Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Parenthood, Yet Again

Q: What are the symptoms of a sick kid?

A: Lack of sleep, loss of appetite and crankiness - in the parents

Slowly parenthood is making more sense. The sacrifice, the sleepy nights and compassion, are all beginning to show its magnitude.

Over the last one week the kids have been taking turns falling sick with viral fever. While I appreciate their consideration in doing so one by one, allowing us mere mortals to provide them with the necessary tlc (tender loving care, not travel and living channel) and sleepless night activities, it is no fun staying up and living like a zombie the next day.

At times like this I am greatly grateful to my hubby for giving me the opportunity to be a SAHM. I can't imagine losing out even a minute of them being sick and needing me.

It is 4.54am and as I type this, I watch on hubby nursing the sick toddler to sleep, just hours away from catching his flight for a work trip. Papa of the year, and don't forget my title too!

A humble appreciation to our parents for bringing us to where we stand now. We would be nothing without you. Allow me to stay awake and send the boss off for his trip.
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Saturday, April 21, 2012

Why This Kolaveri Di?

I am not about to present my own homemade version of Kolaveri song because it has been (over)done already. 'Why This Kolaveri Di' song went viral on social networking, and been awarded by YouTube with a Recently Most Popular Gold Medal Award for receiving a large number of hits in a short time. Once you type the words 'why' on youtube or google, the complete title comes up for your selection. Even the server backup would be updated.

As I sit listening and watching different versions of Kolaveri song on the youtube with my better half, I can't help asking, 'why this kolaveri indeed?' Why is the song such a rage?

The word Kolaveri means murderous rage in Tamil and the recent rage around the song pretty much is just that. The lyrics of the song is written in Tanglish (Tamil+English). It is a part of the soundtrack for the movie '3', written and sung by the actor Dhanush himself. Dhanush sang the song in broken English, as a Tamil person with limited knowledge of the English language. This is perhaps one big reason why the song caught up with the masses. It is very much understandable by the regular English speaking person, boosts of no pretension or exclusivity.

The lyrics of the songs is about a young man experiencing failure in his romantic relationship. No matter what is your mother tongue, this is one Tanglish song that anyone can sing or even understand!

Another possible reason for the rage on the song is perhaps a conspiracy theory by South Indian Superstar Rajnikanth. Dhanush is married to one of Rajini's daughter, and as Rajini is well into the road of retirement, it is perhaps the best way to pass the baton to his successor, Dhanush, as far as stardom is concerned. Maybe Chitti Version 2.0 and his clone robots have something to do with this!

Banking on the youtube popularity success of the song, it is filmed with numerous banner advertisements of AirAsia and Aircel. Sheer genius! With this much of popularity and strategy, no box office success needed to celebrate their movie!

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Cheese Stuffed Chicken Meatloaf With Bacon Recipe

Phew! Is that the longest dish name ever or what! As promised, here I am sharing my recipe with you. I was mainly inspired with Nigella's recipe here for the bacon layering on the outside. The boiled egg stuffing was pretty tempting but I decided cheese would be more continental. And for the same reason, I went for some Italian seasoning using herbs and tomato puree for some character.


Ingredients:

400g minced chicken meat
Some celery, chopped fine
Some black pitted olives, chopped
A few cloves of garlic, grated
1 cup of rolled oats
2 tbsp tomato puree
1 egg
Some thyme, basil and oregano seasoning
2 tbsp milk

1 cup of cheddar cheese, grated
5-6 pieces of bacon

Steps:

1. Mix all the ingredients except cheese and bacon together. Add more oats if you find the minced meat to be soft and not able to sit in shape.

2. Take a baking pan and line it with baking paper.

3. Take half of the mixture and spread it on the baking paper.

4. Put the cheddar cheese on the center of the spread, keeping about 2 inches from the edge.

5. Spread the remaining half on top of the cheese and seal the edges.

6. Layer the bacon on top of the meatloaf in parallel manner.

7. In a preheated oven bake for 20-30 mins, till the bacon is a nice brown colour.
The highlight of savouring this dish is when you cut pieces of the meatloaf and you see cheese oozing out, super-yum! And the bacon is just the icing on the cake, or meatloaf, in this case!

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Living A Zoo Life

Well life has been like a zoo with 1 playful toddler and 1 baby that gets all excited seeing his brother's playfulness that he almost jumps out of my grip. But this is not the zoo this post is about.

Ever since we moved into the new neighbourhood, there has been numerous cars driving around on speed as slow as 10kmph, just to check out the houses and perhaps check out the extent of renovations the people have done to their homes. On weekends and public holidays, the frequency is higher, and speed slower. I kid you not.

While it is flattering to be 'checked out' for our new house, it is sometimes weird that we suddenly feel like a piece of exhibition at the zoo where people visit, stop, watch, and move on to the next piece. I won't be surprised if the passengers in the car are even munching on popcorn or other goodies. I suddenly feel the frustration and loss of privacy that the animals on exhibit at the zoo would feel like. And we complain (I know I do) if they are sitting idle in the corner doing nothing. It is totally our right to chill out in our own space without being watched or judged.

On another note, it is the time of baby solid feeding milestone again and I am into baby solid prep all over again. Jeev is progressing well with his solid intake and at the moment he is having a taste of pasta with pumpkin sauce.



I managed to steal some time over the weekend to make pizzas, using ready-made pizza crust. One is barbeque chicken sausage, and the other tuna delight, which turned out more quiche-like. A wise man once told me that the beauty of the cooking is in the audience, without him, it is nothing. And I feel lucky and gifted that I have such a great receiver and appreciator with an immaculate taste for good food and cooking experiments. The positive words of feedback encourages me to make more and better. Bon Appetite!




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Thursday, April 5, 2012

Bacon Quiche Recipe

Its been a week since I posted the quiche pictures that I made, and I have been wanting to post the recipe for it but thanks to my hectic lifestyle and busy schedule (read motherhood), I can hardly get a moment to myself, let alone blogging.

So there it is, the recipe. Before I get into the details of the recipe, let me remind you that I sort of cheated a bit on the pie crust. Since this was my first ever attempt on making a quiche, I did not want to take any chances, and decided to use ready made roti prata with onions as the base. You can most definitely use the plain ones, but the onion type brought and extra aroma and taste into the pie.

Ingredients:

Some bacon, chopped
1-2 onion, chopped
Some shitake mushroom, chopped
1.5 cup of milk
2 eggs
1 cup of cheddar cheese, grated
4 pieces of roti prata
Some butter

Steps:

1. In a non stick pan, fry the chopped bacon without oil. Once done take it out and set aside.

2. In the same pan, fry the onion and mushroon together till aromatic, and set aside.

3. In a bowl, whisk the milk and eggs together.

4. Butter the pie dish. Toast the prata till light brown in a non stick pan with little butter. Leave it light brown as it will further cook in the oven later.

5. Arrange the prata on the pie dish such a way that you have the sides covered as well.

6. Sprinkle the fried ingredients on the prata. Next layer it with the cheddar cheese.

7. Pour the milk and eggs combination over the pie dish. If you want you can add another layer of cheese.

8. Bake in a preheated oven at 180C for 20-30mins.

You can also replace the bacon with other types of meat, or omit it out altogether.

Baking Up A Storm

As you can see in the title, I am still all kicked-up with my own baking season, and spending as much time and groceries I can in whipping out yummy little stuff using my oven, be it sweet or savoury, or tasteless biscuits (which by the way has been finished by my kid).

I have been spending extra time watching cooking shows by Nigella, Jamie, and the likes, giving extra attention to the details. I decided on making chicken meatloaf and bacon quiche for my next baking venture for a special meal for my better half's birthday. It was a cunning plan to surprise him on his birthday eve, but I did mention to him that I am going to cook something special for him. Since he knew I am so over the moon with the oven, he speculated it could be some pizza or baked pasta (since I make pasta like so often).

I spent a week in checking out recipes online. Pie crust is not exactly easy to make, and I did not want to take any risk as I already have 2 kids on my hands while I prep and fry and bake, so I used my own shortcut - readymade roti prata as base. And for the meatloaf, the plain chicken version sounded too simple, and I got inspired by Nigella's recipe here with the bacon layering on the top, and replaced the filling with cheddar cheese.

Menu was simple, meaty (chicken), and bacon-y. The best thing about both the dishes was that they both had his favourite item, bacon and cheese. And there was no vegetable sidedishes, intentionally, because he is strictly non-vegetarian and I don't want to upset him on his special day.

By the time he arrived, I only had the bacon quiche out of the oven, and he was like 'I knew it was going to be a pizza' and I told him how wrong he was.


Next, I cunningly got him to 'check out' how the meatloaf looked in the oven, and the mere look of bacon layering got him falling in love all over again, with me and the bacon.


The outcome was a feast to the eyes and our tastebuds. Hubby's feelings after his non-vegetarian feast was happy beyond happiness. Although he knew I was like the best cook ever, he did not expect such huge surprise and western experience similar to his American diners. I am just humbled, and excited to try out more. Check out the cheese oozing out of the meatloaf, perfection, well almost!

I will be sharing the recipes in my next post, stay tuned!

Monday, April 2, 2012

Baking For Love

We finally got our oven built into the new kitchen cabinets and I finally got the chance to test (my rusty baking skills and) the oven out. I was spending hours of surfing the net trying to decide what I want to bake to officiate the oven. It took days of attempts and planning till I really got the time to execute the plan. Remember I am the hectic mother of an active toddler and clingy baby?

The first thing that I planned to bake had to be toddler friendly, as I am always feeding Sanju with biscuits for snack, and I prefer him to eat something homemade, like finally! My virtual best friend (Google) brought me to the perfect site for healthy toddler bakes here, and I decided to try out the Oaty Crisp Biscuits.

And the verdict? Nice smell (thanks to the cinnamon), crispy on the outside, but a bit soft inside. I think I should have made them smaller. But on the whole it was a hit with the target audience, Sanju, although it was not sweet at all. Here is the pic, in my most untalented photography skills.


Next, it had to be some indulging dessert for the chocolate crazy adults, with some hints of cheese presence. I decided to go for this cheat chocolate cheese cake that I made previously for my mom's new oven. Basically I just bought a box of ready-mix chocolate cake, added about 200g of butter, 1 cup milk, 250g of cream cheese and 2 eggs, and voila! Cheat, but moist chocolate cheese cake at your service. The final product looks like this:


My creative half was so excited that he wanted to recreate the Bubba Gump's Chocolate Thing with the cake and some ice cream. He layered ice cream and compacted the cake into a mug, heated it up in the microwave, and then put a topping of the same ice cream. The taste was so good that it was overwhelming. I think we might have just uncovered some secrets there!


Next I have planned numerous bakes and grills to be done in the oven, as long as my hectic schedule permits! Watch this space for more.

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