What's up Doc?

With the thought of carrots, invariably comes the thought of Bugs Bunny! HAPPY BIRTHDAY D!!!

Carrot Cake? Try this.

Movies, Movies, Movies!

I've watched:

The Queen

I now get all the hype that was on about Helen Mirren in this movie. Good stuff.

Scoop

Okay so Rotten Tomatoes doesn't think this movie is that great... But Woody Allen is a funny man and I officially like Scarlett Johanssen so there. Watch it if you will.

(Don't worry Sharan, before I left Bombay I hiked up to Lamington road to buy a whole bunch of DVDs so I can burn movies for y'all...)

More blog later,

Toodles

Movie Update!

Here are some movies I watched over the past few days and I would recommend... In this order...

1. Atonement: Brilliant! I loved it... I was a little apprehensive at first cause well with a title like Atonement I was sort of expecting blood and gore but it's not really. Must watch. Amazing acting and everything...

2. Dan in Real Life: So funny, so cute! Ahhhhh, Steve Carrell. The talent. Its about this guy called Dan who falls in love with beautiful stranger but then he figures out that she's his brother's girlfriend! Uh oh! Let the chaos begin!

3. Horton hears a who! : Really cute! I watched this at the theatre and it was good fun... If you haven't heard of Dr. Seuss please go look him up...

Sunny Days

Goodness... let me tell you, making Lemon Meringue Pie is NOT a piece of cake!! I thought it was bordering on disastrous especially cause out of all the millions of recipes I looked up, it just says 9 inch pie crust or whatever and not HOW to make pie crust so I was a little apprehensive about that cause well I've never done this before... Anyway so I found this one recipe that's easy enough but it involves 'shortening' and as far as I know you don't get that in India so I used butter instead and it seemed pretty okay and then it comes to the rolling bit and its all pretty much falling apart. So somehow I rolled it out big enough to fit my baking dish which is all ready and waiting and then guess what?? It doesn't FIT in the blooming oven!! So I had to re-do the whole thing using a different dish.

Anyway, it didn't taste bad but here's a few tips if you live in India and you want to try this:

1. When they say lemons in the recipe they mean things that look like this :-









Which are harder to find in India and you are more likely to come across these:-













They're called "key-limes" and are smaller, seedier, have a thinner rind and are also tangier than lemons... So if the recipe says four lemons and you have key-limes, use only two or three if you like it really tangy... And you might also want to reduce the number of eggs to three... The egg yellow is basically what gives the filling its colour thickens it and the egg white is used for the meringue on top of the pie.
2. For the pie crust; 1/2 cup butter folded into 1 cup flour and then add 1/4 cup cold water till the dough binds worked pretty well, its just a little hard to roll out without breaking, so you could add 1/2 an egg to that for better binding or just carefully roll it out between two sheets of wax paper and then remove the top layer of paper, position in the dish and remove the other layer... also, make a few holes with a fork on the bottom and sides of the shell to prevent it from puffing up during baking... (200 degree celcius, 20 mins)

Happy Baking!

You can find the recipe here.

I Survived Malaria!

Malaria is no stranger to me... Infact I think pretty much all of my family has had Malaria atleast once... Go figure. We lived in Zambia for more than a decade. But we're still alive and that's not supposed to be such a big deal. However, people do actually DIE of malaria simply because they can't afford the drugs required to prevent/cure it.

It's not all that morbid though, cause YOU can make that change!!

Visit NothingbutNets.net

GET INVOLVED. SAVE A LIFE!

p.s. All you bloggers, please don't forget to put a link on YOUR blog too and spread the word... Now what are you waiting for? GO PLAY!I

177 is an odd number

And its hard to figure out where exactly on the dial it is... But halfway between 150 and 200 is close enough right? Well it works... Anyway the strange number is because I have to convert 350 degrees Fahrenheit to Celcius and that's what it is 177. Jeez, why can't the whole world just run on the same measuring system!!! Anyway, so I made Coffee Banana Bread today and it is different and delicious! Got the recipe from here. (Thank you Kari!) If you like to cook, you must check it out... lots of yummy recipes... I'm totally addicted to baking and if I'm not so good at it, everyone's too polite to say so, so I shall continue! Mwahahahaha! (That's my evil laugh btw)

I watched two movies yesterday...

~ The Nanny Diaries... I really like Scarlett Johansonn. She's beautiful and a pretty great actress too. This is a nice, funny movie and there's a really cute guy in it too as a bonus ;) Don't know what his name is though!

~ Vinegar Hill on the Hallmark channel... I gotta say the Hallmark Channel ROCKS! (Except for the fact that they show waaaaaayyy too much of Oprah Winfrey) All their movies have great stories and there are no sleazy sex scenes. You think there's one coming but then... oh its the next scene and you know what happened but you know, you didn't have to see it. It's not that I'm totally against it, it's just that so many movies have unneccesary sex scenes and that's just irritating. Like one of the Matrix movies, I think it was the third one and it just went on and on. Blergh. Anyway this movie is based on a book by the same name by A. Manette Ansay which incidentally has the 'Oprah Book Club' sticker on it... What can you say, the woman leaves her mark everywhere she goes!

Anyway, 'Stepmom' is playing on TV and its coming to the crying part so I'm gonna go...

La'ers

Horse and Carriage

Hilarious Lyrics by Frank Sinatra

Love and Marriage

Love and marriage, love and marriage
Go together like a horse and carriage
This I tell you brother
You cant have one without the other

Love and marriage, love and marriage
Its an institute you cant disparage
Ask the local gentry
And they will say its elementary

Try, try, try to separate them
Its an illusion
Try, try, try, and you will only come
To this conclusion

Love and marriage, love and marriage
Go together like a horse and carriage
Dad was told by mother
You cant have one without the other

I like to agree with Mr. Frank Sinatra! Sigh.
Anyway... You've GOT to see this website - amazing photography by this woman called Brandelyn Shirley. It's like a fairy tale... Check it out for yourself, you'll see what I mean.

Want some?

Fudgy Mocha Brownies with a Crust.

Try it. I thought it was pretty good. Its basically a brownie on top of short-crust you know like the stuff Mrs. Dodds used to make for all our birthday the short-crust with caramel and mint chocolate? Yumscious!!

Anyways... I'll blog more later.

Happy Birthday Orvi, Jonny and Sam!

Little Lessons

God at Her Elbow

Lewis grieving the death of his wife, Joy:

On the other hand, 'Knock and it shall be opened.' But does knocking mean hammering and kicking the door like a maniac? And there's also 'To him that hath shall be given.' After all, you must have a capacity to receive, or even omnipotence can't give. Perhaps your own passion temporarily destroys the capacity.
For all sorts of mistakes are possible when you are dealing with Him. Long ago, before we were married, H. was haunted all one morning as she went about her work with the obscure sense of God (so to speak) 'at her elbow', demanding her attention. And of course, not being a perfected saint, she had the feeling that it would be a question, as it usually is, of some unrepented sin or tedious duty. At last she gave in - I know how one puts it off - and faced Him. But the message was, 'I want to give you something' and instantly she entered into joy.

- from A Grief Observed

(A Year with C.S. Lewis: Daily Reading from His Classic Works; 18 April)

Sometimes I'm scared to face God cause He seems to like to ask of me things that I feel are WAY above my maturity level like Juno puts it and I don't like dealing with such things. So I run, whenever I feel like 'He's at my elbow', I ignore Him.

But what if He's not asking anything at all? What if He just wants to give? What am I missing out on?

I'm guessing, a LOT.

The moment I wake up...

Hello yous~
I am strangely not as addicted to the internet as I used to be. This is a good thing!

Yesterday, I went out with a school friend - Jonny Reid and we chatted and ate a very mallu lunch (appams and chicken stew) and then we went to watch 'U Me aur Hum' which is a new hindi film. I was quite proud of Jonny for sitting through the whole thing and he didn't even ask too many questions about what was going on. I guess learning arabic helps to understand hindi? Anyway, I didn't think it was that great... Although Alzheimer's disease seems to be a recurring theme in my life at the moment. The nice thing about this film is that its got Ajay Devgan and Kajol and they're actually married and so the romance on screen makes it all that much better! Call me old fashioned, but its just nice.




Other movies I've watched so far:

* The Jane Austen Book Club ~
love it! Perfect movie for a blah afternoon and it'll make you want to read all of Jane Austen's novels... Everybody ends up with the right person and its all very satisfying and everything. Watch it! Also has one of my favourite actresses from way back in the day of 'Judging Amy' on the Hallmark channel (click on the picture to know more...)

* The Stranger beside me on Hallmark ~ scary! Imagine marrying a man that you think you know and you love and then he turns out to be a pervert and a rapist. Imagine sleeping beside that man every night. Yikes. Its based on a true story...

* The Panic Room ~ The usual suspense thriller... It was playing on TV so I watched it.

The Bear Came Over The Mountain

I just watched this movie. You should watch it too! It's good. Heartbreakingly good. It's about this old couple who've been in love and married for almost half a century and are happy and then the wife gets Alzheimer's... Possibly the only thing worse than your spouse dying before you is your spouse forgetting who you are...
You should watch this movie. No embarrassing sex scenes that make you want to go fetch a glass of water when your parents walk in. No violence. Just amazing camera shots, great acting, a good story and a make-you-think kind of ending...
I'm in Bangalore and I'm trying to lose weight. NOT easy. The fridge is stacked with Coke and Chocolates and Cheese - the three 'C's I can't resist and I'm not allowed to have any of it! Meh.
Yesterday I cooked dinner - Roast Chicken, boiled vegetables and finger chips made in the oven sans deep frying! Ma directed of course from her bed cause she wasn't feeling well and she came to my rescue a couple of times. But cooking is tiring! I can't imagine doing it every day...
That's it for now~~~~
Toodles

New Alipore

Almost all of the "Ray clan" (Ma's family in Kolkata exists 4 brothers and 3 sisters and they all got married and had kids and so its a BIG family and so much FUN!)

Guess who's back!

HELLO!

This has got to be the longest time I have NOT blogged since I started like two years ago. I actually didn't miss it as much as I thought I would...

Anyway, so I'm in Kolkata and I'm loving it!!

It rained cats and dogs last night and some of this morning - thunder and lightning and all. It was great!

So far I have:

~ eaten 'phuchka' (think pani puri but its not exactly the same) twice

~ been shopping twice

~ been to one HUGE mall which is supposed to be the biggest in Asia but I've heard that about way too many malls so I'm a little hesistant to believe it... ;)

~ met up with an old friend from Zambia after like 5 years or something like that. He used to be such a naughty little kid and now he's taller than me... how fast they grow. boys. meh. i'm still the same height since i last saw him and he's like 6 years younger than me! not. fair.

~ went to a bar with my cousin where they had live music and i met all his friends. hmmm. interesting is all i'll say on here!

~ watched bruce almighty (for the first time) and pearl harbor (again)

~ finished three quarters of Jodi Picoult's newest - 'A change of heart'.... it's uh... can't really say yet... it's educative and there are a few ideas that seem a little picked out of 'Cage of Stars' by Jacquelyn Mitchard and there's the usual court-room drama and I'm waiting for a twist cause it's kind of obvious there is one and I THINK I know what it is...

~ eaten lots of fish. tomorrow is hopefully going to be 'eelish mach'

~ been on the metro twice - i'm so proud of calcutta for thinking about this like twenty years in advance unlike the rest of india's metropolitans except for bombay; atleast we have the trains but i think we could also do with metros. metros are good and air-conditioned! ;)

~ met the newest member of the family (my cousin's newborn son) who is mostly asleep or crying or peeing but he's cute anyways!

~ played scrabble (and WON) once!

Sorry I don't have any pictures except for this one of Vini, Sharan, Joyee and me from the 31st March before we went to Sonu's cousin's wedding... I'll upload the rest when I get to Bangalore next week sometime...