Mom Tales: Puddle-jumping

These last 10 days have been about teaching the toddler an important life skill in the 21st century: How to navigate a waterlogged road (what with global warming and increasing floods each monsoon). By jumping into mud puddles, the 2.5-year-old has learned the vocabulary of water - ripples, splashes, reflections, drops, slippery sides. And he has learned to make way for cars and bikes. He now knows why Peppa Pig loves muddy puddles so much.

#teaching #momlife #momtales #rain #monsoon #muddypuddles

Brekkie: Caprese with salami

#Brekkie: My take on the Caprese with pepper and herb chicken salami from #Yummiez, #burrata from Dairy Fresh, Vadodara, tomatoes, basil, olive oil, soup spice and balsamic vinegar from #Modena

Spiced green tea

The first time my former student  me green tea from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, I discovered the joys of having green cardamom in tea, like they have there. Then, I started experimenting with cloves and cinnamon too, till I stumbled upon my second favourite Indian spice after black pepper, the black cardamom or badi elaichi. It's essential to most of our meat and fish gravies in northern and eastern India, but with some loose leaf green tea from China, Afghanistan, Darjeeling, Assam or Kenya, it's simply divine 💓

The Kissing Booth Review

Watched the movies and then read the books by Beth Reekles she wrote when she was 15 to discover why books are better than their movie adaptations (and I actually liked these). The Kissing Booth films on Netflix have reduced Noah Flynn's multi-layered character from the book to that of a badass seducer (played by the gorgeous Australian actor Jacob Elordi) and Lee Flynn's (Joel Courtney) to a childish side-kick to Elle Evans (Joey King).  Shame! Because Beth, at such young age, is brilliant with details, which older screenwriters have overlooked.

Hinduism/Hindutva

Hinduism calls for inclusion.

Hindutva calls out to Ram.

Hinduism is about temples and idols of different make and stones.

Hindutva is about pink sandstone replicas all over the country.

Hinduism is a practice, a way of living.

Hindutva is an ideology.

Hinduism is about different foods, different forms of sacrifices, different forms of devotions in different faiths.

Hindutva is narrowing Hinduism to just one stream of Brahmanical thought.

Hinduism is of the old, dating back to the age of the Vedas.

Hindutva appeared in the 1880s.

About the mishti in the mishti doi

There are three ways to make mishti doi:

1. Add a generous amount of nolen gur (date jaggery) to hung curd and steam it in a matka/cup to set

2. Caramelize sugar and add the caramel to hung curd and set it at room temperature. You may skip the steaming.

3. Add a tin or two of sweetened condensed milk to hung curd and steam.

What sets mishti doi apart from the regular doi is that it's sweet and has the colour of caramel. Gur makes it dark. Sugar makes it pinkish-brown. Condensed milk makes it creamish white. So when Pranav Patel of #DairyFresh asked me to check theirs out, I did. He warned me it isn't going to be as sweet as mishti doi usually is and he couldn't get nolen gur in #Vadodara in this season (it's only available in winter) so the sweetness of doi is a combination of regular gur (jaggery from sugarcane) and sugar. Yup, the Bengali in me is not happy about it. It's a sweet and sour dahi that isn't quite mishti but for the health freaks out there it's a decent choice of yoghurt.