Coconut Burfi - a do it yourself video

Diwali came and went. There was no time to make any special sweets. San did make some delicious Badam Kheer to celebrate at home. 

Diwali felt incomplete unless some raw material is convereted to a finished product in the kitchen with some contribution from me.. just kidding..

There was a coconut that was part of the Lakshmi pooja that had to be grated. It is not "auspicious" to let that special coconut get spoilt. So, over the weekend, I decided to convert that into a coconut burfi. Please note: What you see below is not a normal sight in our house.. it is an anomaly. 

The last time I made this was almost a decade ago, in the pre video blogging days. 

The kids helped make the video. Apologies for the "uncut" version. 

Recipe is simple : 

Grate coconut. Eyeball how many cups of grated coconut you have (say 1 cup). Add same measure of sugar to same measure of water and stir to get sugar syrup thick enough. Don't let it caramelize. 

Add coconut to sugar syrup and stir like no tomorrow. Then add cashews roasted in excess ghee (clarified butter) to this and stir like there is no day after tomorrow either. 

When the whole thing becomes thick enough to roll like a ball off the vessel, pour it out. Add some powdered cardamom to the mix just before pouring out. 

Then cut into burfi's when cool. 

I love eating it even before the burfi has cooled down. 

Used to try this with coconut that is frozen and grated already. That does not taste good. You can also add some condensed milk or milk powder to this. It tastes better but also gets spoilt faster. 

My grandma makes it this way. Brings back memories.

Hope this motivates some fresh off the boat grad student who is longing for grandmas cooking to get that coconut and start grating.. 

Carnatic music on Alto Saxophone

Now that Jr. is very familiar with reading the notation and subtle nuances on the music sheets, she is back to trying Carnatic music on Alto Saxophone. 

The original plan was to have her do a few Geethams or varnams during the Golu season. There was a time in India where I developed an allergic reaction to "sri chakra raja simhasaneshwari" after listening to way too many girls sing the same song at golus. 

Here in the bay area the song selection seems to be more diverse from the group we interacted with in my childhood. Still, it would have been nice for Jr. to play saxophone at golus. For some reason, she was in the Jazz mood and skipped it.

This week having learned Nagumomu in her music class, she wanted to get the instrument home and practice! 

We were thrilled to hear that. She had attempted the first few bars of it earlier this year and said "too hard. Not there yet! How does Kadri do it so fast? he must have a special saxophone! etc. etc." So it was good to see the change.

Here is a video of her attempting Nagumomu and a thillana.

There is a lot more work to be done, but for a first attempt on the thillana, we were impressed. Now that I have mentioned it on the blog, she will promptly read it and call it quits.. have to work on that tomorrow.. 

Note to everyone else : This is pretty good

Note to Jr. : There is a lot more work to be done

Note to San and all older ladies in the family : No. Her fingers won't fall off because I posted a video on the blog

Note to self : Keep calm and coach on.. 

Architectural marvels, modern and ancient - Jaipur

This is the last of the series of posts on our Jaipur trip from summer!

In our last 24 hours in Jaipur we covered the Jantar Mantar, a Radhe Shyam temple, Birla Mandir and in the morning we covered the Hawa Mahal (air palace). We also managed to get stuck in a heavy downpour and photograph the Jal Mahal (water palace) in the evening!

The previous post on this series of visits is here.

We left Abaneri in the afternoon and came back to Jaipur city to see the Jantar Mantar. Another place that you do not want to visit on a hot and sultry afternoon. It was about to rain and rain big. Walking through those giant "astro-reader" implements was like being in a Hot Yoga room. If you are a big fan of astronomy, this place is a must see. They have precise instrumentation that tells you the position of everything related to everything else in space and time! That pretty much sums up the place.

I am not into astronomy. It is one of those things that I don't grasp easily. This thing in a marble hemisphere with lines around it tracked every planet and constellations position very precisely. It made my head spin!

After walking through all these "Yantras", we walked through the lawns. This little bird was shouting at me. Given I intended it no harm and was tired and weary, took another look at it to see "what its problem was". Turned out it had 4 legs!

After realizing I was no threat, she got up as though smiling at me and walked around. This beautiful chick came out and posed for me! That made my day...

Later on we visited two temples.. one was a Radhe-Shyam temple built in the 1600's by the King of Jaipur and another was the marble temple made by Birla.

It had also finished raining and we went through quite an ordeal getting back into level ground after that downpour. Jaipur's drainage system is probably one of the worst in the world. We were lucky to be in a van instead of a car. 

Cars were literally floating away in the flooding waters at one point near the Jal Mahal. The fresh rain did make the Jal Mahal stand out. If we make another trip to this place, we will definitely take the boat ride to this palace and see inside. Unfortunately, the boat rides are stopped during heavy rains. 

and here is a HDR version.

We were so tired that I did not get my camera out to take pictures at the Birla mandir. A cell phone photo is all we got.. guessing I have very few Birla mandirs left to cover in India!

On the last half day, we visited the Hawa Mahal with a tour guide who went over the kings and queens story yet another time.

This place is a true architectural marvel. It has 900+ windows on the wall facing the street. It has seven levels built staggered so that the foundation can handle it. How may other such massive seven storied structures existed 400 years ago? All the colored glass was imported from Belgium.. or so says the tour guide!

The views from this palace are all designed so that the many queens can watch the king and his processing come from the other place to this one from very far away. Have tried to capture some of those view points in the photographs below..

 The street we see now is where the processing used to come from..

You can see the Jantar Mantar from the top level of the Hawa Mahal and realize how big some of these structures are.. 

A view of the pink city from the top of the Hawa Mahal.

The air flow in this palace was amazing. The 900 windows are placed perfectly to usher in a wind gust that keeps the palace air conditioned 24/7. Here is the Hawa Mahal from street level on the outside. 

Here is an inside view..

Belgian glass takes care of light.. Marble and windows take care of the air circulation. Awe inspiring design!

A view of the courtyards inside. Dancing and entertainment was watched by the many queens through the windows. You can see the slats in the windows are all angled towards the courtyard. The queens can see the center but they cannot be seen. Again, ingenious design!

Even the passages and corridors were curved and lined with cool marble to circulate the air in such a way to create a cooling effect. They should show the Hawa Mahal as a case study for architecture students across the globe. 

After spending the morning at the Hawa Mahal, it was time to say bye to the Pink City!

I had to fly into the domestic airport in Mumbai from Jaipur and within 3 hours go to my in-laws place, grab suitcases and get back to the International airport to travel to east asia, for a business trip! 

Do not know if I should thank Cathay Pacific for their cancelling the flight. For one, I did not get on a plane that had engine failure. I got to spend 3 more days with my family, even if for a few hours each day and had to work during the night and sleep during rides. It also gave me a chance to calm down and get my nerves in order after that ordeal on the plane. 

A good two months later, they did refund that cancelled trip and give me a coupon for the phone bill (from all the calls I had to make from the plane to rearrange things)!

It has taken a long time to get the photos, videos etc. on to the travelog, but that seems to be the norm these days with the busy work schedule. Seriously thinking of buying a personal laptop and installing the Photo editing software on it. Can come in handy during long flights!

Here is to the next trip, to a location we have not seen before!

Jr. brings back memories

Jr. joined the Jazz band at her school. This is a group from the regular band that spends extra time practising Jazz music. They stay back after school and improve.

Last year she had a lot of other classes and refused to go audition. This year, she has more confidence in her playing and it has been an interesting ~2 months.

She asked me many times to come see her perform at an informal "Pizza Night" and I simply could not disappoint her.

It was great to watch her play so confidently and how the Jazz band did in this short a time. 

She definitely did not disappoint me. "Oye como Va" brought back so many memories from 25 years ago when I first listened to Santana's version of it. It was much later during my dancing days that I learned that the original was actually written many decades earlier. 

My sincere hope is that Jr. keeps playing the Alto Sax and enjoys it!

Athirappilly Falls - Kerala

After having a ton of fun at Thekkadi on our recent India trip, we moved on to visit the Athirappalli (Tamil pronounciation) or Athirappilly (as they say it Malayalam) falls with a short stop at Kalady. 

Kalady is the birth place of Adi Sankara, the man who rejuvenated Hinduism across India when it was under threat from invasion on all sides. However cute as Kalady is as a small village on the banks of the Poorna(now Periyaar) river, I did not see anything special there. It was just another temple that was not even maintained to the standards of other important temples. The place could seriously use an upgrade. Moving on... 

Athirappalli is amazing! It was worth the drive on the windy Ghat roads, the trek on slippery stones down to the bottom and walking with plastic ponchos through and through. Totally worth it!

We get to see a lot of tall falls, but few wide ones here. One notable exception was Burney McArthur falls. This one is like a supersize version of Burney McArthur falls when it comes to the volume of water flowing down. Given that we were there in the middle of the monsoon, it was breathtaking!

I did take a slow motion video with the iPhone5, but somehow uploading it to Youtube makes it lose the slo-mo effect. 

If you visit Kerala, this place is a must see. On a touristy note, the ponchos are sold by vendors a good kilometer before you approach the ticket booth entrance for 100 to 120 Rupees. The store at the entrance sells it for 50 Rupees. Our kids learnt an economics lesson there which was interesting. 

Some pictures from the few hours we spent there. It was challenging to get anything there. Even if you have weatherproof 1000 dollar lenses with fancy hoods, the water just forms a fine mist in the air and hits you from all directions. I used to wipe down with a cloth, then aim, shoot, repeat. 

We came back up with happy thoughts and smiles on our faces. Just look at the little ones face on that last picture. It sums up our emotions walking in the mist!

When I post a picture on Facebook of how many states I have visited in the US over the last 21 years of staying here and many friends who were born and raised here tell me that is a lot more than they have seen! There are folks I know who have not seen any state other than California, Nevada or Oregon! 

India is also a vast country. When I was growing up, there was not a lot of time or money to go see the country. Our parents did take us on vacations within the state and to neighbouring Andra Pradesh using their LTC( Leave Travel Concession) tickets every summer. We used to love those trips, have fun visiting temples, taking bath in pristine rivers, etc. but they were like local travel. Not a wide exposure to the rest of the country.

Studying in Varanasi helped break that for me. 

Now that we have the ability to plan trips better and see more things in a short time, we are discovering a piece of India on every trip, even if the trips are few and far between.

This trip was after a gap of 3 years, so we covered two places that were on the list. Kerala and Rajasthan. 

Have finally started looking at photos from the Rajasthan trip.. will post them soon.