School day

Myself and my sister are excited that my niece is part of her nursery school day celebrations.My sister is taking extra interest in finding the songs which are taught for the function. As both are Hindu songs, she has downloaded the lyrics to understand the wordings to help teach my niece. I am not sure if this is expected out of parents these days, but I feel this will encourage kids to participate in group activities. My niece seems to enjoy going for practice over weekends.

On the similar lines was reminded of my first school day celebration participation (goof up). As you all know, we were in a township for most part of my schooling. Being in a township has many advantages as well as disadvantages. One of you them being, everyone knows about your academic and extra curricular activities and it's being discussed by parents!! In those days, our school teachers took real pain to give best programmes for PARENTS DAY celebrations. The selection of the performers will happen very much in advance for dance, drama, singing etc.. The teachers will go round each class, pick few students from each class from I standard to X standard depending on the requirements. Then, they will have a selection round based performance. If you have performed once for PARENTS DAY celebration, the chances to get selected in subsequent years are better!!

So, as usual its dream for all kids and parents to be part of this mega gala event every year AUGUST. Once, I guess I was in my I standard or II standard, was selected for an english drama. I hardly had some two - three lines to speak, but still need to go for practice every evening to understand the whole flow. As it was my first time in parents DAY celebration, Both myself and parents were excited. In meantime, I wanted to get a very very short haircut done for a longtime. I used or lied my role in drama as a reason for getting a haircut done. My poor parents, though not very happy about cutting my then very curly hair, accepted reluctantly to my hair cut.

Twist of event was that the drama team removed me from the play because of my short hair cut!!! Looks like I was roped into that play mainly for my long curly hair!! I was devastated and was not sure how to tell my parents about this.. I again lied that and somehow managed without my mother meeting the drama team to understand the real reason!! I still feel guilty for my act!!

Cabbage kofta gravy

Its been really long since I posted any receipe. Had craving for some new side dish for roti. was blogging for few non-onion based gravies that my MIL can also have..Came across this receipe from manjula's kitchen blog. Am always a big fan of her jain receipes and videos. All her measurements are perfect.. Only change we did was to try shallow frying of koftas with non-stick appakarai pan. One lesson learnt is that the gravy base and kofta can be prepared in advance. But, the addition of kofta into gravy should be done only at the time of serving. Otherwise, the koftas absorb most of the gravy base. Can probably add another 3 tomatoes if we have to add all the prepared koftas. We added only 10 koftas for the tomata base gravy we obtained . We got 20 koftas of medium size with the measurements given. Could get the cabbage shredding very fast with the help of food processor and prepare the dish in a jiffy..My MIL was recollecting her days of preparing suran (chennai kilangu) kofta using hand grater and stone hand based grinder(aattukal) during her joint family younger marriage days!!! Things have really got simplified by modern kitchen gadgets for our generation :)