The Workings of an Overactive Mind

        Right from my childhood one of my favorite recipe was Macaroni. Mom used to make with all the vegetables & it used to be crunchy & spicy. Whenever i go home for Vacation from college this was on the menu. PV too shared my love for this macaroni of mom's. Amma used to pack this as lunch for PV & me during the car travel from Nagercoil to Chennai. But one hour into our journey we would practically polish off the whole box. I have tried so many times to replicate mom's recipe & have never been successful. Most days the longing for mom's macaroni taste has broken me completely.    So nowadays i dont try to replicate hers, instead have come up with numerous other variations. I make them with Paneer, Chicken, Vegetables, Eggs, etc. I usually eyeball the ingredients. The pasta that i tried recently for dinner was a super duper hit & i just wanted to share it here. Recipe: Pasta - 250 gms Onion - 1 medium chopped Tomato - 1 large Garlic - 6 p

    My love for Mint has no bounds. I like the flavor & freshness it brings to a dish. One of my favorite chocolates in York - Peppermint patties. Unfortunately we dont get this in India & whenever someone in my office brings a bag of chocolates from their abroad trip my hands go to this. And one more added advantage is not many like this chocolate & so more chocolates to me. Yaay.      If you are following me on Instagram or Facebook you would have known what happened at my house last week. I ended up with 3 bunches of Mint, 2 bunches of Coriander & one bunch of curry leaves. And i couldn't bring myself to waste them as they are all my favorite. So i ended up making lots of things with them.      So the first thing i did was separate the mint leaves from the stalks. It took me almost 2 hours to do this. I turned on the TV & just sat doing. On the second day, i dried one bunch of mint leaves in the shade for making dried mint leaves that can be used for G

        When I was pregnant with Varun, PV & I wanted a girl very badly. We both chose only girl names & the one boy name we could come up between the two of us was the name of our AC 'Blue Star'. I went through 20 hrs of labor pain & the nurse in the delivery room asked us to say to the baby to come soon. So both PV & I promptly used the girl name & the nurse gave us a weird stare. Finally they had to do a C-sec as we both were going into distress.     After the baby was born, the Dr woke me & showed that its a boy. I was very disappointed at that moment & turned my face (Not my proud moment). But when they got me back to the room after 3 hrs I was stunned by seeing him since he was the exact replica of me in my childhood. From that moment I fell head over heels in love with Varun.     Till recently i was sure that both boys & girls love their mom/dad the same. Whenever the discussion that mothers love their son more than daughters i used

    I like sweets but was never crazy about them. But it all changed when i was pregnant with Varun. Right from day one all i wanted was sweets. In the first trimester its usually advised not to consume sweets but i went crazy with my cravings & it was around Diwali time. So there was a box of sweets that I devoured without PV's knowledge. I used to wake up in the middle of the night to eat them. Finally he discovered it & threw the whole box 😦. There were only few things that didnt trigger nausea & they were Dosa+egg, Sweets, kadala mittai & Coconut water. So i basically lived the nine months on these.     Now coming to present day, Varun cannot resist sweets & along with him even i cant stop eating them now. So there is always kadala mittai at home. An astrologer who has not met him  at all once said that Varun was born to eat sweets. Likewise if there isn't any sweets lying around he'll eat Sugar, Jaggery or Palm candy. He just cant resist them.

     On friday(Jan 17) I woke up around 6.30 and geared up with hoodie and walked outside. Two doggies Ladoo & Boondhi greeted me. The caretaker called out and i was able to see just two bisons from a herd of atleast 50 to 60 on a nearby grassland. We had breakfast and got to pluck fresh strawberry & Potatoes from their backyard. It was a unique & beautiful experience.     By 11, they took us on a Jeep drive to a nearby Waterfalls called Chilanthiyar. This place is accessible only by Four wheel rides that too only jeeps and by walk. There was no roads only small boulders and by the time we reached down to the falls my legs were literally shaking with fear. The water was super cold and Varun enjoyed walking in them. The walk down was steep and enjoyable.The walk up literally left me out of breath and we super struggled to reach our jeep.      The Jeep ride to the top of the hill was one of the most unforgettable experiences in my lifetime. My dad sitting in the f

     Right from my childhood my parents used to take me on vacation at least once a year. By 10 yrs i had visited all the hill stations in Tamilnadu. And after that in my school & College i used to go on all the excursions. So when i got married poor PV who had not visited most of the places had to find unique places or experiences for me when we plan a vacation. Recently I had gone for vacation to a place called Vattavada near Munnar with my family and it was one of the most unique experience for all of us.  We booked a homestay in The Only Place Log cabin. This place was suggested to us by PV's friend. As soon as I checked their website i was super excited to go there. When we were planning in December, they were fully booked so we pushed our vacation to January during the Pongal holidays.      On Pongal morning we started from Chennai around 12 & reached Palani in the evening. Since we had to travel through Anamalai Reserve and many other reserve forests we split t