Weekend Foodie Chronicles – 1

Heylo everyone,

I hope your weekends have been going great !

I have had this urge to share with you all what K & K (my better half and me incase you didn’t know who I am referring to) have been upto for the past two weekends. Now, the reason why I am sharing this is because I want to show off what has been cooking at home considering most of them if not all, have been introduced for the first time by none other than yours truly.

I know you must have all stood up and applauded. But one small clarification. When I say “introduced”, please don’t think that it is my patent whatsoever unless you want to count li’l modifications here and there after eating half of the raw ingredients, as signs of culinary genius. What I am referring to is the fact that I am cooking them for the first time.

I am not really in a mood to share recipes (ah, such vanity) because:

1. They are really easy and I hardly think there are people who don’t know how to make them already.

2. You just need to google and use your kitchen know-how a bit and voila !

3. I am not great at doling out recipes, yet.

4. I do so much of trial and error that I don’t remember how I cooked it. (okie, stop laughing now).

Even though we had a decent DSLR, neither of us has the patience to click using that, once we see the food. So, all pictures are from my iPad and that explains the quality. My food looked super clear and like those in Tarla Dalal’s book okai?

Here are a few things I made while the better half pretended to help me (I am typing only coz’ I know he reads my blog. Umm, well, he actually helped me a lot):

Squiddly diddly - Here is my first IDLI !

Really, don’t ever every think idlis are easy to make. They are easy to eat maybe (doesn’t hold good if you think that idli is a tastless steamed ball of batter which it is in a way but not really tasteless and if the texture annoys you). I love idlis and can eat anything anyways  and so was raring to cook my first idlis. I must highlight that the batter is store bought and all I did was to steam them. But you can tell how happy and proud I am with that. Okay, now steaming is a long procedure what with getting cooker ready, oiling the idli plates and placing them carefully inside so that all of them get the privilege of getting steamed with no partialty? And whoa, don’t forget the delectable chutney okie? Oh no, that wasn’t bought from any store. Ofcourse I made it from scratch. You really underestimate me.

And then, we had this before lunch.

Simple and super yum !

See that? That’s the simplest thing to make and yet tasted lovely ! Boiled sprouted green gram topped with some diced onions, tomatoes, lemon and Haldiram’s aloo bhujia. That was our Saturday appetizer that we ate so much that we kind of felt full and had to eat a simple lunch. See, you don’t need a very elaborate dish sometimes.

So, we had this for lunch.

Tomato jeera dal and beetroot palya

 

That picture is so unclear. Basically, it was just ground tomato and jeera dal with beetroot. It was a simple lunch but we kind of enjoyed it.

And the evening saw us eating this -

Gupchups !

Seriously, for all you guys who want to get a positive on your proposal to loved ones, all you need to do is propose when they the person is eating a gup-chup. They will say nod their head vigorously ! Except for the puris, I made the rest (am not referring to the onions and tomatoes but also the pani and the tamarind chutney and aloo thingy also) and trust me, these are some of the easiest things to make and give you the most indelible form of joy

Left with a lot of idli batter but don’t want to go back to normal idlis? Why fear when an alternative is here –

Uima ! Kaima !

Seriously, this is a great alternative to idlis. Make a kaima out of it ! Ever since we saw this item on Saravana Bhavan menu here, I have been wanting to try it. So when my better half kind of did not react very enthusiastically when I said, “We are going to have idli again!!”, I knew the time to try this one had come. And woah ! We loved it.

And somewhere in between we had this for lunch too. the picture is not really clear but none of them are anyways, so–

Mixture loaded upma

So, this is actually my better half’s plate. He always makes sure all his food is hidden away, submerged under the various sev forms. So ya, I promise you the upma underneath is quite tempting. Hot and soft with some veggies – just the way I love it.

And also, we made this.

Cabbage prathas

      with

Dalma

 which looked something like this:

Yay !

So, there goes my plate.

At this point, I must confess that I am feeling a bit stupid for sharing unclear pictures and of such commonplace dishes. But I am going to go ahead and post it anyway coz’ I was so enthusiastic when I started typing this post. And who knows someday when I am a famous cook, I can always refer people to this post and say, “See, everyone starts small.”

Right?

My thatha: My magic-man. My hero.

After the final binding and revision, I closed the black hard-bound book. My dissertation. My work that pretty much determined all my years of post-graduate education in medicine and healthcare. And yet, I felt a strange sense of calm. I guess the biggest solace came from my front page. The dedication sheet that I added after li’l thought. It was almost as if I knew what I had to write in there and it had somehow found its rightful place.

I ran my fingers over the lines again-

You’ve always been my hero,
You’ve always been my pride,
You’ve always given so much love,
And shown what’s deep inside.

And everyday I pray to God,
I thank him for sending you,
Because you’re the one who wrote me the song,
And made all my dreams come true!

 It made me happy. It was a very funny feeling. But that instant, all I felt was happiness and pride. I felt proud of myself that I had made him happy no matter where he was.

Thatha - the most brilliant organizer, the most compassionate doctor, a witty conversationalist and above all an extremely loving grandfather.

It is often the most common late realization – realizing the value of someone when they are no more with you physically. But no, not for us. Each of us, all the 32 paternal cousins loved and truly basked in the undivided attention he gave each one of us. Being the only girl in the huge male cousin-crowd, I always thought that he loved me more and I felt so lucky and so on-top-of-the-world with that feeling.

Even now, as I write this, I don’t think I can ever think of anything sad to say. I just feel so thankful to have been a part of his magnanimous life for 23 years.

My first memory of him is not really a clear one. I was probably in play school and I thought he was a magic man. He used to put two small sticks, one each on his lap, then take the one of his right hand and blow it into the other hand and then pick the other one by his left hand but when he opened his hands, we could see one in each hand even though he had “blown” one into the left. I laugh everytime I think of this “trick” because it hardly was one. But I loved him for this and I was always breaking sticks off the broomstick asking him to repeat this, getting more and more dazzled everytime he repeated it. He used to do it for each of us, each of us cousins who thought we could all carve out this career for ourselves and always entertain people with magic like thatha did.

As I stepped into primary school, I could see him become more and more protective of me, become more ambitious for me and slowly transform from the magic-man to the hero.

I especially vividly remember the times he used to suddenly pop-by at my school to just see me and say a hi. Often, the hi would be accompanied by mango-bites, colouring book and sometimes pens. I loved the kind of surprise visits he often bestowed me with. Now, when I look back, I see him standing tall at the general office, chatting up with the clerks and making friends left, right and centre. I used to go hug him and as I hugged him, I could smell the various tailam (the oils used in Ayurveda) and feel a strange sense of comfort in them.

The realization that I have an Ayurvedic doctor for a grandfather did not mean much to me initially. But eventually, as I  started seeing the influx of patients into our home to meet him, when he stayed over with us, it all began to sink in. People from different walks of life would come home at 9 in the night and stay put till 10, talking to grandpa in the verandah. And I would never fail to see them walk away happily with magical concoctions in their hand. That was the moment that infused in me the warmth and pride that stays intact till today. I never ever took a lot of grandpa’s medicines and so I wont comment on his professional success. All I know is that even when he was 94 years old, I have seen people calling my aunt to request her to put thatha on line so that they can seek his opinion for a long nagging cough.

When he was awarded by different medical councils and I saw people place congratulatory notes on local newspapers, I used to make sure I got my share popularity for being his granddaughter. I used to make it a point to tell as many classmates as possible about my amazing grandpa without sounding snobbish.

I can still hear his voice call out my mother’s name as soon as he entered the gate, the familiar green coloured bag, the one which contained an entire city inside. And the way he kept one file on top of the other, the way he used every space inside the bag and packaged everything so wonderfully beats me. He even used those fish wires to sometimes tie related papers together. And from somewhere in between all this, he used to pull out my colouring book.

As days rolled into years and I had to get into my 11^th, grandpa wanted me to do it in Mysore itself. He said he would like to be able to see me whenever he wanted which would not happen if I were to go away to some other place. A bit annoyed at not being given “freedom”, I reluctantly agreed. I am so thankful for that decision influenced by his love because I don’t think I’d have the kind of wonderful memories if I had taken a different path then.

As I type this away, I look at my piggy bank on the table and I am reminded of how he had piggy banks for all of us that later became RDs and soon became appreciable amount of money, all planned for our education. He was our parent, our mentor and banker. Every 500 rupees I got for a distinction or my first Titan Raga or the surprise pack of Parle-G – everything was his doing.

In between all this, my thatha was accident prone – cuts on the toe, chipped off toe nails, bleeding cracks had been quite common. Infact, I often saw his children advising him to stay at home and enjoy himself without going out to work. Now, I know where I get my stubborn streak from. Thatha never agreed.

So, when he had a big fall and had to go for a hip surgery, we were a bit scared and yet somehow deep down felt that this would make him give up the job and get better soon. But that was not to be. After a fall and surgery at 86 years of age, he went back to work after 5 months of stay at home doctor-ship.

The second fall happened sometime when  he was 89 years and we were really scared this time. The earlier doctor had warned us against this and so we were all a bit angry at him for not having listened to us. Infact my uncles told him to stay put.

But no. The thatha that he was, he did not bother to rest well and went back to work.

When we celebrated his 95^th birthday, I cannot tell you the kind of happiness that I could feel in everyone’s heart. It makes me cry even now when I think of how cute he and paati looked together.

When the third fall happened shortly after his 95^th birthday, we all just knew he would get better very soon. He had tripped inside the house trying to look for water in the night in absolute darkness, very unlike the other earlier two cases where he had had a big fall outside. So, when my aunts and uncle took him to the doctor eventually, it took us a while to digest that he had had a stroke.

I used to see him smile on his hospital bed, talk to us a bit, ask about our studies, enquire about our lunch, give me subtle hints to marry. I don’t know when he stopped doing all this. I really don’t. I only know that he and paati came to stay with us after being discharged. I remember thatha’s words become fewer every passing day. I remember seeing the most dignified, stately man become a bag of muscles. It still did not hurt me. I used to secretly cry inside bathrooms, repeatedly flushing the toilet and yet somehow get a strange sense of consolation recollecting how he had survived two previous falls.

We had a helper to be with him always just incase there was any emergency. The helper loved him and really took care of him just the way any grandson would.

And then, bed sores came. Cleaning them became almost daily affairs and I remember him sleeping on one side, unable to move, unable to say much because he had almost lost his speech, slowly swallowing his pureed food. Images of him eating one coconut mithai after another came to mind and I found myself clinging onto hope and yet hoping for a miracle that would end the suffering, even if it meant losing him. A college student, I used to feel guilty but I just couldn’t think of anything I could do.

And then the miracle happened. I had to go to Mumbai for a conference and I told grandpa about it. I thought he would just nod and say a feeble yes but he started using small sentences like “do you have money?”, “I will give 1000 rupees” for local transport etc. My grandma, ma, pa, Chintu and I were all overjoyed. I left to Mumbai, a happy person.

However, when I came back, I didn’t see much progress. Infact, he had gotten more bed-sores and had started eating lesser.

Then, came his 96^th birthday. We had a lovely celebration even though he was bed-ridden. I loved the fact that my ma made pureed coconut burfi equivalents for thatha. Those were his last.

A few weeks later, paati screamed for help that he seems to be choking. And as I started feeling his pulse, I could listen to the faint pulse. I put my head on his heart and listened to the beats fade away right there in front of me. I remember ma and Chintu holding him and he left us, just like that.

But no, I did not cry. Seeing him lie there, knowing that his bed-sores did not hurt him any longer, that he did not feel dependent any longer, that he did not have to eat another pureed diet while we ate our normal food any longer, that he did not have to stay in bed all day any longer made me feel calm. I looked at him, his white stub after the recent shave my uncles had given him earlier that week and I thought of all the wonderful memories he had given me.

I saw his hands and remembered the stick-trick. His lovely handwriting. I looked at his cap hanging by the window sill and God’s photo on his right side because he insisted on seeing God every morning as soon as he woke up. I thanked God for making me a part of his life and for the way he defined me in many ways. I was amazed at how everything in my home had a memory of my thatha with it. I want to remember him with  happiness always. It gets hard at times to always have that frame of mind but I don’t ever want him to think his grand-daughter misses him.

I want him to know that I know he is here, right here.

This entry is a part of the contest at <a title=”The Largest and the most active community of Indian Bloggers” href=”http://www.blogadda.com&#8221; target=”_blank”>BlogAdda.com</a> in association with <a title=”Your Khatti Meethi Family” href=”http://www.imlee.com&#8221; target=”_blank”>imlee.com</a>

This entry is a part of the  contest at Blogadda in association with imlee.

Roadtrip to Kuantan – Day 2

You can read Part 1 here.

 So, the next day saw us waking up at 9:00 A.M. because come what may, no matter how tired I am, I hate missing the buffet breakfasts by the poolside. I love having breakfast slowly savouring everything, watching the sea, watching others sip tea, feel invigorated and submerge my plate with watermelons and bread puddings. I like to pass by that guy who makes omelette and serves them with a smile or look at kids who are overjoyed to see cornflakes, chocoflakes, honey stars and what not !

Oh and I also make sure to try every fruit juice there. Alright, let me stop here for now.

 We had breakfast and went back to sleep. You’d think we were the adventure seekers or something but no all of us except my better half went off to sleep. I slept for like 2 hours straight. And then O and L wanted to sleep more (until 4). So, my better half and myself (K and K) went down to the pool for some fun.

 We love playing in pool. Neither of us knows swimming because I fail to acknowledge K (my better half)’s ability to flap arms and legs in water and stay afloat for like 8 seconds as self-taught swimming. So, we totally go bonkers and oblivious of the fact that there are 3 and 4 year olds who are actually “swimming”. It is so so fun , really !

 And then, as if to re-emphasize the fact that we cannot swim, the kids try different strokes in front of you and we both can only gape at them in awe. I must learn swimming I often remark, only to forget it as soon as I am out of the pool.

 We spent a good hour and half in the pool and had a shower and then went for a bite. I always forget to photograph what we eat. I must do it next time. Well, we had some Chinese – Longhon and steamed rice for myself and fish and chips for my better half.

 By this time it was almost 4. With O and L up, we all set off to do what we had to do – explore streets and try local markets. We just went around the place looking at how the houses were built coz’ they seemed to stand on a 4 legged structure and almost every house had a courtyard. We realized that Kuantan is a very low activity area with some amazing vast spaces and a place where I could see animals grazing (gosh ! felt like eternity sicne I saw that), sparrows and kids playing with those tyres.

Check out this guy posing. We also spotted some cute chaps

We were snapping away sitting inside the car as though we were on a safari. Felt so good to see so much space and see the familiar fauna and hear the familiar sounds.

After some aimless driving, we decided to try the farmers market. This market is a small one that stretches along one of the streets for a short distance. It is famous for local delights. The entire street smells of satay. There were small round ring shaped sweets that I call adrasam and I was so astonished to see them there because I always thought adrasam was a sweet dish from the southern part ofIndia. Turns out that it is local toMalaysia as well and the only exception if the ring like shape as compared to the flat rounded shape that we eat inIndia. You get about 10 of the little rings for 1 RM. We really like the taste and so bought for 4 RM more. Yummy yum yum !

See! That is street food !

O and L tried satays of different types – mutton, beef etc etc while hubby and I tried the peanut butter crepe which was so so crispy and so so yummilicious !

 I was so awed at how they make the dishes – you must just watch them churn out so many items in seconds ! Though the street was not crowded, there almost was always someone at every shop buying something or the other. I have come to realize that Malays love food. I felt a warm kinship with them for obvious reasons.

They also had green leafy veggies, durians, water melons, ice kacang, different types of tea (ice lemon, green ice lemon, chrysanthemum, jasmine green) as well. We just went easy on the drink because we have tried most of them here inSingapore and we had bigger plans for the night and needed some tummy space.

 After about an hour, we left for the big mosque which is famous in Kuantan and is also one of the most beautiful mosques. It was on this day that we saw full moon in all its glory and we realized how much we had been missing in the tall-tall-buildings-everywhereSingapore. We just sat moon gazing because we were not allowed inside the mosque with our attires. We listened to the prayers and felt good. It was a lovely feeling – to be able to just sit there and watch people, their actions, the kids, their pranks, the attires and everything.

 After about 45 minutes of blissful nothingness, we left to find a spa for us. We wanted to get a aromatherapy and we had forced our better halves as well. It was here that we had a real adventure. We just weren’t able to find any spa that had any free slots. We spent probably 1.5 hours that night just trying to locate a spa. We finally decided that we will book a slot for the next day. We found a Thai spa and booked for each of us a 2 hour aromatherapy each. And for 2 hrs it was just 120 RM – Imagine ! We were so so so so happy that we forgot we were hungry.

The hubby went berserk watching cricket being played by kids and teens in Mlaysia and had to take this snap to store the joy in picture form for him to cherish. I leave it to you to spot the players.

 But not for long. Soon, we saw ourselves trying to find a place to eat, the kinds that your instinct forces you to go into. Soon, we found one ! – An all veggie place only to make me feel happy. I have such lovely travel partners, no? O and L love their meat but they opted for this so that I can have my (huge) share of delight !

 The place had a poster saying “Go green and save Planet Earth” and that was the motto of the restaurant as well. It was a typical Chinese restaurant with the red Chinese lanterns and Buddha’s teaching playing on television there.

 Not able to wait anymore, we opened the menu and lo ! The items were like – Roast duck, Abalone mushroom, frog kidney, chicken drumsticks etc. Now, I have long known that you can have vegetarian chicken – yes yes !  The ones made from soya that are made to look like chicken but apparently don’t taste like one. But am not a huge fan of them either.

 So, we had to call the restaurant people there and ask them what was the menu all about. And the lady laughs at us and says, “It is all vegetarian. Only name is like that.” Phew !

 We ordered like about 10 dishes, I think – toufu delights, fried rice, mushrooms, green leaves, deep fried veggies and veg. tom yam soup and fresh fruit/veggie juice. Wow ! That was some spread. As soon as we ordered, we doubted if we would be able to finish everything and then felt ashamed of underestimating our appetites.

I especially loved my carrot milkshake – it was slurpilicious !

 When the food arrived, we couldn’t hold ourselves back for even a brief moment in between. We dug, scooped, chopped, massacred everything on the table. We even thought of ordering another toufu because it was as soft as butter and we hadn’t ever had anything like that before. Lovely lovely dinner !

 What’s dinner without dessert? So, we had to find a place to go to for the dessert we were also craving for – Chendol. At this point, I must tell you a bit about this amazing dessert.

Chendol is a not VERY sweet dessert made of coconut milk, sweet flour shavings, red beans, glass jelly and sweet syrup in the bottom topped with a mountain (small) of crushed/shaved ice over which they pour sweet corn in another sweet syrup – it is absolutely heavenly, trust me.

 We had even googled for the right place to eat Chendol but then we were too late and that shop (it was called Mustafa chendol) which was famous for its chendol was closed.

Since it was almost 11 and we were not going back with unfulfilled desires, we went to Papa John’s for chendol. While my better half and I ordered chendol topped with vanilla ice cream, O ordered some huge chocolate thingy with many scoops of ice-cream and L ordered aMilo treat along with some Lychee delight. Sitting outside the café, watching the full moon and feeling the zephyr was magical and made more so with the arrival of our desserts. We looooooooooooooooooved every spoonful. I love it when it remains tasty even towards the very end and doesn’t make us feel too heavy.

Since we did not click a picture of our beautiful chendol, I leave you with an almost similar picture from the web. Imagine this with more corn and also vanilla ice-cream on top. Sigh !

 After a lovely day of blissful nothingness, we drove back to the resort where K & K fought over the remote and later cuddled off to sleep with me dreaming of Chendol bowls dancing.

 p.s. I had more pictures but then we shared our cameras and so, don’t have all on my systm now. I wanted to still blog desperately before I forgot any detail no matter how insignificant.

Coming up will be trips to beaches and nature walk and batik factory and also the spa !

Road trip to Kuantan (Pahanga) – Day 1

Ah my dear folks,

So, I am on a high. All that road trip and some amazing sights left me just content and happy. No, seriously, why haven’t I done more of such long road trips?

The nothingness of the expanse makes you feel amazing, seriously. You don’t always need picturesque sights. No, not always. To drive along fields and random greenery is so stimulating.

Before I start digressing too much, let me regale you with our 3 day trip to Kuantan in Malaysia by car. So, the lucky chaps were O, L, K and K (K and K would be my better half and me). It would be unjust to not tell you a li’l about O and L considering we have been doing these trips for a while now over long weekends and we have been like family.

So, that is Kuantan along the east coast.

O is a Spanish guy who was my better half’s batchmate during MBA. So, they both hit off very well and we are now family. O loves to travel much to the delight of my better half who looooves to travel as well and now me (all of my earlier travels were within India for either research conferences or small family vacations) and so all this is refreshingly new for me. He also loves food much to the delight of my better half and now me. So, you know how it is. We pretty much share our love for travel, food, new cultures and sight-seeing. You get the drift.

Meet L. L is a Malay lady who is also O’s fiance. She works as a para legal professional. She loves travelling as well. She also loves food much to my comfort because I need a lady with good appetite to divert attention from my plate coz’ I eat a lot. So, we have been friends owing to our better halves and have found quite a few things we both enjoy doing – for e.g. books and travel. Now, THAT is a LOT, right?

And then, there is K and K. We both were like kids during the travel but lets not dwell too much on that for now.

The last time we travelled was to Penang (I’ll write about it as well sometime soon) during Chinese New Year for 4 days and we’d been a riot ! So, we were reallllly looking forward to this trip mainly coz’ I have never heard of this place before, it was my first long road trip, the company and mostly because I hadn’t heard of Kuantan being a very big tourist spot except for few beaches.

 

What with Google churning out such images, I knew there’d be like lot of beaches.

 I’m not a very beach person if the beach is the commercial types (if you know what I mean) not coz’ I don’t like people but because I can’t appreciate all the beauty in the same way as I could if it were to be less crowded. But I am open to recreation anywhere so I really didn’t have any complaints.

After some smart packing (now, that’s a first for me coz’ I usually pack the entire wardrobe and as soon as you open my tightly packed bag there will be a mini-market inside) and some hustle bustle because we had to leave directly from work on thursday afternoon, we left for office with 2 backpacks and one Nikon DSLR.

Fast forward to afternoon. I met up with my better half at his workplace where O works as well. And L joined in too. We were waiting for O to join us at the lobby of Marina Bay Sands Skypark. At the lobby, there were some cute Chinese girls playing some really melodious tunes and while I clapped in joy, the other guests looked at me amused wondering which entertainment was better. During this meet-up, I managed to cup my thumb when I dug my hand into the bagpack for some tissues and realized that the tube of a cream had caused the cut. And as though my cut was just what the hotel authorities needed, they started warning the guests not to touch the Italian glass as it could be dangerous and cause deep cuts. Talk of blessing in disguise ! And all this while, I mentally made a note that this wasn’t smart packing and who had I been kidding?! Have I told you all that I am accident prone? At the start of a trip, I either trip down the steps to the bus and land on my bottom or hit my hand against a door or something. Pretty much always, seriously.

So, well, finally O came over and then we left for Johor Bahru which is the nearest Malaysian city to Singapore. We took a cab to the immigration checkpoint. So, we cleared the customs and immigration at S’pore and Malaysia and then left to the place where we picked up our car and whee! We started our journey into Malaysia.

What was supposed to start off at 2:00 P.M. on 5th April started at 4:30 P.M. but we were really way too relieved to repent the loss of time and happy to start the drive and use as much of daylight as posible when we were driving a distance of more than 500 kms.

The journey was a chatty one and we kept talking each others’ head off, sharing tales of Malaysia with L telling us a bit about different places, my better half asking some questions, me watching outside the window hoping for fireflies and O occassionally checking on us with his “you all ok at the back” and joining in the banter when the traffic was less and the road became visible. Well, with long weekends, it does get quite busy what with everyone suddenly wanting to go to Malaysia.

All along the drive, we felt so deliriously happy to see so many trees. Really, Malaysia is so green. We felt so good that the trees were so plush and the land hadn’t been cleared or whatsoever. I even started ranting in my head as to how much of all the global warming and CO2 has been saved by this greenery and became even more optimistic that we all really have hope. Palms, some random shrubs and lots of dense bushes and hills that were totally covered in green – wow ! We never took pictures on our way but we sure took a lot on our way back and I’ll share them in the subsequent parts about my travel.

After a long long drive that included one stop for dinner where I managed to find vegetarian red bean buns and some drink and some rice and some greens (My tummy is often called the Municipal tank), I felt good. So did the rest. O bought some crackers and Red Bull to keep him up for the late night driving that was to ensue and we set off again. Oh, did I mention the yummy Crunch icecreams?

Post-dinner and dessert, the chats became less with K and K dozing off occassionally and then popping their heads up to see if we were at Kuantan and see the GPS to know how far we were. Well, we also listened to some awesome music throughout the journey and it stuck in our heads. We sang and even danced inside our car and we must have managed to invoke the Rain Gods with all this that it started raining heavily. So, we decided to only listen and not sing much so that poor O didn’t have to undergo all this.

Well, after some circling around the same U-turns and shouting in glee everytime we saw Swiss Garden Resort signs coz’ that was where we were staying and we were so overjoyed to know we were nearby, we finally reached the resort. Ah yay ! We did it, we did it !

We parked the car (well, technically O did while we unparked ourselves from our seats) and checked in at 3:00 A.M. on the 6th of April. Absolutely thrilled about unwinding for the long weekend, Kand K cuddled off to sleep.

I leave you with a view from our room.

Don’t forget to check out the sea view. The photo doesn’t do justice because I clicked it coz’ we could feel the fresh air.

p.s. We had an amazing time and loads to share.We made trips to a cottage industry as well. More tales and more photos to follow in subsequent parts

The Hat Shop on the Corner – Marita Conlon-Mc Kenna

Last week saw me craving to buy a couple of nice sidesweeps and trims thanks to what I got my nose buried in. That’s right – this book made me crave for hats- all types of them, just about one each will do (I am quite understanding  and selfless that way towards the better half). Unless you want to gift me one.

Anyways, I digress.

Well, I borrowed this book from the library only because of the name. I thought I must read books with fun names and give the serious reads a rest. So, Mr. Salman Rushdie and Mr. V.S. Naipul et al., please excuse.

Ellie’s life takes a turn when she inherits her mother’s hatshop in Dublin’s South anne Street. Ellie has a job already and must decide what she wants - whether she wants to keep the hat shop or give it away for a generous sum to one of the developers who wish to change Dublin.

Ellie herself has studied fashion and  knows how much the shop meant to her mother. But does it mean the same to her? Also, Ellie has a job already. Do the millinery confections seduce her towards them?

Surrounded by supportive friends, old customers and new ones who come to the shop with myriad requirements and requests, Ellie finds herself surrounded by an assortment of an order list. But does she manage to do them all?

Alongside is her relationship with Rory who seems non-commmital but yet promises his love for her. And then, there is Neil Harrington. Whom does she choose?

                                      

That’s the cover of the book. For the kind of hats described, the cover doesn’t do justice.

I liked reading this one. Simple, quite cheesy at times most of the time, majorly predictable but yet makes you want to read so that you are left feeling good and the drool-worthy descriptions of the hats made me feel exactly what the book set out to make me feel – good. And, Craving. For. Hats.

I have never read a proper chick-lit book for long (make that LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG). So, I was excited and kept drilling the fact that I was reading chic-lit to my better half who was much relieved when I returned the book on Sunday. I am crazy only. As if I need to say it out.

Umm, I am bad at rating and all. But, yeah, go pick this one up if you want a super light, happily predictable read.

I’d probably read more by this author just to feel good and bother hubby with girly tales.

So, what have you been reading lately readers?