2016 Sec 1 Week 6 Update

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Since we were reaching GG’s school on a touch-and-go basis last week with her screaming she’s late, we decided to leave a bit earlier this week and see if we were reaching schools in time. So we started leaving home around 6:30 – 6:35 am daily against the 6:45 am of last week. The 10 minutes did seem to make a difference and most week we reached BB’s school before 7 am and dropped off GG latest by 7:10 am. This meant I was at work latest by 7:20, making me perhaps the first person in, after the cleaners! The new timings work and this will now be our default timings daily.

BB had a school ‘Big Breakfast’ on Friday. He and a bunch of classmates, who make up the class committee went to the shopping centre last week to buy food items for this communal breakfast that their school does each year. They got NTUC Fair Price coupons and I think they went $1 above that which someone paid.

Class tests for both are on and BB also has his first common test in two weeks’ time, so need to push them a bit for this.

We also went through the cut-off points for some of the junior colleges as well as some of the polytechnic courses that the kids are interested in. It was a bit of a shocker for them as some of the courses have such low cut off points! Hopefully this will spur them to do well in secondary school. Stress levels start to rise again!

Monday and Tuesday are off for everyone in Singapore for the Chinese New Year holidays. So it’s time to chill and have some fun before we start working on the first exams of secondary 1!

In My Hands Today…

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Sister of My Heart – Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Anju is the daughter of an upper-caste Calcutta family; her cousin Sudha is the daughter of the black sheep of the family. Sudha is as beautiful, tenderhearted, and serious as Anju is plain, whip-smart, and defiant. yet since the day they were born, Sudha and Anju have been bonded in ways even their mothers cannot comprehend.

The cousins’ bond is shattered, however, when Sudha learns a dark family secret. urged into arranged marriages, their lives take sudden, opposite turns: Sudha becomes the dutiful daughter-in-law of a rigid small-town household, while Anju goes to America with her new husband and learns to live her own life of secrets. Then tragedy strikes them both, and the women discover that, despite the distance that has grown between them, they have only each other to turn to. Set in the two worlds of India and America, this is an exceptionally moving novel of love, friendship, and compelling courage.

Recipe: Mixed Vegetable Koftas in Red Gravy

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Last week S asked for some koftas for lunch. You could call Koftas a kind of Indian meatballs which are made with both meat as well as vegetables mixed with spices. Normally when asked for these labour intensive dishes, my usual answer is a no, but I decided to make them this time. I usually prepare these with potatoes, but for some reason didn’t want to that day. I decided to experiment and that experiment was a huge success, hence this blog post. These koftas, though labour and time intensive are extremely versatile and you could have them as part of your main course, as a snack or even made into veggie burgers! You’ll be glad you tried them….

Mixed Vegetable Koftas in Red Gravy

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Ingredients:

For the Koftas:

  • 2 cups chopped mixed vegetables (I used potatoes, sweet potatoes, cauliflowers, French beans, carrots, peas, corn and cabbage. You could use some of these, all or even experiment with your own version)
  • 1 cup frozen paneer
  • 2 cups Breadcrumbs (may need slightly more or less, depending on the wetness of the paste)
  • 1 tsp turmeric
  • 1 – 2 tsps red chilli powder (add more or less depending on the intensity of the chilli and your tolerance level)
  • 2 tsps Amchur powder (dry mango powder, can omit if not available, though it gives a nice tanginess to the kofta)
  • Salt to taste
  • Oil for deep frying

For the Red Gravy

  • 2 tbps oil
  • 2 large onions, chopped roughly
  • 3 medium tomatoes, chopped roughly
  • 1 medium carrot, chopped
  • 1/3 of orange pumpkin, peeled and chopped
  • 1 cup skimmed milk
  • 1 inch piece of ginger
  • 4-5 garlic pods
  • 1 tsp coriander seeds
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • 1 tsp fennel seeds
  • 1 tsp carom seeds
  • 1 tsp garam masala
  • Fresh coriander leaves to garnish

Method:

For the koftas

  • In a large pressure cooker, cook the chopped vegetables with minimum water for about 4 whistles. Let the pressure reduce completely, remove from the cooker and drain all the water completely.
  • In a largish dish put the frozen paneer and cover with hot water. This will soften the paneer and when soft enough to press with your fingers, drain the water completely. Keep the water to use for the gravy.
  • Once the vegetables are cool enough to touch and the water has drained away, using your hands or a potato masher, mash up the vegetables so that it resembles a dough. At the point, squeeze out the water from the paneer and crumble it, adding it to the paste.
  • Add salt to taste, red chilli powder, turmeric powder, amchur powder and mix well. Add the breadcrumbs a cup at a time and try to make balls. If the mixture is able to retain the shape of the ball without crumbling or sticking to your hand, the koftas are ready to be fried. Keep this aside while you start on the gravy.
  • Make the required number of koftas and fry on a medium flame till the outside is nice, crisp and brown. Drain on kitchen paper. You need not cook the inside too much as it is already cooked. Keep it aside till it is time to serve.

For the Gravy

  • In a pan, heat 1 tsp oil and fry the following, stirring for a couple of seconds each before you add the next ingredient – cumin seeds, coriander seeds, fennel seeds, carom seeds, chillies, ginger and finally the garlic.
  • Next add the chopped onions, fry for a few minutes, then put in the carrots and pumpkin, frying each for a couple of minutes before adding the next one.
    When the vegetables start softening, add the tomatoes and add a tsp of salt to allow the vegetable to sweat and cook. When the tomatoes are cooked and the vegetables soft, remove from the fire.
  • Let it cool and then zap it in a blender. You can use the paneer water here as it has all the goodness of paneer.
  • Once cool, in a clean pan, heat the balance 1 tsp oil, and when warm, pour the blended mixture and let it boil. If the mixture if thick, add some milk or cream (if you want to make it rich) to thin it.
  • When it starts boiling, check for salt and add the garam masala. Give it a quick boil and switch off the gas.

Assembling the dish

  • When it’s time to serve, heat the gravy and add the koftas to the gravy, garnish with coriander leaves and serve immediately.

Tips and Notes:

  • You can make the koftas as a teatime snack. I even made these into patties and served as veggie burgers. They were delicious!
  • Do not assemble the dish in advance as the koftas tend to absorb the gravy, so make them separately and assemble when it’s time to serve.
  • Instead of milk, you could do a combination of milk and cream in the gravy to make it richer. At the stage of frying the onions and spices, a handful of cashewnuts could also be added to increase the richness of the gravy.
  • I also felt that if the gravy was thinned with milk, you could also drink it as a soup. Just increase the amount of carrots and pumpkin and it’s quite similar to my Coriander Carrot Pumpkin Soup.

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The Koftas made as patty for a delicious Veggie Burger!

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In My Hands Today…

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The Sly Company of People Who Care – Rahul Bhattacharya

In flight from the tame familiarity of home in Bombay, a twenty-six-year-old cricket journalist chucks his job and arrives in Guyana, a forgotten colonial society of raw, mesmerizing beauty. Amid beautiful, decaying wooden houses in Georgetown, on coastal sugarcane plantations, and in the dark rainforest interior scavenged by diamond hunters, he grows absorbed with the fantastic possibilities of this new place where descendants of the enslaved and indentured have made a new world. Ultimately, to fulfill his purpose, he prepares to mount an adventure of his own. His journey takes him beyond Guyanese borders, and his companion will be the feisty, wild-haired Jan.

Dreams Revisited

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I was going to post this in my weekly update, but when I started typing it, it became a whole new post, hence posting it today! I also wrote about another really vivid dream I had about 8-9 months back

This week I’ve had some real vivid dreams. I dreamt about planes, travel, holidays three days in a row and then one about a quarrel with my mum! I am going to document what the dreams were, so if there are any changes in life, I know it’s here and I don’t forget.

Dream 1
In the first dream, I am transiting in Bangalore on the way to Singapore and decide to leave the airport and go out. It is night time and I end up in a very happening party. I talk to people and suddenly see a male friend whom I have not seen for a while. While talking and catching up, I suddenly realise I need to get back to the airport. My friend volunteers to drop me back. We reach the airport which is deserted and stroll in, going upto the runway when we suddenly see the SQ flight take off. I am not at the least bit upset, but just comment, “Oh dear, I’ve missed my flight, I don’t know when I will get to Singapore.” I don’t remember anything beyond this and probably woke up at this point.

Dream 2
The second dream is a lot more fuzzy, but it has something to do with a flying club and BB. I do remember thinking that I had another plane dream when I woke up but nothing else…

Dream 3
This one is the most vivid one, especially when I just woke it. It took me a couple of seconds to come back to the earth! In this dream, S, BB, GG and I are in London. We are in an AirBnB rental place and the kids are not happy with their bedroom. I take soiled clothes and put them into a washing machine, commenting to S about why we didn’t try this route before.

There’s a knock and someone comes in – I couldn’t recognize him, but I am guessing he was local and he passes me a paper. I can’t remember now what it was, but in the dream it made perfect sense. Something about him passing it from someone or I passing him something. Then he passes me a map of London and we start planning our itinerary, I remember seeing the Parliament House and the Buckingham House in the map.

Next I remember being outside and also thinking I should write a novel set in London and see if I could get away with it without actually being there. At the outside place, I saw some people who seemed familiar. At this point the alarm rang and I woke up.

Dream 4
I had another weird dream. This time, I was around 20 odd years old, living at home with my parents and sister. It was just my mum, sister and me in the dream. I need to go to school and my mum was asking me to make something. I don’t know why, but I was against doing that and was mouthing her off. I reluctantly did what I was supposed to do, banging things around.

My sister also needed to go to school and the word Aston/Ashton was very emphatic in the dream. I think this was the school I was to go to? When I finally finish, I decide to take a taxi and drop my sister to school on the way. We get down and I suddenly realise I do not have the address of Aston/Ashton and start googling it using my phone (there were no mobiles then, or if there were, only the very rich could afford them, leave aside smartphones)!

We get a taxi and I also find out the address but suddenly realise that by the time I get to school, it will be over. I don’t remember much after this, or perhaps I woke up. I’ve never spoken to my mum like I did in the dream, at least not since I grew up and went to college. She was more a friend than a mum. My dad perhaps sometimes as I am more like him than my mum in temperament and when we tend to disagree, both stand their ground and won’t budge. It’s up to my mum to play the peacemaker!

I googled what the dreams meant and it’s absolutely fascinating!

Dreaming about missing a flight means there’s something missing in your life, possibly direction, confidence or intimacy. It’s a fear of missing something important and is possibly related to the stress in your waking hours. This is possibly due to my current work situation, but in the dream there was no fear when I missed the flight, just an Oh Oh moment!

Dreaming about London or any other big city usually has references to socializing and making friends. If you are on a holiday or socializing in the big city, then positive changes are afoot.

If you are in an empty Airport in your dream, it means that changes are afoot and shortly you will have a situation that must come to ahead

When you travel to a new place that you’ve never been before in a dream, it means that you desire for changes to occur in your life or changes are going to occur, which you may know or not. This is to enable you to move forward in life. Again if you enjoyed the trip, then the changes may be more positive than negative

When you quarrel with someone in your dream, it means some sort of a struggle which you are facing in your life. Quarreling with friends or business associates indicate positive changes. It also means that everything will be going very well and quarrelling with family means the whole family will live in harmony.

If your mother comes in your dream, it represents the nurturing aspect of your own character and having a conversation with her indicates a matter which has preoccupied you which you are not sure how to deal with it during your waking hours, representing unresolved problems.

Ah well, I am going to take all these interpretations with a huge pinch of salt! I will definitely update here if there are positive changes to my life soon!