Mutton Biryani

This is a recipe I obtained from some site and reading it, it sounds quite promising.

Mutton Biryani ( Pakistani) 85mins



Hot Lamb Main Course Pakistan Asia
Serves 4-6

Ingredients
240ml/8fl.oz. Ghee or Oil
2 Onions, finely chopped
675g/1-1/2lb Mutton or Lamb, cut into 2.5cm/1 inch cubes
Salt to taste
2 teasp Red Chili Powder
2 teasp Turmeric Powder
1 ½ teasp Black Cumin
4 2.5cm/1-inch pieces Cinnamon Sticks
4 Cloves
4 Cardamom Pods
2 Bay Leaves
2 teasp Ginger Paste
2 teasp Garlic Paste
720ml/24fl.oz. Water
4 Tomatoes, chopped
180ml/6fl.oz. Plain Yoghurt
675g/1-1/2lb Rice
1 tbsp Freshly chopped Coriander
a few Mint Leaves
1 teasp Lemon Juice

Instructions

1. Heat the oil in a large saucepan, add the onions and fry until golden brown.

2. Add the mutton and fry over a high heat for 5 minutes, turning from time to time.

3. Add the Salt, Red Chili Powder, Turmeric Powder, Black Cumin, Cinnamon Sticks Cloves, Cardamom Pods, Bay Leaves, Ginger and Garlic Pastes together with the water, mix well then reduce the heat, partially cover and cook for 45 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, place the rice in another saucepan, cover with 5cm/2-inches of water, bring to the boil then reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes only until half cooked. Drain well and set aside.

5. After the 45 minutes cooking time, stir the yoghurt into the meat mixture and cook gently for a further 5 minutes.

6. Place one quarter of the half cooked rice on the bottom of a large saucepan then top with one quarter of the meat mixture. Continue layering until the rice and meat are finished. Sprinkle with the chopped coriander, mint leaves and lemon juice, cover and cook over a medium heat for 5-10 minutes unit rice is completely cooked. Serve hot.

turning 28 hasn't exactly worked for me

After I turned 28, I have had 1500$ loss on the cancellation of my air tickets, been fined for speeding and had a "short-paper" acceptance (that's such a slap on the face). Rewind please :)

Well, at least I got a cake from my students for my birthday :)

High-precision math

I was wondering a couple of months ago about how to achieve accuracy in floating-point computations such as say, try to multiple 4.34524362 with 2.456357642456 while we know that there is only finite precision that can be provided by programming languages. A way around this problem was to save the values as strings and multiple two strings rather than two numbers - so you won't be able to multiply two "values" a and b as a*b but you multiply them as multiply(a,b). Using operator overloading, even a*b can easily be achieved. Now, what I have done so far is +,-,*,/, factorial, combinations on integers and being too lazy, I only implemented the * functions on floating-point values. The implementation works for extremely large values (as high as the compiler would support for a string - which is pretty high :D)

The math_library.cpp (right click and choose "save target as") can be used by anyone but NOT for commercial purposes.

pumpkin masala / kaddu ki sabzi

This is a recipe I am posting as an apology to Eric for not turning up for the skype chat on Wednesday evening :(

Serves 2

1kg Pumpkin - JAP - the green one
Mustard seeds - 1/3 teaspoon
Cumin seeds - 1/3 teaspoon
Chilli powder - 1 teaspoon (for spicy otherwise half)
Turmeric powder - 1/3 teaspoon
Coriander powder - 2 teaspoons
Oil - 4 tablespoons
Coriander leaves for garnishing

cut the pumpkin. the size of the dices in the image will make the end product mushy (which i like). NO NEED to skin the pumpkin :) if you want the pieces to be separate at the end - cut bigger pieces.




Heat oil in a saucepan and when hot add mustard seeds and after 2-3 seconds cumin seends and after 3-4 seconds the diced pumpkin. toss so that they mix nicely. cover lid, turn heat down to 3 o'clock and cook for 20 minutes, tossing one or two times in between.

mix the chilli, turmeric and coriander powder in a cup with water so that it dissolves and becomes a liquidy paste. turn the heat high and add this paste, stir till they mix decently and turn the heat down again to 3 o'clock. Cook for another 5 minutes and done! garnish with coriander leaves and serve with bread/naan/ chapaati/ pooris (but not rice :D)

pumpkin masala recipe as an apology to Eric

This is a recipe I am posting as an apology to Eric for not turning up for the skype chat on Wednesday evening :(

Serves 2

1kg Pumpkin - JAP - the green one
Mustard seeds - 1/3 teaspoon
Cumin seeds - 1/3 teaspoon
Chilli powder - 1 teaspoon (for spicy otherwise half)
Turmeric powder - 1/3 teaspoon
Coriander powder - 2 teaspoons
Oil - 4 tablespoons
Coriander leaves for garnishing

cut the pumpkin. the size of the dices in the image will make the end product mushy (which i like). if you want the pieces to be separate at the end - cut bigger pieces.

Heat oil in a saucepan and when hot add mustard seeds and after 2-3 seconds cumin seends and after 3-4 seconds the diced pumpkin. toss so that they mix nicely. cover lid, turn heat down to 3 o'clock and cook for 20 minutes, tossing one or two times in between.

mix the chilli, turmeric and coriander powder in a cup with water so that it dissolves and becomes a liquidy paste. turn the heat high and add this paste, stir till they mix decently and turn the heat down again to 3 o'clock. Cook for another 5 minutes and done! garnish with coriander leaves and serve with bread/naan/ chapaati/ pooris (but not rice :D)

Addendum: You can skip skinning the pumpkin - just dice without peeling!!! Saves a lot of time and is equally tasty, if not more :p

khichdi

quite a number of people like khichdi, because


a) it's easy to make
b) it's healthy
c) it's easy to make

you really want to have khichdi a day after the following

1) all you can eat buffet
2) chocolate fondu night
3) movie night with free chips at the hosts'
4) large big mac meal because it was just 50 cents more than regular meal
5) mom visited you for 2 weeks
6) finished a kg tub of homer hudson full fat ice cream because you *suspected* it was going bad (although you just bought it from woolies the same day :D)

coming down to business, the ingredients you *need* are

0) water - 5 cups
1) rice - 1 cup
2) lentil - either split moong or toovar or mix - 1 cup
3) oil
4) salt 1 teaspoon
5) turmeric 1/2 teaspoon, chilli powder 1 teaspoon
6) cumin seeds - 1 teaspoon

ingredients you might want to add are


7) onions - 1 large chopped nail size
8) tomatoes - 2 medium chopped rather big (about the size of a "normal" dice)
9) cloves - 6-10 pieces
10) cardamom - 3-5 pieces
11) 2 bay leaves
12) potatoes - two medium - cut into match box size)

pressure cooker is best otherwise you can also cook in sauce pan with secure lid

put oil (about 5-6 tablespoons) and when hot, add the cumin seeds, bay leaves, cardamom and cloves and after 5-6 seconds or before it burns :D add the onions. fry for a while - not too much as in curry, just a little while - say about 2 mins. while onions fry, wash the rice and lentils together and keep aside. (no need to have soaked the lentils beforehand since these are the thin lentils - toovar/split moong)

add the chilli powder, turmeric and salt.

add the potatoes, rice and lentils and fold a couple of times. then add the 5 cups of water and when it boils, add the tomatoes and put the lid on.

a) if using pressure cooker, cook for 5-6 minutes on high and 10 minutres on 3o'clock position.

or b) if using saucepan with lid, cook for 7-8 minutes on high and 15 minutes on 3o'clock position

done dona done done :p

my favorite khichdi with sweet lime pickle and yoghurt

Worst spin class ever!!

Warning - I will winge in this post, so stop reading now if you don't want to listen to me complain.

I do 2 spin classes a week at the Macquarie Uni. gym. Both start at 5:15 and i need to get there well ahead of time to get a ticket for the class etc. This means I skip lunch at work and make sure I get there in time.

For the second time, I reach the class to find out that the regular instructor (who is excellent!!) couldn't make it and has instead been replaced by this girl who is here from the US for the summer semester. The first time I was in this girl's class I was unhappy and so were all the other regulars but we let it pass.

But she was back again today. And we weren't warned. It was a crap class. She made us do the same thing for 25 minutes with awful girlie-pop music playing in the background. All she says during class is "good job". Even before we start the work out she is already good jobbing us. We could just sit on the bike and curse and she would still say we did a good job. She reckons its better to hold personal giggly conversations with her other girlfriends who are around her than to take control and get the whole class involved and motivated. Unbelievable! She is so breathless that by the 30 minute mark she switched to sign language and decides to end the 45 minute class after only half an hour. Umm ok I admit I was glad the torture was over. At the end she told us how "awesome" we all were and that we had all done a "good job".

As I walked out in disbelief I met one of the girls who goes to a lot of spin classes at the gym and asked her if she had ever been to this girl's class. It was like hearing myself speak.

So...I did what Eric would have done :D I wrote a long letter of dissatisfaction with dire warnings that I would keep writing long annoying letters if I had to attend another one of her classes without being warned.

Wanting to know when I check in and get the ticket that the regular instructor can't make it isn't unreasonable, is it?

Off to school

Maya started kindergarten yesterday. She had been pleasantly obliviously to the whole hoopla that is kindergarten preparation till I bought the whole list of books from the library about kindergarten, "first day jitters". Even then the first day went pretty smoothly. She ran and gave her teacher a huge hug. Anjali this year has the best teacher in the whole world as her preschool teacher and the year is off to a good start:-).

End of an era

Exactly this time, next week, I will be handing in my doctoral thesis and with that, my student identity over to the university. It ends a 10-year tertiary education era for me. I remember, I always wanted to be an academic, at some level, inspired by my father. But it became definite in my first semester of undergraduation when we had the pleasure of being taught by Prof. Banerjee, who is way better than ANY other lecturer I have ever come across. Infact, I don't think it can get any better than that. Of course, I can't imagine coming close to his level of academic excellence.

Here's a picture I took with him and Madam during the last trip to India. (From L to R - mom, madam, me and sir)

bad guys cooler than good guys lately

It appears that in recent years of Hollywood blockbusters, the bad guys have been way cooler than the good guys; while the hero requires a whole network of people and devices supporting him, the villain seems to be a self-sufficient guy...or girl.
The best instances of this are in Agent Smith from Matrix, who was much smarter than Neo (of course, except at the end), Silver Surfer from Fantastic four (unfortunately he goes over to the 'bright' side :D), Green Goblin against the super-lame Spiderman, and the best of all - the Joker!!! Batman was just a whiny wuss in the movie dominated by the Joker. Who could forget his "Why so serious", "It's NOT about the money" and "Look, I'll make this pencil disappear ...... ta-da!!"


Go the Joker and the gang!

Bania goes to the museum

The only Museum we have been visiting for the past 5 years is Children's museum, Maya lately has been showing some interest in all things Japanese. There was a Japan exhibit at the local museum 'Blanton'. While I was looking at the website I saw that the thursdays are free for all. The Bania in me got more interested in Japan than ever and we took a trip.

We zoomed past the Japan exhibit and the Renaissance, stopped briefly in front of the greek/roman statues I tried to get the kids to really see how beautiful they carved the clothes out of stone with each fold showing. They would not budge, Maya commented "how beautiful do you think they carved the clothes for this one". She was pointing to a nude...

Well, then we went to Cildo Meireles' "Missão/Missões installation. It's one of the permanent installations with the ceiling made of cattle bones and a pit full of shining pennies and a spine connecting the two. The girls spent majority of their visit there playing with the pennies. The bania genes live....

There are some pictures here.

Pets and kids

Yesterday the girls and I went out to a mid week, late afternoon farmer's market. The crowd consisted mostly of Moms and kids. There were kids in bathing suits running around in the water fountains, some good food and a lot of bad live music.

I had Anjali in my tow and Maya was walking they played a little in the water fountains. As we sat down with a taco we saw a lady pass by with a small stroller and there was a cage instead of screen. I empathized with her as I can remember some situations where I could have used a stroller with a cage. But wait it wasn't a kid it was a dog in the stroller!

By then I was intrigued, so are there other people doing the same or was this woman one of kind walk-the-dog-in-custom-stroller lady. As any busy mom of two would do I came back and googled it right away and ahoy! Here it is. Looks like there are others, enough for someone to sell these online.

I want to dish out some juicy comments but I will exercise restraint because I don't get the whole pet thing. Maybe this attitude is just our family. We never had any pets growing up, not even a fish, nada. I do remember catching some bugs and saving them in a box till they died. The only person in our family who showed some affinity for animals was dadi, my paternal grandma, feeding the street dogs every morning.I think that was more a part of collecting brownie points with God (good karma) more than any love of animals or pets. She also mentioned that she didn't feed the cats because the cats eat with their eyes closed so they don't count towards good karma. Go figure... I don't even remember asking our parents for a dog.

Partially it could be cultural also. I see far few Indians, for that matter Asians owning pets than other cultures. One of the standard reply I hear from parents is "Why do we need pets, we have kids?". Is the reverse also true? Are people substituting pets for kids in all the ways down to strollers? I've heard people give their last names to the pets and address themselves as Moms. Again I'll reserve my judgement.


This post will not be complete without mentioning(thanks Ravi for bringing this to my attention) the "kid leashes". I've seen people walking with their kids on leashes some attached to the backpacks.


Well the trip to the farmer's market was good I scored a free cloth tote and got Ravi's favorite granola for 2$ less than the health food store. As for the lady walking her dog in the stroller and people with kids on leashes, each to her own. Why not?

ps: I have a lot of time these days on my hands hence so prolific on the blog. There are reasons I cannot reveal now but maybe after the storm has passed:-)

Out of the nose and on the .....

Brithday parties have always been tricky at our home.So far Maya, Ravi and my collective social anxiety had prevented any huge birthday bashes at our house and then came Anjali with a huge personality packed in that little body. There was no way she was taking a little playdate with a couple of friends at the park for a birthday party. So we planned a birthday party with handmade monkey invitations, cake, pinata, food, the whole nine yards.

The party started pretty well and kids were basically doing there own thing raiding the backyard,jumping on the trampoline, girls' room and adults were eating, enjoying the drinks and chatting. We did the pinata which was a NEMO pinata(the urge to beat to death your favorite character is a topic of a different post all together) and got all the kids high on sugar after that there were a few obligatory meltdowns from 2 year olds. One potty training accident.

After that it was CAKE TIME. We had a cake with a monkey face and everything was set and Ravi chose this time to tell Anjali that "we were going to smush her face with cake after she cuts the cake". I don't know if it was the candies or general excitement Ajnali started bawling, I don't mean little sniffles, tears all over the face bawling that is usually accompaied by lots of drainage from the nose. This whole scene was taking place in dining room with no tissue in sight I ran to the kitchen to get one and ran back Alas... too late... I saw the booger drop from her nose and land on the CAKE!!!! It was a scene right out of a sitcom. There was a moment of silence and then a burst of laughter from all corners. What did we do with the cake you ask? It took some careful cake cutting and a bunch of totally booger desensitized parents and the CAKE WAS HAD....

aussie winters

aussie winters suck. not JUST because it's cold but because big brother begins with winter :-( for those of you who are not familiar with the show,

a) be thankful to god
b) its a show that puts 15 losers in a house away from loved ones so that they can decide who the biggest loser is.
c) be thankful to your TV channel provider

can' wait for september... (it finishes sometime around september)

Swimming through swami troubles

There is a temple in Austin called Barsana Dham and it's a very beautiful temple. More like an ashram plus a north Indian temple. This temple holds a very special place in our family because this is pretty much the first place Ravi and I went to by ourselves, so I guess our first date, we got married here, we celebrated Maya's first b'rthday by sponsoring the lunch at the temple and then Anjali's first b'day by doing the same. So even though I'm not super religious this temple has always been a part of our major milestones.

If you were wondering where this is going, patience my child. Most of the people living in the ashram are westerners who found solace/escape/answers in the Hindu religion particulary the flavor and interpretation being practiced by the Swamiji who founded this temple. They are all extremely sweet people who honestly believe in this swamiji enough to leave their normal lives and live here. Over the years we have come to know a lot of the people living at the ashram.

The ashram holds a mela every year which is a blast irrespective of your religious beliefs. They have elephants and what not. This year I decided to invite some friends over to the mela so I sent out an email to about 20-30 friends(mostly parents of the 5 year old set) one month before the mela. The day before the mela this appears in the paper.

I sent an email out to all of my guests letting them know about the 'situation'. We did end up going to the mela but talking to Swamiji's devotees was very hard. They seemed in complete denial that allegations could be true at all. I feel indifferent to swamiji's fate but feel very sad for all the people who have completely dedicated their lives to him.

Tilburg and Frogs

It's been a while and lots has happened: we moved from Oz to the lowlands (aka the Netherlands), went from summer to winter and now to spring, bought a house, found jobs and daycare for Colwin, settled in, had lots of visitors. All in all: everything went fine and we start feeling at home in Tilburg. That doesn't mean that we don't miss Sydney, though.

The one person Colwin misses most is his friend Andre.



In a way, kids here are more boisterous than the kids Colwin had been hanging out with in Sydney. And he just needs to find his place in a group that has already been together for a while. But things are not all bad: Colwin's slowly finding his place at daycare, too. A couple of weeks ago, they were dressing up. This is the result:



I'm still not sure how they got Colwin to dress in this costume :) And it will haunt him until the end of his days...

Microsoft Word X-(

I have been using Microsoft Word as my primary authoring tool for years now. And the more I use it, the more passionately I hate it. Do the people who design this ever get feedback from users? Do they know how annoying it is to try and format a simple document without Word trying to read your mind and doing it for you?

And now, Word refuses to let me open a docx file someone sent over, as I don't have Office 2007. It prompts me to download and install the file converter. You would think this would fix my problem, but no, it still refuses to open the file!!!

Argggh!!!!!!

Basic curry recipe

This post is credited to Gail who made me remember that I need to put a simplified recipe for everyone :) So, here it goes...

Ingredients for curry (serves 6)

Heavybottom saucepan with lid
30 ml oil
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 bay leaves
4 cloves garlic and one finger of ginger (made into paste)
2 big onions chopped fairly fine
2 big tomatoes, chopped not very fine
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
3 teaspoon coriander powder
salt to taste

Mix chilli, turmeric and corainder powder and add about 40 ml of water. mix to form a thin paste.

heat oil in the pan and when hot, throw in the bay leaves and cumin seeds (in an even fashion). reduce the heat to 6 o'clock position and after 4-5 seconds in which the cumin seeds will become whitish, add the ginger-garlic paste, stir and about 10 seconds later add the onions. heat till the onions are brownish (which should be about 15 mins) stirring occasionally. increase heat to max and add the spice powder paste prepared earlier. stir continuously, add about 30 ml water again when the paste starts thickening and stir again. after about 30 seconds, add salt and tomato, reduce heat to 6 o'clock position and sitr occasionally for about 20 mins.

THAT'S YOUR BASIC CURRY - YAY!!

Now let's say we are adding chicken

turn heat to max, add the diced chicken (Don't add any water), cook for about 5 minutes keep turning the paste from the bottom of the pan (folding) so that the chicken cubes are sealed to keep moisture in them. put the lid on, turn the heat to 3 o'clock position and cook for 25 mins. DONE!!!!

Onions :(

My hands smell of onions right now and I hate it !!!!!!!
Serves me right for making all the lamb curry. maybe I should switch
to making pancakes and then my hands will smell .... well, atleast not
like onions :D

so i guess this is it

We had been warned and foretold, but nothing prepared us for the departure of Colwin, Menno and Tanja. It was a beautiful day; the 9th of January; only spoilt by the fact that the next day - a Thursday (or a Colwin Day) unfortunately, was never going to be the same for us. I just wanted to soak up each and every moment at dinner the night before and at airport that day. I was carrying Colwin, who was pretty excited about flying and meet "aupa" and "auma". Then, all of a sudden, he turned to me, held my cheeks and whispered, "will you come in the aeroplane?", in a tone resembling his frequent pleads of "i wanna watch pingoo". Haven't met a smarter and loving kid ever in my life and I don't think that's going to change. Every single day brings up his memories; jelly beans that I was searching on 9th, the ping pong ball he had chewed on and hid behind the couch, the most awesome hand-painted wrapping papers are sure not making things easy. Can't wait to see them again soon. Thanks to Skype, Colwin won't forget us, or at least I hope so....