Of mothers and sons

Today was just one of those weird days. My mind was mostly at another place where a person whom I absolutely adore was getting operated, but I had these bunch of evaluations (12 of them) to conduct in which the time had to be maintained, questions had to be asked, some quick judgement on the performance had to be passed etc. etc. The hardest part was watching my own students make a really sorry presentation of their decently good work. At the end of it I was sitting in my office feeling so dejected when the sms came from her son that she was out of the operation theater and everything seemed to have gone alright. It was a big relief to see that and I immediately felt incredibly guilty to be thinking about anything else.

Back at daycare RRJ was least interested in being picked up for a drop to cricket because through some clever scheme he and 3 others had managed to get the permission from the rather strict principal to play cricket right in front of the daycare. He wanted to finish the game before heading to the other place. The principal teased him, "what have you got in your body, look like a skeleton, haan?" "I have got cricket in my body, maam." The kid shows sparks of brilliance at times. He lights up my darkest of moods effortlessly even if 90 percent of the times he is the primary cause of the dark mood.

Scorching

The heat in Chennai is rapidly setting itself up for the shift to its top-most gear as the agni-nakshatram starts on May 4 (I think). But that is hardly a bother because at the moment it is the scorching pace at which the deadlines have been approaching which has me reeling. And I am not even the one who is running this universe!

Art of sprouting

When the going gets tough, which it has been getting in the past couple of weeks, at the top of my list of coping strategies is to have a good helping of super foods. And at the top of my list of super foods are sprouts. Grean-mung bean sprouts. Full of nutrients, easy to make at home and the best part is for all their goodness and convenience, they don't taste bad. In fact with a little lime and salt they make a very tasty snack. Now, while the process of sprouting is fairly simple, I have been trying to optimise the  process steps to have: usage of regular kitchen utensils, no cloth-shoth jhamela and minimum handling. The last attempt worked out beautifully and a batch of absolutely gorgeous sprouts was obtained. Here are the steps:

• get a vessel (V1) which as the shape of a bowl
• get a smaller vessel (V2) with lid (L2)
• soak the amount of bean that you think would fit the space that is enclosed in V1 if it was covered with L2. I usually soak the beans in the morning before leaving for office
• in the evening, drain the beans and put them in V1
• cover the beans with upturned L2 and push the L2 down until it snugly fits V1
• next put upturned V2
• now holding the V1 and V2 turn the whole assembly up side down
• put a weight on the V2
• before sleeping slowly retrace the steps and rinse the beans and bring back to the final configutration
• do another rinse in the morning and put it back again

By the evening, sprouts are fully grown and ready to give you a perfect pick-me-up snack!