Interesting brown bag..(Thanks, Chipotle!)

Just as I was about to garbage this bag, chanced upon the writing on it and enjoyed reading it in detail. Being mindful is important to not lose out on these small surprise packages, literally! :)

Independence Day Chitrahar from back in the days...

Happy India Independence day..belated wishes!

Does anyone remember Chitrahaar from back in the days? I am sure anyone and everyone from my age-group definitely does - right? For the uninitiated, it was a bi-weekly movie song program that used to come in the Indian National Television Channel "Doordarshan". It was the only channel available back then - yes, I am from the pre-cable era (made me feel akin to dinosaur era, as I was writing this..lol!)

So every Wednesday and Friday used to be movie song night via this program .. 8pm and we were all hooked to the television. No 24-hour song channels in those days and anyways, don't think parents would have allowed that much TV-time back then! :) School lunch-break conversation would center around what were the new songs..and the thing was on special occasions, they would play the same songs!! Yes, same songs.. :)

Gandhi Jayanti meant a song from Ben Kingsley's Gandhi movie - that was the only Gandhi-based movie in those days, now we have a few more to the mix. Holi, Diwali, Ganesh Chaturthi, Raksha bandhan..you name the occasion and they had a set of canned songs which played every year. As I was thinking of a special post for India's Independence Day celeb, I thought I should repost the songs from Chitrahar that were played religiously every Independence day. If anyone is enthued enough, mind checking in this year to see if they end up playing any of these YET AGAIN!! An informal Bingo game of sorts, you know! :)

So here they go..do you remember any others? Let me know if you do..

5 years since...

I am 5 years old!!!

Happy 5th Birthday to this dear blogspace of mine. 55000+ views, 60+ followers, 120+ posts old - this is something I cherish as my own. Changing the template every now and then to give it a new look. Eating a new food has a new dimension now - how do I blog?

Thank you, Maa, for instilling this love for good food in me. It is from her that I have learnt to not only cook but also make it presentable by adding garnishes, etc. Baba is ofcourse a picky eater and thus, her challenge is always much more. Thank you, Baba, for introducing me to photography - I can never be as good! No matter how many SLRs I own, I will always think of his Yashica as "the" camera.

Thank you, my dear friends Sonali, Prajakta and Kavita, for always nudging me in the right direction and prodding me to blog when I was going through a lull here. You guys partly own this space - thank you always for your encouraging words!

My blogger friends - Sra, Somoo, Sanoli, Torview and many many more wonderful human beings - this experience is all thanks to you guys! How boring it would be to keep posting without any interaction from the other bloggers out there? Even a simple comment such as "Looks yummy" or "Interesting" goes a long way and means a lot!

Thank you, everyone, for the memories and wonderful experience related this blog - and many mores to come! :)

Dahi Bara yet again and Random thoughts!

I have to share this click with you all! I have this plant since the last three years and it has always come back vibrantly every single year without any extra care from my end. The flowers are so pretty but I never got a chance to click them in bloom. Just the other day, I was heading out to work while I saw it has it's first bloom. Not to miss the chance, immediately took out my camera and took a shot! No instagram, no editing, this was taken in a single shot! Even today, I love looking at it - what colors! I just love it! One of my friend who is an awesome painter has even thought of converting this to painting - wow, can there be a better compliment? :)

Google Mailer... 

Recently received a mailer from Google with a coupon to use their ad service for my blog. I am less likely to use it but it was kind of a validation that my blog is being noticed. :) Being termed a "small business" was also a new one for me - never thought of it like that - so refreshing that I am all the more pepped up to keep my blog going! :)

Red Velvet Cupcakes 

We have always loved the Red Velvet Cake with Cream-cheese frosting from Costco. Recently, we found that they have also got cupcake versions of the same. How could I resist getting them? ;) It was undoubtedly delicious and equal in flavor to the cake. It's gonna be a regular in our house henceforth! :)

Dahi Bara 

For the recipe, follow this link please. Enjoy this very popular street-food of Cuttack, Orissa - my mamu ghara (maternal family) is there! :)

Purple cabbage - what not to make?

Hi All -

I have officially hit a new low in experimentation. I went grocery shopping and got seduced by these bright-purple tight-bound cabbages. One part of me says "Wait, let's display some patience,  get a recipe and honorably buy this next time" - other part of me like a haughty wife refuses to listen and buys it never the less. And then for the rest of the week, I adoringly pride myself on my purchase - watch it with admiration every time I open the fridge to find something to eat but not select it for consumption as if it is a forbidden fruit. It is an asset no doubt - but it's use still evades me!

A week goes by..10 days gone..now my admiration is slowly turning into despair worrying that it's fate is not like some of the other less fortunate veggies in my pantry. This stunning beauty's destiny is also the black hole of my garbage can (literally, my garbage can is black - talk about disclosing too much detail in the current age of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare..every day a new social networking tool is enticing you to become "more" connected)! I have to eat it..but how?

A braveheart experience occurs - chop it into long slices with some red onions similarly sliced and lemon juice and a dollop of cheese-spinach dip (leftover from hubby's dinner of one night!) - well, not bad! BUUUUTTTTT, I will not eat it unless I am really hungry..since I had come back from gymn and regular dinner was still being cooked, I finished off half of this! The remaining half continued to languish in the cold frigid temperatures..am sure my fridge was gloating at that point "you thought you could get away, is it? Look who's back!" ;)

My nightmare - still three quarters of the purple cabbage remains! Time to resort to my base Indian cooking skills and see if I can still salvage my appetite for purple cabbage. So come Sunday evening and time to make dinner plans for the week, I go ahead and chop off the purple cabbage into tiny pieces and make a Indian-style cabbage curry with them! Since I was not hungry (or as I often am when there is nothing interesting enough to whet my appetite!), I had to put off "cherishing" it till Monday evening. Trust me, the suspense was killing me aside from the fact Monday blues with cloudy weather outside was not helping. Well, how did it turn out after all? Go ahead and ask that - if you have read through my entire monologue so far, may as well play along with me, eh? ;)

<< Rukawat ke liye khed hai..We will be right back >>

More in next post including a pic .. you better be back for that else ..
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Else what? There will be one less reader for that post! :p Have a great day and thanks for enduring through this timepass post! You really did not have anything better to do, did you? :)