Month: October 2004

Another 10 minute wonder

Yesterday night was one of those days!!!

The cook did not turn up so I asked the boys at home as to what they wanted for dinner.

In unison I get a reply “anything will do” with “something nice” added as an afterthought.

Over the years I have learnt -when such a reply is heard, something non-veg will be eaten well, any veg dish on the table will be left untouched and two hours post dinner time I will hear whimpers of “I am hungry”!

Usually when I go to the kitchen I have absolutely no idea what will reach the dining table – I searched the fridge and found Mafco frozen chicken loafs. Went to the net, searched for quick chicken recipe and found Spicy Chicken Sauté on NDTV cooks site.

This recipe tastes good with Roti or Parathas.

I did make some modifications to the recipe – most important one being adding of freshly crushed pepper after the dish was cooked.

Yum Pepper Prawns

Finally on Sunday I managed to make the deceptively simple and lip smacking yummy Hot Pepper Prawn recipe which Madhuhad posted here

The biggest problem for me was to get a bottle of Oyster Sauce. A few things I did which I will not do next time are

1) Not to use de-veined frozen prawns (already mentioned by Madhu, but I did not because fresh prawns are not always available in Nagpur if something like this has to be made in a hurry)

2) Make it a wee bit more hot

3) Make proper Veg fried rice as accompaniment – we had it with plain rice which was not bad except that we ended up eating just the peppery prawns.

The recipe does not mention putting a pinch of salt (or salt to taste) I realised while making and had put it but it wont strike those who do not cook on a regular basis (or are not women 😉

We lost him

After two days of fanatic care we lost FrostByte. It was too small to survive. It was loosing weight, developed jaundice and his breath grew laboured – the feeds we were giving perhaps did not contain the nutrients and antibodies that are necessary for such a small squirrel baby to survive.

Sunday 9.30 AM it stopped fighting for life.

We buried it in the garden while Aasim was away attending his Tabla lessons, he came back, was sad, but took it well. Since then he is placing a small flower everyday at the place where we buried FrostByte.

Our ninth baby

Today morning another baby squirrel entered our lives – this is the ninth one that has come to us and the smallest we have ever raised. Uh-Uh our first one was the smallest till date but much bigger than this one.

The eyes are not yet open, hair are sparse I am wondering if it will be able to survive at all.

He however does not seem to be in a shock – drank milk lustily has relieved itself after milk feeds. Total three feeds till now. We are giving him (yes it is a him) scalded Buffalo milk with honey at slightly higher than human body temperature -feeding by a syringe and a cut infant feeding tube and observing very strict hygiene when handling him

Peacefully curled up in Tarique’s shirt pocket, he is hating being exposed to light and cold hands.

His shouts out of resentment against light and cold are much loud for his size.

Hope the fellow survives.

Aasim came back from school and named him FrostByte after one of his UT2004 characters – “Frostbyte is strong” he says.

First pictures here and here

Lj meme

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here

Fountainhead -the movie

In one line, its good but not good enough!!

The movie does not do justice to the book. The characters barring Roark and Wynand no where come close to what they have been described – specially the physical appearance of Dominique.

At some places the characters mouth dialogues as if they are just reciting them, without understanding, to anyone who has read the book and understands it, this is very apparent with one exception of Ellsworth Monkton Toohey – he was just as despicable in the movie as he is in the book.

A big disappointment, was not finding any mention the Stoddard Temple and Dominique’s statue carved by Steven Mallory. Also no where to be seen were Mike the construction worker Catherine, Toohey’s niece and Austen Heller the man who first gave work to Roark.

In the book, Gail Wynand lives. He lives on as an emotionally dead being a defeated man who gave in to second handers. In the movie, he is shown to have committed suicide. I wonder what prompted Ms. Rand (the screenplay of the movie is by Ayn Rand herself) who have this change. I surely did not like this diversion from the book. It kind of redeems Wynand. The man saved Banner over his soul. He did the act knowing its full consequences, he did not deserve to be redeemed.

Movie recommended only if you have read the book.

Music Review

Picked up the much hyped Veer Zara audio CD for two reasons, I liked Madan Mohan’s compositions and I like Yash Chopra movies.

My first reaction was that of disappointment – the music does not have that classic feel which I was expecting, the lyrics are good, but I expected more out of Javed Akthar

However, the music grew on me and after listening to the entire CD twice, I want to hear more.

The second CD in the album is truly a collector item.