Pages

Monday, February 11, 2013

Survival of the cooker

The display name project 365 of twitter has been keeping me busy and I had started ignoring this blog. Today, though, I have some interesting news. As of today, I'm officially a cooker. No no.. Not the pressure kind. The cooking kind. I mean, I have learnt to cook a few basic recipes that would help me NOT JUST survive, but help me retain sesnsation of my taste buds. 

 Yes, I have not just learnt to cook/make the Tambrahm essentials of Molagapodi, Thenga podi and Dhaniya podi, but have also made my first prototype test and I'm pleased to announce that it has been a grand success.

 This post is part 1 of the series where I shall describe the procedure to what all I have made.

 First up

 Molaga Podi (Chilli/Gunpowder):

 Disclaimer: Follow the links if you aren't sure what these ingredients are. I have linked them to bigbasket.com from where I buy my groceries. I have no other association with them.

 3/4th tumbler of Kadalai paruppu (Gram dhal)
1/4th tumbler of Vellai uLundhu (white urad dhal)
About 10 MoLaga Red Chillies (Any variety that you prefer. Add more if you like it to be extra spicy) 
About a Rs.5 coin sized piece of Perungaayam (Asafoetida/Hing), if you are using the solid kind. If you are using the powder, add about a tablespoon full. More if you like the smell of it.
1/4th tumbler of eLLu (Til)
About a tablespoon of oil (any oil that you prefer - I used refined sunflower oil)
About a two-thumbs sized piece of vellam (jaggery) for a tinge of sweetness. Avoid it if you don't like sweetness. Personally, I feel this is what makes it taste brilliant. I have a sweet tooth, you see.
Salt - As necessary

 I hadn't measured it in terms of weight. My Mom hates doing that. Everything is measured only by the eye. "You'll know how much is enough when you see it" is what she says and I seem to follow her.

 Okay, I've put up the image of the tumbler below if you still need measurements. 

Note that my hands are huge. Bigger than a typical guy's. So, keep that in mind. :P

 1 tumbler = approximately 150gm of Paruppu (Dhal). Not sure though.
Take all the ingredients mentioned above, except the eLLu and fry it in a pan on medium flame with any oil that you prefer (I used refined sunflower oil) until both the paruppu turn golden yellow. Make sure to keep Sautéing it to avoid burning it. The chilli would also have started emitting its odour by now. Once done frying, keep this mix aside to cool down.

 Now, take the eLLu that is remaining and Sauté it on a pan without any oil. This has to be done dry. The eLLu will start to burst like pop corn. Be careful not to get burnt by the bursting grains. The raw smell would have disappeared by now and the colour would've also turned to golden-yellow. This indicates that it is cooked. Remove the pan away from the fire.

 Now, take the previous mix of Red chillies, Kadalai Paruppu, VeLLai ULundhu and asafoetida, after making sure that it has cooled down sufficiently for your mixer, grind it along with a lemon-sized piece of tamarind and Rock-salt as necessary. (Rock salt lends a better taste than free-flowing powdered salt).

 Last step is to add the eLLu that has been cooling down all this while to the already ground powder and grind them all together.

 That's it. It's done. That was simple, wasn't it?

Allow it to cool down and store it in an air-tight container. The measurements mentioned here will make the powder last for about a week for a single person, if used everyday. 

 This can be mixed with rice, used as a side-dish for Idly, Dosai, Thayir saadham (Curd rice) etc.

 Enjoy. :)

 Let me know if you try this out and how it turned out to be. And if you have any tips/tricks in survival skills, leave it in the comments.

 I will follow-up with posts on the recipes of Thenga podi and Dhaniya podi soon.
2 comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Indha Avinasi oru visuvaasi - MMKR Dialogue compilation

After +Mirnalini Venkatraman posted some dialogue reference to a dialogue from Thilli Mullu on twitter, I had asked her what she meant and got blasted for not getting the reference. This +Ashokha Varshini gave me the imposition to write for such a grave ignorance. Then, @_curses tweeted another dialogue from MMKR which also I didn't seem to "get". Just like Avinasi, I am also one visuvaasi so, as an alternative to writing imposition, I decided to download a watch both Michael Madana Kama Rajan and Thillu Mullu again and live tweet both movies' dialogues and I did. This blog post is to compile all those tweets into a single source for future reference as suggested by +bala kumaran So, here goes:




































Thanks to all of you who had tweeted, for making this as comprehensive as possible. Please @reply tweet to me or post here in the comments, some of the dialogues that we (everyone tagged in the tweets above) may have missed.

Next post: #ThilluMullu based :)

No comments:

Monday, January 7, 2013

Thank you, Knowledgeable Chennai Crowd

The idea of visiting the town of charm - Chennai originated with a friend moving there in April last year. I had been there on May but that was the worst time of the year to visit a place like that. Everyone knows the 3 seasons of Chennai - Hot, Hotter and Hottest! And May is falls in middle of the hottest months of the year.
Anyway, this blog is not about my earlier visit, so I'll stop there.
I will not talk about how I despise Chennai Summers, either. This being the winter, I expected it to be bearable, if not pleasant, but to my surprise it was actually VERY pleasant.

'Twas the Season to be jolly. Yeah. The Christmas season had arrived and it had been over a month since another friend had moved to Chennai. That was an incentive for me to visit the city. Thanks to twitter, I now know a lot more people from Chennai than from my own town. So, took the opportunity of the year-end-shutdown at office to visit all of them.

Boy, was that a great decision! I may not have partied for the New year's. I may not have drunk. I may not have traveled, but what could be better than meeting some awesome people! As an icing on the cake, I got to go to the ARR live-in-concert.

Was that brilliant or what! My first ever concert. Rain-drenched. Soaking-wet. The crowd had not moved an inch. I, being what's known as "Enthu pattani", went to the venue at 2PM for the 6PM concert to put towel and hold seats for my friends (you know who you are, #giuTreat). Rained all through until the concert began, but I got to hear the songs being performed even before it did. All the artists were there rehearsing back stage with the mics ON. :D
The man's called AR RahGod for no silly reason. We were literally drenched by "Isai Puyal" (Musical cyclone). Whatte Man!
Except for a few screw-ups by Hariharan and  the ads for Jaya TV serials in between the songs, I had the time of my life at the concert.

I made sure I met as many twitter folks as possible over multiple tweet-ups. First one was a small one in a posh tea kadai called Pascucci and the second one was over dinner at a restaurant called Kailash Parbat. Both nice places. Was blown away by the crowd that was waiting outside Kailash Parbat when we exited. Didn't think the food was THAT great. The ambiance was good, though.

Stood in the queue for 5 hours to get to see the deity at the Singa-Perumal koil on Vaikunta Ekadasi day.

Wasted money in watching The Hobbit. Before you outrage, I Haven't watched LoTR series, so...

After the itching wait, finally got to watch Sivaji 3D in Dolby ATMOS at Sathyam Cinemas. I owe an apology to everyone who turned up that day for I had all their tickets and ended up being terribly late. Sorry. Really.

You! Yes, you! Go watch it. If you haven't watched it yet or even if you have, book a ticket to Chennai and watch it in ATMOS. Mind-blowing it is. And it is a completely different movie in 3D.

Watched NKPK - One hilarious movie this one is. Watch it if you already haven't.

Went to the Vandalur Zoo. Whatte place! Spent one entire day there and if you love animals, this is a must-see. One suggestion - Don't take the golf cart. Take the cycle or walk, if you want to see all animals leisurely.

Met some long-time-no-see friends, but only briefly - Most of them being busy. Looks like only I was completely vetti this time of the year. :P Anyway, I could use this as an excuse for going again. Chennai is just 6 hours away from Bangalore.

If only Chennai had Bangalore's weather, I'll gladly move. Whatte town. What warmth. What people! Love the place, although I have no deep connection to it.

And did I mention my romance with trains? Chennai's sub-urban trains - oh my love!

With that came the time to pack-up and get back to the grind. What a way to end a year and start another one. Thank you Chennai. Thanks to all the people who made it to the tweet-ups and to the ones I met. Yuvaar the bestest!

Here's wishing you 2013 to be the best year so far, in your lives. Take care. Be good. Until next time... :)
No comments:

Monday, December 31, 2012

2012 - Retrospect

1. Traveled by an International flight for the first time
2. Visited a foreign county for the first time
3. Saw roads of the middle east for the first time
4. Saw snow for the first time
5. Bought my first basketball shoes and converse shoes
6. Discovered nutella and chocolate flakes
7. Ate my first cup-cake (have had muffins before)
8. Got promoted
9. Made some amazing friends, mostly through Twitter
10.Followed many people, un-followed a few
11. Met a lot of Twitter folks in person
12. Attended my first real live concert
13. Discovered food street and CTR thanks to the new friend I made - Apoorva
14. Have bowled more than any other year - Thanks to another new friend, Vinay
15. Discovered the joy of oor suthifying pointlessly with a friend
16. Watched more plays/movies/shows this year than any other
17. Moved to a better house
18. Met some lovely folks in Madras
19. Been the Busiest and the laziest at work, this year
20. In one sentence - Awesome food, awesome company and an awesome time has been had.

Some things I wish to do in 2013:
1. Read more. One book every fortnight challenge of Aska has been taken up
2. Learn and work on new stuff
3. Travel more
4. Last but not definitely the keystone for doing the rest - Make more money.

Here's wishing you a very happy new year.

I'd like to hear your story. Comment away.

No comments:

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Growing younger

Being the ARR fan that I am, when Ranjani had made a post about Rahman's interview (http://tharkuri.wordpress.com/2012/12/04/ella-pugazhum-iraivanukke/), I was immediately interested in it. Somewhere in the video, he says that he feels younger now than when he was actually young. And that made a connect with me. Made my eyes go wide. Because that's exactly how I feel now too. The years in college in a course that I was least interested in (which I found out only after the first year) and then the passing of my father really had sucked the life out of me.
The knife of passing Engineering and earning for the family hung over my head and the impending doom if I didn't was too much to bear. Although I was strong enough to not go into depression, it wasn't easy either.
I wasn't an introvert but thanks to my conservative upbringing, I had never really enjoyed myself, in hindsight. The few things that gave me joy were a few of my friends and technology. I didn't realize then what I was losing out on.
This may sound cheesy but it is true -In the past couple of years, I've come to realize the petty joys of youth and feel younger now than in the last few years. Perhaps the reason that I find myself in the company of more and more people who are much younger than I am than people of my own age. Earning gives you that independence, the freedom to do things that you always wanted to without being naive or overtly irresponsible. Although I have my sweet memories and nostalgia, I love the present and feel this is the best part of my life and there is so much ahead of me to experience and achieve.
Do you feel the same way? Is there are period in your life that you enjoy(ed) the most? Comment and let me know.
No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

Old and (penny) wise

I was rummaging through the long-forgotten piggy bank of mine and came across a treasure trove of antique coins. Notice the rupee coin that dates back to 1869. Let me remind you that these were not collected for collection's sake.


Do you have similar antiquities in your posession? Let me know. :)
No comments:

Friday, November 9, 2012

Obama's Complete Victory Speech: Obama Wins the 2012 Election

No comments:

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

You Never Know

There are things you want desperately at times and you don't get it. There are others that you are fine either way and those are the ones that fall into place effortlessly. Then there's the third kind that you never thought of would happen to you and they do - both good things and bad things.

Now, how one should handle these highs and lows can be answered with a single phrase - "This too shall pass" except no one knows how long it would take to pass. You aren't sure if it is a good thing for it to pass so that you can move on to higher place or if it's passing just rocks the boat and takes you to much worse position than you are in currently. So, what should one do in such circumstances?

Choice is what determines the future. Not luck, CHOICE. At your death-bed if you recount the path that you had treaded, you'll see the choices that you made. You'll see that even if one small such choice was made differently, your life could've taken a whole new course. Things wouldn't have turned out the way they did. Hind-sight is twenty-20 they say, but you'd never know even at your death bed, if you made the right choices. You never know if you made your choices differently, if it would have been for the better or for worse. That's life.

YOU NEVER KNOW! 

Go with the flow. Make the choices when you have to. Give your mind the maximum time for it to come to a decision. This can be contrary to being decisive but creative people are not decisive. So, consider yourself one. Your mind will make the choice for the most creative/original solution to a problem. Or will it just delay the decision making and you could lose the window of opportunity that you were presented to make the decision to take the path that appeared so easily in front you. That's it.

YOU NEVER KNOW!

Why is everything so complicated? I sit and ponder... to make my next immediate decision that's going to change my LIFE!
1 comment:

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Mugamoodi(Mask) - Review

Never seeming to learn from our past experiences, myself and a few of my twitter buddies decided to go for the interestingly named Jiiva starrer - Mugamoodi (Mask).
Spoiler Alert: If you are planning to watch the movie, stop reading... or don't... the movie is predictable anyway.

After his previous outing - Yudham sei which was, I must admit, a formidable thriller, Mysskin tries out his hand at another genre - Superheroes. He must be given due credit to bring such a genre to Indian or rather Tamil Cinema (I don't consider mythology based movies in this genre). This is true new fiction. Having said that, the movie falls flat when it comes to screenplay.

The movie seems to be heavily influenced by Christopher Nolan's Batman series. This can be seen straight away from the posters to the trailer. Damn! Even the background score seems to be heavily influenced by the Dark Knight series' Hans Zimmer composition. Even the characterization seems to have been heavily influenced by Batman movies. Commissioner Gordon - Assistant Commissioner Gaurav, NYPD - TNPD, Batman - Mugamoodi, Lucius Fox - Girish Karnad, Alfred - the other "Thatha".

Portraying the jobless, aimless, angry young man (especially at his always-scolding-father) seems to be some kind of an allergy that Tamil cinema, in the recent days, has caught. Bruce Lee (Jiiva) wanting to be like the original Bruce Lee trains with a fairly less known Kung-Fu master in the suburbs of Chennai. The movie moves slowly where the director tries to set the stage for the story later. The first half is a la Billa 2 to Billa 1. Jiiva tries to bring in some students who can pay the fee to learn Kung-fu from his master, so that he can pay up the rent to his master's landlord, and prevent him from becoming homeless. He does this by intimidating a few so-called low class uneducated fish market vendors at the market. Here's where the heorin is introduced, the face of whom is not shown until the end of the next scene.

The story moves on...Jiiva trying to impress his new found love - Shakthi (Pooja Hegde) by lying that he's working at some company in a good post and gets his nose cut when his father yells at him revealing his true status right in front of the heroine. The build-up given to the heroine's intro is unwarranted considering that we have seen prettier ones.

Are you bored already? Yes, we were too! Looking at the watch, it was almost an hour and half and nothing yet. Then, in order to propose, Jiiva finally tries to reveal who Mugamoodi is to Pooja Hegde. That's when the story tries to become more interesting but in vain. The villain's men try to kill the Assistant commissioner (who's also Pooja's father) - played by Nazar - unimaginatively  or unnaturally named Gaurav. Jiiva being on the spot is handed the gun by the miscreant who escapes and Jiiva is framed. Nazar manages to recover from his Gunshot wound in the hospital during which the villain tries to kill him. The police officer who was Nazar's assistant is caught red handed while trying to kill a conscious Nazar who acts to be sleeping.

The worst portrayal of a villain is done by Narain, again unimaginatively named Angusamy, who, later is revealed to be the a fellow-inmate of Jiiva's Kung-fu master 22 years ago, yet looks much younger than the Kung-fu master. Most of his scenes he tries to mock his opponent, be it his fellow inmate or Jiiva. His movements, perhaps made to resemble some niche Kung-fu move, unintentionally becomes quite GAYish. Especially the way he repeats all the Superhero names - "Batman, Spiderman, Superman" is extremely annoying. The Villain is more comical than intimidating. There's a touch of Joker being tried out here but fails terribly.

I won't go into any more details, you ask is there more? Yes... sadly. This is a looong movie. I'll just get to the gist. The villain continues his childhood traits of being a thief and learns Kung-fu from his foster father who was a Kung-Fu master himself. He kills his foster father when he finds out that he was the one to inform the police about his thievery. Grows up to start a Kung-fu school with his partners in crime and continues stealing jewelry from houses and killing every single soul who comes in their way. Mugamoodi unintentionally comes in their way during one of their heists. The next thing you know, he's framed for shooting the ACP. After a lot of running around and kidnapping and hostage and ransom calls, the story lands at the Ennur port for the climax... which was again, very predictable. The hero's hands are tied up, the villain tries to kill him, after some confusing scene sans logic, it ends with the villain giving up holding on to his trademark hammer (a la "Yaavarum Nalam"?) and falling into the sea and hitting his head on to a metal jutting out from one of the cranes (perhaps to justify that he actually dies from the fall), after losing to Jiiva in his fight where Mugamoodi uses the last technique that his master had taught him but the villain not knowing it.

Are you a bit ticked off? Yes, that's what the movie does. Songs are forgettable. Music Director named "K", has done some interesting background score, as said earlier, heavily inspired by the Dark Knight series. The Title credits does a Marvel comics/DC comics style animation that we have so loved in the recent superhero movies, which is nice.

Overall - Very mediocre.

This character, however, has tremendous potential to be greatly developed. Perhaps someone could get some great writers and come up with a more captivating story and make a sequel. We could then, forget this annoying intro and move on, creating a home-bred superhero who could be out friendly neighbourhood superhero!
No comments:

Monday, July 16, 2012

My take on Billa 2

Following up with a post from my friend Rajagopalan's review of the movie, which you can find here:

http://opinionsoftheraja.blogspot.in/2012/07/scarface-meets-godfather-and-other.html

Here's my take on it:

Slight disagreement about the music part, with Raja's review. Yuvan has had better ones. Also, the punch dialogue English translation loses its punch. Can't help that, of course. Just saying. The cinematography is breath-taking, indeed. Especially the scenes in so-called "Boravia" if such a country exists. The guy playing the Russian arms dealer was a perfect fit, except that he didn't "look" Russian.

Also, lot of logic misses. e.g. The scene where the villain calls Ajith on the phone and says that if he doesn't show up, Jasmine would die. Only one problem. He doesn't say where to come, but still the hero being a hero lands up at the right place. And the commandos having Jasmine at gun point, don't waste a single bullet on seeing the hero's envoy.
Showing NSG/army/navy/air-force commandos helpless, with just a shotgun in the hero's hand is a bit unnerving to me.


As for glam, Bruna sizzles indeed. Parvathy (Jasmine) was just wasted!

Looks like the producers wanted another prequel to be made. Probably Billa 3. So many questions still unanswered and more that came up with Billa 2! The song shot like a graphic novel leaves out a lot of detail, showing only certain aspects of the past. The scene where Ajith says "They didn't understand me then, I don't know if they will now" and then his sister saying "Will you never learn?" says there's more to come.

No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)