Life without Maggi

Maggi is an inherent part of our diet right now! The Nestle made noodles are a favorite evening snack for kids at least once a week and also a dinner option for daddy and the kids at least once a week! 

Daddy is the Maggi expert and can make it in many different ways with any combination of vegetables, as a soup, just with enough water or cook it so that the "noodles don't stick to each other", depending on what the kids feel like on any given day.

When we come home after any all day outings, dinner is always Maggi, as it can be done by the time kids go take a shower. 

So it is a rude shock to see headline news that Maggi has lead and a lot more MSG in it than it is supposed to. Given Nestle is an international brand, the expectation was always that there will be "some" quality control. 

One good thing I do is to not use the Masala packet that comes with the noodles. Instead I use a combination of :

Salt + Sambar powder (made in India with my Grandma or mom's recipe) + turmeric powder + a small pinch of asafoedita (kids like it, I skip it)

and we save the masala packets. Think I have posted on this earlier as well. 

Given all the Maggi consumption, we have a drawer in the kitchen just dedicated to noodles and masala. Today I decided to go clean out the Maggi drawer and this is what I saw..

poured it on the ground and counted the packets to clear it out..

That was 670 packets of Maggi Tastemaker masala! This is just from Jan of this year. 

Going by some crude math, we would have possibly injested enough lead to make us brain dead for the next seven generations if the reports are true!

Then again, we do not know how much of the stuff is in the noodles. Will watch the reports. Maybe the New Jersey Nestle that imports it from India will do some spot checks?

It is also true that noodles (be it Maggi or Ramen) have a lot of wax in it.. so I do boil the noodles to remove the wax on occasion or dry roast it to get rid of the wax before using the noodles. 

Given the data, we are not an occasional noodle family! So we should take this seriously. In the meantime, we are going back to adai, dosai, kunukku for "tiffin" where possible.

Growing up fast..

The camera has been out for 5 days this year. That means photographs of the kids or family are few and far between.

Got a rare chance earlier this month to take a few pictures of Jr. in the backyard just before she was going to her dance class.  

She is already a handful and is a deadly cross between two of my favorite women.. My wife and my sister. If she doesn't do something that reminds me of one, she does remind me of the other. 

Jr. is already planning to take over mom's closet and shoe rack, given she is now the same size. I just sit back and watch the fun.

Yesterday we were talking about hairstyles. When I told Jr. that I might think about paying for her to get "highlights" in her hair, San jumped in and said "too early. I didn't get highlights till college" or some such thing.

Jr.'s response?

Wow. You actually had highlights. It is good to know that my mom used to be cool! 

I had no words to respond to that. San had some choice things to say which are unprintable. 

We have officially entered unchartered territory!

Revisiting the Tulips

Roosengarde near Seattle is famous for its Tulips. Three years ago, we visited the place but were too late to the Tulip fields. They had topped it off. 

This year we got a chance to go there. We miscalculated on multiple fronts. We had 5 hours in the afternoon to go and come back, before we had to drive to the airport to catch our flight back.

It was probably the first sunny weekend in Seattle area. The entire population was out on the freeway. The traffic made a 90 minute ride into a 3 hour ride. Also given we were in two cars and were using the iPhone as a GPS, the phone battery drained in the middle of the drive. That meant that we could not communicate between cars. We were thinking of turning back multiple times but given the communication gap, decided to go all the way and meet at the Tulip place. 

We spent 20 minutes there. Ran to the fields, took pictures and raced back to the parking lot. That was when some of the kids in the group said "pee pee". The attendant in the fields pointed us to a restroom that was half a mile away, or what seemed half a mile away. So we told the kids to hold it and started on our drive back. 

Made it back in a lot less than 90 minutes after some fast driving and we also made it to our flight as it was boarding!

Here are some pictures.. 

It is quite a sight. If you are in the seattle area in Mid April, don't miss it.

Loved this color.. 

This was my favorite strip.. bright yellow!

Finally a photograph that my mom will appreciate! She always complains that I am not in the pictures.. 

Next time we go, we will plan an extra day in Seattle instead of a Friday evening to Sunday evening trip and spend a day here.  That way I can go crazy with the photography.