Was putting Jr. and the little one to bed last night.
It was a long day for me and they both knew I was dead tired. Also mom and grandma were out watching a movie.
So Jr. decides to break out of our usual Ragam quiz routine and sings "Giridhara gopala" for me. My eyes almost closed and I dozed off and they nudged me back.
Me : someday when I am old and lying in a hospital bed, will you two sing giridhara gopala for me just like you did now?
LO : why are you going to go back to the hospital?
Me : No. I am not talking about now. this is a lot of years from now when I am older and you are also older and you probably have kids of your own. Then?
Jr.: what if we forget this song?
Me: we have your youtube video right? just bring it to my ears and play it for me if you forget the song
LO: We won't forget the song. maybe we can have our kids sing to you just like we sing to Grandma right now on videochat?
Me : (this girl correlates things just like I do.. this is truly amazing to see how she connects things).. Yes. you can do that.
Jr. : But what if we have boys instead of girls?
Me : You have a boy in your music class don't you? you can teach boys to sing. Daddy is a boy and he is teaching you, no?
Jr. : But what if they are not interested?
Me : you can get them interested. keep singing to them and encourage them. tell them they are doing good. really good.
LO : Daddy, I love you. I really don't want you to go to a hospital when you are older.
Me : okay, enough of this topic. just remember we talked about you singing for me okay. let's all go to bed and sleep for now.
The little one's face when she said it made me so guilty for even bringing this up. Sometimes we say things without thinking through the consequences, especially when we are tired.
With little kids, you are never sure how far they understand what concepts at what age.
For now, the conversation is forgotten or is being made light of and the girls are back to being their giggly selves.
Spent a good 4 hours in the kitchen today to make some Laddu and Mixture..
The video footage has too many improper comments deliberately uttered by Jr. and the little one to irritate me while making the video..
Don't know why they have this new found fascination with the "weenie" word. They say it just to see if I will get irritated or will scold them.. It is either that or Kusu (Fart). First I ignored them for a few minutes, then realized it was going to be very difficult to make a videoblog with the kids saying these two words three times/ sentence. So started using a remote control to turn the recording on and off.
They did not know I was still recording and finally they figured out that one as well and it all went downhill from there.
Tomorrow will be spent at home quietly savoring what was made today... and of course, editing the video with the kids watching..
Yes, the boondhi is going to soak in the sugar syrup overnight and will be made into laddu's in the morning!
When we see comments like "you have way too much time on your hands" after watching the mysore pak or vadam videos, cannot help but smile.
The whole idea behind doing the videos was to show folks that
a. you do not need a lot of time to make it b. it is not that difficult to make these things
That is why the time was mentioned in the videos. The mysore pak was done in 1 hour and 4 mins (and if the ghee was premade it could be done in 50 mins.) The time it takes for you to drive around to an Indian Restaurant and find mysore pak(you can find Soan Papdi and Haldiram stuff here in stores but not MysorePak), stay in line, pay, come back home is almost an hour plus.
It will also cost you 1$ per piece + gas for that while it costs you 10 cents to make it at home!
The vadam making started at 12:42 and we were done by 1:08, in under 30 minutes! We got 72 pieces for ~$1.5 total! Your other options are to wait for closest friend or relative to get you some from India or buy 20 pieces for $3.99 from the local Indian store.
It would have taken the same time to make 4 times that quantity of the gel and another 10 minutes to spread it out!
Was telling Sangeetha earlier today "Has cooking ones own specialty items become that unfashionable that only people with time to waste or too much time on their hands can do it?"
Is this a phenomena with the younger generation? Eating fast food or buying your food is somehow supposed to be a "time saver" and therefore a cheaper option?
Just think about it!
We cook every night and we take our lunch with us to work. (San always packs my lunch.. also everyday I do call her at lunchtime to have a chat, if not about the food, at least we have a chat). We cook for the kids anyways, so it is a no brainer to spend the 10 minutes to pack lunch. One can always argue that if you get paid enough, the cost of that 10 minutes is more at an hourly rate and therefore buying food is cheaper.
So many recipes are going to be lost. It has been ages since I even smelled some of those divine smells that would come from the kumuti aduppus (charcoal stoves) when my grandma and her aunt would team up to make sweets for the family on a whim!
Just wish I could replay those smells like we replay youtube videos! It doesn't have to be lost. We don't have to rely on MSG and complicated carbonates and coloring agents to add pep to the food we eat.
On a similar note, when we pulled potatoes grown in our backyard and made a simple curry, the smell and taste were orders of magnitude better. It was like being transported to my 10 year old phase, and I was sitting on the floor and my mom was sliding more curry on to my plate from the "ilupa chatti"!
The potatoes looked ugly and gnarled, but the taste was out of this world. The picture perfect potatoes from the local grocery store are practically bland compared to this. We as a consumer would rather have our food look good than taste good.
A lot of the younger generation prefers to buy food than make food and the convenient excuse becomes "you have way too much time on your hands if you are cooking!"
By the way, bloging and videoblogs are easy, especially if you can type 70+ words a minute and you have been doing this a lot.
We all have 168 hours a week. If you spend 42 hours sleeping, 14 hours driving to and from work and running errands over weekend, that leaves you with 112 hours.
If you work 11 hours a day, 5 days a week and another 10 hours over the weekend that takes out 65 hours and you have 47 hours. You spend ~2.5 hours a weekday with your kids and 12 hours with them over the weekend and that is another 17 hours and you still have 30 hours left for eating breakfast, dinner, watching movies, doing dishes, grocery shopping, making that once a week cooking video,etc. no?
Jr., after watching the "Making of Vadaam" video, decided to make a cooking video earlier today (aka irritating your mother video). I did not know about this till San told me. It was hilarious to hear her commentary and the videography.
She adapts, refines, starts this one at the beginning of the Dosai making cycle..Watching this brings happy tears! My little girl is already an expert videographer and cooking aficionado!
You see how a 7 year old can do this by observation (between watching food network and her dad). Next thing you know she will be collecting advertisement money.
Kids today!
ps. You have to have the audio on high to really hear her comments.
One recent TV favorite for the whole family is Olivia, on Nick Jr.
We were watching the kid's old favorite "Max and Ruby", when one day Jr. accidentally caught this show centered around a family of talking pigs, dadddy, mommy 6 3/4 year old Olivia, her four year old "bother" brother Ian and the few month old baby William.
My initial reaction was "Why can't these serials be about a human family like Calliou?". Max and Ruby is about a Rabbit world where Rabbits do human things.
It grew on the whole family within 20 minutes because of the script, the quality of animation and the way it puts things in the perspective of an almost seven year old.
In the show we watched first, Olivia's little "bother" Ian grabs every toy that she selects. She chooses to color and he takes away all her red crayons. At that point, Olivia sees no point in coloring anymore because red is her favorite color.
Then she moves on to do a puzzle and Ian grabs that too.. same thing happens when she tries to read a book! Any refusal by Olivia and Ian screams "Mom, she is not sharing!" and mom promptly reprimands Olivia, gives her a timeout for not sharing.
We were rolling on the floor laughing because this was a normal occurrence in our household, but were totally unprepared for what came next.
You see, Olivia has these little dream sequences (usually 2 per episode) where she goes into a trance and lets her imagination run wild. When her mom gave her a timeout, she thinks about how adults would react if they had to share everything.
In the dream her mom is about to get into her car, when out of the blue comes Mrs. Hogginmuller, Olivia's teacher and grabs the key and goes "I will have to take this car. will return it later"
Her mom is all zapped and goes "but.. bbbb but, that is MY car!" and Olivia comes behind her and says "Mom, you are not sharing! Maybe you should go to your room and think it over"
Now, that is something. The kids were looking at us like "now, there is a serial that reflected what goes on in my head all the time". We were still laughing, but there was a lesson for the parents.
Every episode is a treat to watch. There is a "Rule of life" in every episode that really cracks you up and like the initial caption reads, this serial does indeed teach kids the importance of inter personal relationships.
Truly amazing. If you have kids in the 3-9 age group, they will really enjoy this show and so will you.
Now I watch Olivia while eating dinner after the kids have gone to bed.
ps. found out that the episodes are available on itunes.
Sunday, March 14, 2010 at 11:22PM 
