Living the dream. One day at a time.

After a heavy fire fighting at work on Friday, finally we were ready for our much awaited long weekend trip to a small town-Naples, Maine.  This is when I realized that we CAN live without an internet connection for two and a half days, and we actually did not die without accessing any social networking sites.

Early and fresh, we headed to our destination, after two and half hours drive reached Naples, and patted Aditi for suggesting this picturesque town to spend a laid back weekend. After quickly dropping our bags in the cabins right outside Long lake, we decided to take the canoes and explore the lake.  The row boats and canoes were available to the cabin renters whenever they wish(ofcourse with the mandatory life jackets), which was a great bonus point to this spot. For the  evening, we decided to cookout variety of meat on the grill. Being a diverse group of people we decided to marinate the meat with our own spice flavors and the result turned out to be quite a yummy meal and by 9 o clock we were in a meat heaven.   I marinated the chicken with Tandoori chicken masala, ginger, garlic and lemon juice, restrained myself to keep it mild for the benefit of  American heads. We also had a variety of chicken sausages, chicken legs (Redgine wouldn’t reveal the secret spices she added), turkey patties and dum alu. TJ demonstrated his meat grilling skills and we ate our meal sitting on the dock. At night we sipped our respective drinks around a cozy bonfire with some light conversation and called it an early day.

Next morning shivering, we woke up to realize mother nature was not being too kind to us and waited eagerly for the rain to stop as we had a number of activities planned for the day. After a refreshing cup of tea and eggs we went for a drive to Shawnee peak mountain in anticipation of going for a small trek, but the weather was not supportive and decided to drop the plan.

Focus of the day-Lunch was at a local diner Sandy’s-famous for it’s fresh seafood. I stuck to my fish and chips and couldn’t dare eating anything that was looking at me with wide open eyes. But everyone else seemed to enjoy their fresh lobster meat wearing their cute aprons and using a set of tools to cut the lobster shell. The clams in the soup simply melted in my mouth and must say that I had never tasted better clam chowder anywhere else.

Evening was spent riding a jet ski at the nearest lake, the speed in water, the waves, pleasant weather and the beautiful lake was truly an experience in itself and all of us were hesitant to give up their respective skis. For a moment I felt like a TV star with all the wind in my hair and speeding like a powerful diva, but after the jet skiing session I headed back to the cabins and made some masala tea for everyone and I felt like Reshma again :p. Among the group, Shreyas and I were the maximum gas consumers for the Jet skis because of the fast riding, curvy adventures in water and generally acting like a 5 year old. For the next couple of hours we minded our own business and pretty much did what we liked(which involved the most mature thing – taking pictures looking in random directions, notice the serious expression).

For dinner we cooked some more meat, Asparagus and turkey burgers, lets just say we ate to our heart’s content. After dinner we had a long chat till wee hours and then bundled up to sleep. All in all this weekend was a much needed break and we are charged atleast for the next couple of months!!That was my weekend how was yours?

Remember the girl behind my not-so-cool hairdo a year back? sooo she has taken to blogging these days and must say the girl can write,  so here I am shamelessly advertising my didi’s blog(go sue me if you want) who helped me write essays and speeches in past.  Now that we are sharing blog links you should also visit my dimply friend here .

Now let’s come to the title of this post, I never intended to add a recipe category to this site  but I cannot help but post this super fun recipe (No there is no patent on this one, not yet) courtesy of Shreyas. The dish is called baitha anda in Marathi and loose translation in English makes it sitting egg (??) .  The dish turned out to be good enough to make an entry in Rachel ray’s 30 minute meals (I bet you dint know Sanjeev Kapoor showed one minute shrimp rice on her show sometime back) Anyhow, without further ado lets start with the process.

Baitha Egg recipe(for 2)

Ingredients (rather components as the chef likes to call them)

* 3 eggs

* 1/2 onion, 1/2 tomato

* 1/2 teaspoon oil, Ginger garlic paste(1/4th spoon- optional)

* 1 teaspoon chicken curry powder, turmeric, cumin seeds, 1/2 teaspoon Chilly powder, salt

* Chopped  Coriander for garnishing

Method

1. Heat oil in a pan, add a teaspoon of cumin seeds and a pinch of turmeric.

2. When the seeds splutter add ginger garlic paste

3. Saute onion till they turn brown and add Chicken curry powder,  red chilly powder and salt.

4. Add chopped tomato and let it cook for a minute

5. When this gravy is cooked (now comes the tricky part), spead the gravy evenly in pan and make three holes in the pan with a spoon (no physical holes in the pan please) pour the eggs in the holes and stir them lightly with a spoon, make sure the egg doesn’t disintegrate.

6. Cover the pan and on a very low flame let the eggs cook for 4 minutes and turn them over without breaking into more than two pieces.

7. Garnish with coriander and eat with a roti or bread

You should/could/would not call this an omlette and we take no responsibility if the dish isn’t edible.  We enjoyed this quick recipe dish watching Ocean’s Eleven on a lazy saturday afternoon, which not only turned out to be a yummy meal but cured my never ending headache. BTW on a totally tangential note does anyone also think that Catch me if you can was copied from Bunty aur Babli or it’s just me :p

(Warning: If you know me in person and bring this post in our conversation, I don’t know what you are talking about)

It happened about 3 weeks back and thought I SHOULD blog this.  A lot of people I know form a natural bonding with inanimate things they own, like I know my friend N is crazy about her monkey( soft toy)  since she was a year old , N2 is very possessive about her cell phone, S is too attached to his bag and so on. Similarly I share a “connection” with my laptop, not just because my living depends on computers (being a software professional)but because the machine means a lot more to me. Mainly because when I bought a Macbook (a little reminder here and here) I thought it was exorbitant for my student’s pocket and I  had to calculate ten times and budget before I made the big decision of giving my old Dell back home and get another machine.  It was the first most expensive piece I gifted myself, and boy I was proud! The machine worked like a charm for last two years, it has passed the ultimate stress tests till now, never complained even when I ran my Netflix project with humongous data. For the first time Shreyas thought I made a wise decision!

But finally it’s destiny changed. I somehow broke the entire screen of my shining macbook three weeks back, I was numb, shattered, tried restarting the machine some hundred million times, removed the battery, put it back, All I could see on screen was 4 blue lines and black out. I called Apple support with trembling hands and was disappointed knowing that I had to wait till next morning for their working hours. Next day I scheduled an appointment at the genius bar and called Apple support, when the voice on phone said 750$ or more charge I knew it was the end of happy times, I shamelessly cried on phone not just because it costs worth a new machine but because I made such a huge mistake.

That is when the story took a different turn, the lead actor made his appearance, Shreyas pinged me and told me about this site where we could order the screen for 140$ with overnight delivery, the tricky part was that, it needed an absolute expert to replace the old screen as the machine had to be disintegrated completely  (you see where the remaining 610$ go).  I had  faith in the expert but I wasn’t sure about the quality of the screen,  after much research I made up my mind, placed the order and got the brand new screen delivered next morning. The screen replacement process took exactly 4.5 hours and n’th degree of patience. If you ever have to go though this (touches wood quickly) follow these precautionary steps:

1. Before you sit and start the actual process, make sure you have a plastic knife, lot of white papers, pen, coin, screw drivers, clean workspace with sufficient lighting. (No music in the background please)

2. Follow all the 68 steps in the guide with super dedication (Do not opt for a shortcut method)

3. After each step when you take out the screw , make a note on separate white paper where you write the step number, screw size, it’s description and keep the screw on the paper (now you get the clean space point)

4. Do not get panicked when you see your beautiful machine in pieces at one point, use this time to appreciate the engineering that was put behind it’s creation. Infact it’s a good point to take a coffee/beer/coke break according to your preference.

5. After the 58th step, hold your breath and start the machine to check if everything comes up ok, (Everything looked fine for me at this step), check the wireless connection, iSight camera settings and backlight.

6. After successfully completing 68th step, bless your friend/self whichever is applicable. (In my case I am forever thankful to Shreyas who was wicked cool throughout the process…who am I kidding there were lots of not-so-nice-sounding words involved)

This is how I learned my lesson the hard way, Thank you for your concern, you may breath now. Please be good!

My favorite paragraph from my favorite book, ‘Notes to Myself’ gifted by my favorite friend, the book which made my journey from India to Boston a much better experience:

As I look back on my life, one of the most constant and powerful things I have experienced is the desire to be more than I am at the moment -an unwillingness to let my mind remain in the pettiness where it idles– a desire to increase the boundaries of myself –a desire to feel more, learn more, express more–a desire to grow, improve, purify, expand. I used to interpret this inner push as meaning that there was some one thing out there that I wanted to do or be or have. And I have spent too much of my life trying to find it. But now I know that this energy within me is seeking more than the mate or the profession or the religion, more even than pleasure or power or meaning. It is seeking more of me; or better , it is, thank God, releasing of me.

Notes to Myself

My struggle to become a person, Hugh Prather!