All About Food

Ever since I started cooking, my receptiveness to food and related aspects have gone up by manifolds. Despite my obvious hefty appearance, my attention to food has always remained limited to just eating it. It was so bad, that I couldnt tell if a dish had salt in it or not. Of late, I have grown very particular about it and much to my wife's chagrin, I have started asking for this or that dish every day.

In fact, for no good reasons, I have been avoiding some vegetables for the most part of my life till now. Recently, thanks my wife partly, I have started tasting the untasted. Tomatoes, Cauliflower, Brinjal have all been a strict no-no for me till recently. Now, tomatoes seem heavenly. In a way it was a blessing. Thinking about it, we all should restrict our kids to a subset of vegetables till they grow up to be 25 or so and then unleash them to discover and taste the untasted. Its like your life starting all over again with new unexplored things when it comes to eating. Just like when you were kid with a whole world to explore. Only now, you are wise and you know to avoid a chocolate in favor of a vegetable.

I was recently stunned by the amount of health and good ness an Apple can provide. Yes, a raw whole apple, period. See this listing here for what goes in to that seemingly simple fruit http://www.naturalnews.com/025013.html . I have never been a major fruit fan either but then better late than never. Of late, I am starting to wonder if that "free radical, antioxidant" stunt is actually true. You cant go wrong with a bag of apples. Interestingly, the famous saying about apples - "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" -, it turns out, is actually an euphemistic version of an even older saying - "An apple before going to bed makes the doctor beg for his bread". Understandably, sounds bit insulting to the medical community.

I couldnt find a photo of a fruit or an apple looking exotic for today's post. Hence, the photo here was taken way back in 2005. My wife had prepared dinner - awesome and rich paruppu usili and a delicious mor kozhambu to go with it. I was so tempted that I had to capture it before I dived into that.

Whose Line Is It Anyways - #10

It was just before Christmas and we as parents were heavily cashing in on the promised Santa's arrival to get our way with this young man when it comes to making him listen or do stuffs. On one such day, my wife was helping my mom put on her hair dye. The curious mind was watching it intently as my wife used a brush dipped in black dye on the hair. His face got grim and started pacing around sadly. Puzzled we asked why he looked so upset. His forlorn reply came - "Painting paper is good, painting head is bad. Mommy is painting patti's head." and with a warning look at his mom, he finished, "Santa Claus is watching you."

Our young man came to know that what his mom wears in her ears is called "ear ring". With his grandma, ie my mom, with us now, he was one fine day "exploring" her face and stumbled across the "mukuthi"(nose piercing) she was wearing. He hesitated for a moment before jubilantly naming it as her "nose ear-ring".

With his new found knowledge of alphabets and its relationship to making words, our young man also realized that most objects have their name written over them somewhere. His endeavor to read out the names written on objects gave way to some lighter moments too -

• During our stop over at Frankfurt airport, he looks through the window and blurts out "L-U-F-T-H-A-N-S-A" and with a triumphant look at me concludes it as "airplane".
• A car with an overhead sign light should be a pizza delivery car in his view. When we encountered an orange cab aka taxi, he yelled that its a pizza delivery car. We corrected him saying that its a taxi and not all cars with overhead sign light are for pizzas. After a brief reflection, he came back "O-R-A-N-G-E, ...Taxi".
• At a cross road signal, his curiosity got aroused by a bank building and its name sign - "U-N-I-O-N-B-A-N-K, .. Wall"
• I was wearing the Texas Longhorns T-shirt at home and he got excited. "T-E-X-A-S . . . . Dress"

More than the actual spell out, what stood out in the above was the eager looking expression at us expecting our approval for his efforts.