When I was zero years old!!

21 May 2009

My enlarging tummy arises a lot of curiosity in my little girl. Today morning while having bath she was asking Sajeev:

"Acha, when I was zero years old, whose tummy was I in?"

He answered "Amma's tummy"

She asked again,"When Amma was zero years old, whose tummy was she in?"

He answered "Mommy's tummy" (she used to call my mom, "mommy")

She replied "Oh, I see, so Mommy had two babies in her tummy!!"

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Rainy day thoughts!!

15 May 2009

Its raining outside and Singapore-rain is very short lived unlike the rain back in my hometown in Kerala. Whenever I am in a relaxed mood on a rainy day, I walk back through memory lane and become a curious little girl eagerly watching through my window seeing raindrops falling from the roof top with great force on to the ground, replacing sand and making small pits along the borders of the roof on the ground, while some other drops making tiny crowns on the ground which I used to think could fit only frogs!! There used to be tall trees around the house and its different shades of lush greenery used to provide me an unknown sense of security. There was a tall cypress tree which used to bend with the heaviness of water on its leaves. All heavy rains used to bring me a fear that it could just break into pieces, but it never did.

In Kerala, raining whole day is quite common... And, if there is a break during those downpour I used to jump out of the house to touch the wet leaves, to observe if any plant is damaged in my tiny garden. I used to have my own separate garden from the age of 6, where me and my cousin, who had one himself, used to grow different flower plants and we had a great deal of internal competition on whose garden is going to come up healthy and whose plant is to bear flower first. :) We had tiny water channels inside the garden, which were tiny rivers for us... and the plants were majestic trees on the banks of those rivers. Rain used to fill our rivers sometimes making it wider uprooting some of our plants.

 One interesting thing to do after rain was to make paper boats and float it in the pitches of brown water under the coconut trees. We used to get great satisfaction watching it floating .There is a plant which catches the raindrops and retains its shape and its kind of sticky. We used to pluck it out and put it inside the eyes which used to give a very cool feeling. A yummy memory is the cashew nut which my grandmother used to prepare for us after the rain.The mouth watering aroma used to drive me to where my grandma prepared it.  She used to say that this is to be done only during rainy days. The nuts have to be put inside fire under charcoal and when it is cooked properly, only she knows when, it's taken out and the hard husk is removed. That is one of the few things I have tasted with 100% liking. As I grew up I used to get a feeling of sadness when it used to rain, a longing for something or someone...that's the age... Now, still rain amuses me, though not as much as that of a curious little girl who always saw treasures in nature!!

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Fruit cake: Mother's Day special :-)

10 May 2009
Successful Fruit cake recipe: Mother's Day Special; Yes we made it :)

• Caramel ingredients and preparation
  

1. 1/4 cup sugar
2. 1 tbsp water
3. 1/4 cup warm water
4. 1tsp vanilla extract

 Heat 1/4 cup of sugar with 1 tbsp of water in medium heat stirring until the colour changes to dark brown. Once the colour becomes dark remove the pan and pour 1/4 cup of warm water and to this add 1tsp of vanilla extract. Be careful while adding warm water to the hot sugar syrup, it could sputter.

• First Mixing: ingredients and preparation

1. 1 cup sugar
2. 115 grams of butter, room temperature
3. 3 eggs

Blend sugar and butter by adding the eggs one by one.

• Second Mixing: ingredients and preparation

1. 1 cup cake flour (can use all purpose flour too, I came across cake flour in cold storage so went for it)
2. 2tsp baking powder
3. 1/2 tsp salt
4. 1 tsp spice powder (contains cinnamon, spices and nut mug)

Mix flour, baking powder, spice powder together. To this, add caramel water and blend well. Add sugar, butter and egg mixture and blend then all together.

• Adding nuts and dried fruits.

To the above blended mixture, add 1 cup of dried fruits (raisins, cherries, dates etc.) and 1/2 cup of nuts. I added almonds and cashew nuts cut into small pieces of about 5 mm.  

• Final step.

Pour the mixture into a greased baking pan, and bake at 176 degree

Celsius for an hour. Once done we can remove the cake . Insert a toothpick in the middle to check whether it

s cooked properly. If baking is proper, the toothpick comes out neat and

clean. Allow it to cool down and store it in a tight container. 

Our cake came out perfect and yummy!!

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Mother's Day!!

10 May 2009

Yesterday, May 10th was Mother's Day!! Even though I slept very late in the previous night surfing net and talking to some of the friends online, I felt a rush of energy. Mother's day came with the endearng thoughts of mom. The fact that she is not on this earth made me to feel lonely in the voidness of her absence... Though the gallons of energy I used to receive after talking to mom is no more, I am at the giving end now... Time to give back what has been received. Even while going through the most difficult plight she could easily convince me that everything is going to be all right. Celebration is one thing she was very enthusiastic about... After all, life is always a celebration of being alive.

 I hope sincerely that all the mothers in this world had a wonderful Mother's day. And as the saying goes, "You may only be someone in the world, but to someone else, you may be the world." 

On May 8th Aishwarya came running after coming from school with a little, cute chart. It was made up of black chart paper on which the picture of a silver trophy was pasted. Below, there was an yellow rectangular paper on which she has scribbled beautifully in her budding handwriting that "This trophy goes to the World's Best Mom -Aishwarya".  I was so proud to be a mom. It might be prepared with the help of teachers and she might have copied the words form what teacher has written on the white board but, I don't care. For me its something which my little girl is whispering to me. Sometimes ignoring certain things can be bliss ;-)

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