Hello, bloggy friends! Anyone heard of the site Jobster? Anyone in the network who can invite me to it? It sounds pretty interesting, so any info would be welcome.
I need some help, especially from anyone who knows anything about Tamil or Malayalam cooking.I have made chips at home, both by myself as well as as a helping hand at home. The broad principles that apply to fried food apply here too: temperature control balances cooking and browning, season the chips when they come out of the oil and are still hot.
With two exceptions: chips made from a particular plaintain (நேந்திரங்காய் [nénthirânkāi], not வாழைக்காய் [vāzhaikkāi]), and from unripe jack fruit (பலாக்காய் [pâlākkāi]). In these two cases, when the chips are half-way fried, you add some brine directly into the oil. It explodes, foams, bubbles, but eventually subsides. This is rather destructive to the oil. A whole bunch of solids sediment at the bottom, and the oil doesn’t last very long.
But when the chips emerge from the oil, they are perfectly seasoned. I learnt this technique from my grandmother. Even though we are Tamil, she was strongly influenced by Malayali cooking techniques, and those two fruits are mostly used in Malayali cooking.
Given the drawbacks, why do it this way? Importantly, why do it this way only for these two kinds of chips? I asked Alton Brown when he was in town, but he called my grandmother stupid, so I had to shiv him.
Does anyone else know?
I finished reading this book quite a few hours ago, but needed the time to gather my thoughts a bit. I still haven’t completely been able to focus - the book has been quite a shocker. If you thought that “Harry Potter and the Order of Pheonix” was depressing, you might as well skip this book. World is a lot more brutal in the new era when there is a fierce battle raging between the good wizards/witches and the death eaters. a lot of people we have come to know and appreciate are offed with relative ease that is actually scary when you have the time to ponder.
I am not ashamed to say I ended up crying towards the end, though oddly this book’s ending is a lot more hopeful and full of courage and anticipation of braver things to come than the 5th book’s ending. I cannot wait to see what happens next. There is a lot of information provided in this book, almost as if J.K.Rowling was extremely anxious to fill us all in before something bad happens.
There are a lot of firsts in this book. Dumbledore finally trusts Harry enought to give out more information to him than he did before. Of course, Dumbledore also ends up trusting someone else deeply and ends up at their mercy when he shouldn’t have. The kids are pretty grown up and end up having love interests - most of which Harry Potter lovers might have predicted or hoped for since day one.
It is definitely a treat to watch Harry grow up right in front of our eyes as the book progresses and he is definitely different from the sullen, moody boy he was in the fifth book. A must read for fans, but left me wanting for more, which was probably the idea of it all.
Of course, like a lot of other online reviewers, I felt as if the Sixth book was nothing but a long prologue to the seventh one, for which I am waiting with bated breath. There is one line of the book that still brings me to tears - Harry is Dumbledore’s man through and through!
One last thing - given all the clues about the Half-blood Prince spread throughout the book, it was quite stupid of me to not guess who it turned out to be - it was a total no-brainer. I am just dying to read the seventh book now - I can just see how kick-ass it is going to be now, Harry Potter and the Horcruxes…
The blood has not yet dried in th estreets of London, but morons are out in full force already - Here is a similar column from a certain Raman from Rediff, filled with gems like -
The fact that the US has been waging the war in foreign territory against foreign nationals and not against its own nationals in its own territory has deprived its operations of any measure of self-restraint. No weapon is out of bounds to the US troops participating in this war and no methods are above the law.[emphasis mine]
A more elaborate deconstruction might follow if I feel like this is worth it, but I am amazed how the moonbats always manage to find someone completely different from the people who pulled the trigger to blame in every single incident. Also noteworthy is this one part from the column -
More Indian civilians have died at the hands of jihadi terrorists than nationals of any other country. Yet, we try to observe considerable self-restraint in our counter-terrorism campaigns. No air strikes, no use of heavy artillery, no armour, no shaving off of the beards of the detenus, no shackles on their legs, no restrictions on their praying in a group, no isolation, no ban on their relatives meeting them periodically, no instances of degrading treatment or disrespect to their religionAha - and India is so much safer for all of that caution isn’t it? No? My bad!
Allegations of torture are often made against the Indian security forces—-some of them true—-but nobody has ever accused them of practices like descecrating the Holy Koran, forcing the detenus to undress and indulge in simulated sexual acts with each other etc.[emphasis mine]
Let me tell you right now how much it boils my blood when idiots lump “desecrating” a freaking book with actual torture. It is a book, made of paper and has no life of its own or feelings. You could put it in a shredder for all I care and it won’t feel a thing. It is idiotic how everyone conveniently forget the detainees themselves mishandling the Koran -
Hood also said his investigation found 15 cases of detainees mishandling their own Korans. “These included using a Koran as a pillow, ripping pages out of the Koran, attempting to flush a Koran down the toilet and urinating on the Koran,” Hood’s report said. It offered no possible explanation for the detainees’ motives. In the most recent of those 15 cases, a detainee on Feb. 18 allegedly ripped up his Koran and handed it to a guard, stating that he had given up on being a Muslim. Several guards witnessed this, Hood reported.
I guess wee little Islamist minds don’t get bent out-of-shape if it is a fellow Islamist doing the abuse, huh!
update: Here is a good story from the NYTimes exploring the various terror links in Britain. This little piece stood out to me, since L pointed it out in his first comment - “Complicating Britain’s antiterrorism strategy is its refusal or delays of requests for extradition of suspects by some allies, including the United States, France, Spain and Morocco.” - even though refusal of extradition to India is not mentioned.
Considering that I was almost done reading “Freakonomics”, it was very interesting to me see this take of an actual economist on the book. I personally love this book and am just bowled over by how un-PC the book is making its findings known and assertions made. I thought it was fundamentally refreshing, so I guess it was a good thing I was not an economist and also a good thing the book was made to appeal to non-economist people like me. A very good read - a fast read.
Amit Varma has got the current Mela up on his blog, so go check it out.
Previous Mela hosts -
July:
7th July: Nilu
14th July: Patrix
21st July: Yazad
28th July: Nitai
Here are the future Mela venues -
August:
4th August: Saket Vaidya
11th August: Abhishek
18th August: Shivam Vij
25th August: Ashish Hanwadikar
September:
1st September: Sunil Laxman
8th September: Harini Calamur
15th September: Amit Varma
22nd September: Ram
29th September: Akshay
October:
6th October: India Genie
13th October: Selva
20th October: Neelakantan
27th October: Nitai