ounces fat free/low fat whipped topping, thawed
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
16 ounces frozen unsweetened pitted dark cherries; thawed and undrained
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp cornstarch
1/4 tsp almond extract
1/4 cup slivered almonds, dry roasted

In a small bow, stir together water, 1/4 cup sugar, coffee granules and vanilla until sugar has dissolved.
To assemble, dip ladyfingers (sugar side in coffee) in coffee sugar mix prepared above and make a layer of this in your dish. Spoon whipped topping over it, covering evenly and sprinkle with cocoa powder. Repeat. Cover the dish with a plastic wrap and refrigerate for 8-24 hours.
Meanwhile, halve the cherries(Jamie had bought fresh cherries, she froze it, cut it in half and threw the pits)add 2 tbsp sugar and cornstarch until cornstarch is dissolved. Bring to a boil over medium high heat. Boil for a minute stirring constant. Remove from heat and cool it. Stir in almond extract and store in refrigerator until serving time.
When serving, spoon cherry mix over individual servings. Sprinkle with toasted almonds too.
Nutrients/serving: Calories: 246. Total fat 2.5gm, sat fat 0gm, polyunsaturatedfats: 0.5gm, monounsaturated fats: 1gm. Carbohydrates: 51 gm. Sugar: 32gm. Fiber 3gm. cholesterol 4mg. Protein 3 gm; sodium 69mg.
Okay, the sugars are still high, but hey this is a dessert and if you work out and eat this, I'm sure the sugar won't get stored as fat.

Our garden is really growing well. We harvested bok choy, radicchio lettuce so far. Radicchio was very crunchy but very bitter. We made a salad and I had to take bites of bread in between to mask the bitter. Cucumber vines are spreading with yellow flowers, cabbage is growing. We had to get harvest all of radicchio to make room for the spreading cucumbers, tomatoes? look at them!!



Our single strawberry harvest..

..

Jamie got this cute Cleveland Browns grill from home..isn't this cute? We plan on grilling some portobello mushrooms and corn on this.



I got a noodles and company menu from RPAC. Plan is try some of their recipes at home. Will let you know how it turned out. I'll end here. Hope everyone is having a great summer! Cheers everyone!

Smita