So I thought I can cook. What a joke!!!! My little girl is repeatedly making it a point that I CANNOT COOK.So far she has made verbal objections to the quality of the meal. But today she has taken the abuse a notch up and started splattering food all over her body and carpeting food all over the floor.I was so overwhelmed, I started to cry.It was not like whimpering or squirming but out and out full-on crying with snot coming out of my nose. All the tears just blurted out of the eye socket and I cannot stop it. It was such a serious blow to my cook's soul. Then after some time (read: 1.5 hrs), when the storm has passed and I regained my will power to clear up the mess, my cook's ego crawled back.There must be help somewhere in the net. It is too early to accept defeat.That too from a person not even a year and half old. So the search begins.....

Pregnancy Update

Today I am slightly annoyed,a little scared,totally and utterly bored and big time lonely . So far pregnancy was allright. It did not change the way I go about my life, except for the growing bump which by the way A has named as Bampu Singh and me and my friends allegedly started to refer to my yet-to-be-born baby by that name to A's utter disgust.

Mr Poxy

A(my husband) had Chicken pox from last Friday. He did not have Chicken Pox during his childhood. So finally there is sign that A is growing out of childhood. Letting apart the jokes, I was terribly stressed and depressed for the last 1 week. It is bad to have Chicken Pox yourself and it is ten times worse to see somebody else in your family having that. So much I wished I could take away his pain and irritation but could not help him either way. After 9 long days, A is much better now with most of the blisters are crusted over and I get a chance to take a breath of relief.

Things I learned unlearned and re-learned about Chicken Pox:-

Religion: Spiritual but not religious

This post was drafted almost two months back.

After spending three decades (plus a few more years, to be honest) on this planet, all of a sudden, a surge of religiousness caught the better of me. Suddenly I felt that it is not enough to be spiritual only,being a bit religious would not hurt anybody.

Amusing thing in bland office toilet

Funny thing that repeteadly amuses me in our very bland and dreary office bathroom.

Check out Photo No 1 below, it is the snapshot of the Paper towel dispenser in our office toilet.

Fall Reflection

My designer "Dust Brush and Pan"

How shamelessly could you brag over your "Dust Brush and Pan" !!!
To my defence, I am totally won over by the arty side of this functional object as much as the functionality of this artistic brush.
Seriously, bristles of a 'Dust Brush' as the evening gown of a lady- how much pumped up could one get on creativity juice to come up with something as elegant as this.

So here is what I shopped for in my Paris trip.
Designer "Dust Brush and Pan".

Korma Kalia!!!

Easy peasy Recipes for Rui Macher Korma aarRui Macher Kalia!

Weekend er extra kaaj
Aansh Charanor-Rui mach

Photo blog Paris

In some way there is a striking resemblance between Paris and Kolkata. North Kolkata to be precise. May be it is the similarity of the architecture of the buildings of the two cities that prompted me saying that, or it may be something else (is it the eccentricity of common people ???), which I have felt through but am not articulate enough to put together here in words.

A subject not at all related to food

As a kid, I was completely bowled over, when I first learnt how to draw cubes. You know, what I mean, the cube everyone used to draw as a kid,starting with two squares, one square within the other and then connecting the corners of the squares.... etc, something quite like this...

Spring is nature's way of saying, "Let's party!"

Finally spring is in the air!
So we had our first impromptu(me and A started planning for it at about 11 pm the night before ) picnic here last weekend. The plan did work out quite well. So we had a classic " Jane Austen" styled "Picnic at Box hill" with our friends.

Bottle gourd Curry

Ghontos should be called Ghontos and nothing else. So Lau Ghonto, in no possible way should be called Bottle Gourd Curry. My sincerest apologies for that.

This is a quintessential Bengali vegetarian dish. We grew up with Lau Ghonto popping up frequently in the weekly menu, specially in the summer months and to my amusement every time this dish is served, it comes with Ma’s perennial words “ Lau gorom er somoi khete hoi, pet thanda thake” .
I am looking forward to this summer Ma, when I would cook this dish and serve you with those tender and comforting words “Lau gorom e khete hoi……..”

Thank you fellow blogger for these wonderful recipes

Below are the snaps of two wonderful dishes I tried the other day, following the recipes, I found in BongMom’s cookbook ( Thank you for sharing them, BongMom.) So for the recipes you have to visit her site. The links to the recipes are tagged with the recipe names.
Enjoy!!!

It's A Snowy Thursday Morning

Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village though.
He will not see me stopping here,
To watch his woods fill up with snow...............(Robert Frost)

Laytta fish, Dino and Sunday Adda

For the last couple of weeks, we (me and A) were spending our Sunday evening in a very traditional Bengali way….that is “jomiye-adda-on-a-Sunday-evening” with our Bengali friends around. I hope by next week I would introduce “Muri” (rice crispies)and “Beguni” (Brinjal fry) in Adda too.
Last Sunday, a major point of discussion in the Adda session involved “Layttya Mach”(“Lotte Mach” as some would prefer to call it).

(“Layttya Mach” is a phosphorus rich fish).

CURRY FOR THE SOUL #2

Don’t try to find any coherence in the following paragraphs. I could assure you beforehand there is not any. I don’t intend to write any coherent passages today. I am writing this post because
1) there is no new posts in this blog since new year’s eve and
2) today I feel like writing but I do not have anything on top of my head to write about and
3) I am big time depressed. Damn you English weather! You make me homesick so bad.

Twin Recipe #1

I always get hooked to easy recipe ideas but I get really fired up by “Double Bill” kind of recipe ideas where you could finish up two different dishes putting in as much effort as needed to prepare a single dish only (or a little bit of extra effort , but only a little bit honestly!) and surely not twice as much.