Banana cake with lemon sauce

I love banana bread but all the recipes I had used eggs. Most of my students do not eat eggs so I have to  constantly experiment how to replace eggs in the recipes I have. 
I have this wonderful cake recipe book published by Better Homes and Gardens. I  purchased this when I was a grad student at UVa (currently in the news for all the wrong reasons and more about that later) and once I made the ice cream cake from this book for my friends because one of them wanted to eat an ice cream cake. There is a lovely pinapple-orange upside down cake recipe too- absolutely delicious cake but again calls for eggs.
I turned to it yesterday looking for recipe to adapt and there it was- Nutmeg cake with lemon sauce.
This morning I made it.  It is a rich cake calling for 1/2cup of butter and 11/2 cups of sugar. As the sugar crystals are large, I grind them to powder along with vanilla pod. Today I also added half a piece of nutmeg.  I usually melt the butter and beat it into the sugar.  It called for 3 eggs which I replaced with the puree of 4 over ripe bananas. That too went into the butter-sugar mix. 
For the flour, the recipe called for 2 cups of flour and I did not give in to my temptation of adding atta into it. I used 2 cups of maida as recommended. If you are using eggs, you need to add only 1 tsp of baking powder. If bananas are replacing eggs, then you need to increase the baking powder. For each egg, add extra 1/4 tsp of baking powder.  So I added 1 3/4 tsp of baking powder.  And 1 tsp of baking soda.
The recipe also called for 1 cup of butter milk or sour milk (add lemon juice to milk).
Alternatively add flour and milk to the butter-sugar-banana mix and fold them in. Pour the cake batter onto a 13 X 9X 2 inch pan and bake at 180oC for 30 minutes.
The lemon sauce is also very rich. I heated 3/4 cups of sugar with 5 tablespoon of corn starch and 1 cup of water till the mixture became thick. Then 2 tablespoon of butter was stirred in along with lemon juice and lemon peel.
Once the cake was done, I poured a little bit of sauce over it as I was planning to take it to the lab meeting. However, the appropriate thing is to serve the cake with sauce.
The picture of the cake is here:

The little corner is cut off because I wanted to taste it and
I forgot to take the picture before cutting the cake.





It is when I tasted it that I realized that I have the perfect banana cake- the one I had been searching for a long time. 

Roses from the garden

We have pruned the rose trees and they are blooming. Here are the pink roses from the garden.

Dal with mooli/radish leaves

On the way back from Kosi Kalan on Sunday, we stopped at Ballabhgarh market as both my aunt and I had to buy vegetables and fruits.  We went slightly berserk at the sight of fresh vegetables and only the fact that darkness had set in stopped us from going on a rampage. As it ended up I purchased mooli.  I made mooli parantha and then not wanting to waste the leaves, I decided to make a dal.  I had some mixed dal which I soaked overnight (this I realized is absolutely needed otherwise the dal does not get tender) and pressured cooked it till it was mashable. I heated the oil and added cumin seeds and 1 chopped onion. Then seeing ginger on the counter top, I added little bit of it. Once the onions were tender, I added tomatoes and stirred till they started becoming tender. Meantime, I sorted the radish leaves and washed them. They were also chopped and added to the onion-tomato mix.  The leaves immediately wilted and once they were done, the cooked dal and salt was added.  For spice, I added the sambar powder and the dal was done. It tasted really good. I had it with a rice dish given to me by a colleague.

Currently I am attempting  to make eggless banana bread once more. Let us see how it turns out.

Another site visit- Tuition center in New Seemapuri

We have been supporting enrollment of children from economically weaker section into public schools under the Delhi Government and RTE clause. The hard work was done by people from Pardarshita while we supported it financially. This project was started in 2005 and 8 years down the road it feels good to know that those children are still going to school as most of these children live in urban slums and resettlement colonies. One of the major hurdle is of course how to keep the children motivated. Most of the public schools do not enough attention to children and these kids are handicapped by the fact that they  most often first-time learners. So the idea of tuition centers took root and this year the first tuition center was started. It is still in fledgling stage though one of the parent is very happy-his restless child for the first time is taking an interest in school books.  We have a teacher who has been trained by District Institute for Education and Training (DIET), a government venture to train teachers.  We are keeping our fingers crossed and hope that we will see good results.
To get to Dilshad Garden from JNU was a two hour journey. It was mostly enjoyable except for  one glitch- I took the gramin seva from JNU to Chattarpur metro station. A big mistake. Gramin Seva are okay to travel between Munirka and JNU or JNU and B-block market in Vasant Kunj. Anything beyond that is a risky business as the infrastructure is minimal and one ends up with an aching back. The metro itself was good and afforded me a chance to hear bits and pieces of conversations. As most were college kids, they were either discussing CAT exams or their board exams and the forthcoming semester exams. The girls were fully made up making me realize that times have indeed changed. I also finally understood, both literally and metaphorically, ugliness of Indian men. I was told by my cousin to read the book "The Ugliness of Indian Men" by Mukul Kesavan. Today I got to see and hear it. The coordinator of Pardarshita is a trained lawyer and works as Judge at the Children's court. She told me horrific stories of rape and sodomy. I am still trying to digest all that I have heard.
The children living in these resettlement and slums continue to be at risk- both boys and girls. The only way out for many of them is education and I really hope that the children whom we got enrolled get to make a better life for themselves and their families.

Doing pointless work

I was going to post about the soup I made today. However,  yesterday I promised the Dean that I would work on the UGC project document for the department. The last date is 15th for the online submission and though the document has been prepared we had to upload it on the site.  I have had previous experience with UGC website and I was fully prepared to deal with it. But I must admit I underestimated UGC. I have no idea who prepared the online submission form. It obviously went to a company on least quote. The first problem I and my colleague encountered yesterday was that when we filled up a page and hit the save button, it refused to save the data. This morning I finally figured out the problem. Every field, especially the one marked with asterisk, should be completed before it will save and allow you to continue.  I was very happy at having cracked the problem and I breezed through the document till I came to the one termed seminars and conferences. I filled up every field and uploaded all the documents and yet it will not save it. I have given up. Tomorrow is another day. A fresh day and there will be two of us to work on the document and hopefully two Ph.Ds can figure out the glitch.
Meantime, I have prepared almost all the files in the required format. They require huge amount of information (most of them pointless according to me but possibly of relevance to the babus).  We finally decided that we do not have some of the information and cannot possibly gather it. One such information is about the total number of publications that each faculty has and then number of publications each faculty has in the past five years. We managed to get the publication list for the past 5 years for most of the faculty but gave up on the total number of publications. Fortunately, this had to be submitted as annexure otherwise I could not have proceeded on the online form.
I am looking forward to tomorrow when I will be done with it and get back to mundane things like submitting manuscripts to journals.
As for the soup, it got made in the morning. Sweet potato, potato and carrots, boiled and pureed. I had it in the afternoon with a dash of cream.

Warming up with soups

Now that days have become shorter and evening cooler, I tend to include more soups in my diet. Winter is always delightful with wide range of vegetables. On my grocery day I picked up fresh peas and carrots so today I decided to make peas-carrot soup. It was simple. I gave tadka of jeera (cumin) and sauteed one onion, one carrot and few shelled peas. I then added water and allowed the vegetables to slowly cook. I flip-flopped about what spices to add then decided on using sambar powder. So that too went into the pot along with salt. Once the vegetables were done, I allowed it to cool (I learnt the hard way that patience in this matter is always a virtue or else you will end up with soup splashed all over the kitchen and one self).  Once cooled, I pureed it in the blender. Before eating I warmed it up and added garnish of coriander leaves.
Here it is:

As an aside, Nanku Ram today decided that we should plant coriander in the garden.  Sumithra has been telling him to plant it but he has been resisting the idea. Today he finally decided that on Sunday we will plant coriander. So hopefully, this winter I will have fresh dhaniya from the garden.
The garden is now being readied for winter flowers. We pruned the hibiscus and the pavazha malli tree.  Plots have now been prepared to plant nastriums, allysium, poppies, pansies, and of course petunias.  We have started the seeds for all except pansies (which failed to germinate) and petunias.  Once the plants have become hardier, we will transplant them into the prepared beds.

On Pedagogy

This post is inspired by my observations made on teaching systems in schools (both formal and non-formal) in India. Directly it is a result of my visit to a formal school for girls about 3 hours drive from where I live.  The teachers lamented that they do not have good teachers and that their girls are scared of speaking or reading English. The two are connected in many ways.
The girls are scared of English because no one around them speaks English. There is no body to correct their mistakes or to encourage them to read story books.   If they had a teacher who could speak English and who taught only in English then there is a chance that they will pick it up. A good teacher would use different methods to get them over the psychological barrier. One way is to make them keep a diary. Tell them to write a story and then read it out to the class. Mistakes will happen but the more they write the better they will become.  Include a library hour where they will have to read English story books. Currently, they do have story books for the primary classes but it is a structured reading. They are not encouraged to imagine. This is not the problem of this particular school. Many schools (including even the so-called good ones) fall into this trap where the teacher is more anxious to finish the syllabus than to worry about the imagination of the child. In fact lesser the imagination the better it is because the child will accept anything that the teacher says and not ask questions.
This is now tied to the second point. What is the definition of a good teacher? And can one get a good teacher by paying enormous amount of money.
I believe that a good teacher is the one who can hold the attention of the class and inspire them to imagine, to ask questions. As a teacher, I might not know all the answers but as I teacher I should be ready to read about it or to point the students into the direction where they can get the answer to the question. Of course the student will also have to put in extra effort but many times they will do it as long as the teacher demands it.
Yesterday I was observing the science classes and I felt so sorry for the children. In biology they were reading about Spirogyra, which reproduces through fragmentation. A student wanted to know how it happens. The teachers said it just happens. The girl was silenced. It is not the fault of the teacher. That is all she has been taught.
Many of the biological principles can be taught by experiments. Instead the students sit in a blank room memorizing photosynthesis, starch production, and principles of genetics, unaware how you can relate it to the world outside you.
Yesterday I was really itching to step in at some point.  I would love to teach and see if I can make the change but I am also scared that I might bite off more than I can chew. Making a commitment like this implies that I should be ready to fulfill it.