The Return of the Butterfly- Book Review

I purchased it the day before I took the train to Chennai. It was the perfect reading material.
I was first introduced to the Butterfly by my brother. She is, in her own words, a sophisty, convent-educated socialite.  She lives in, thank heavens, in Gulburg, in Lahore, with her husband Janoo (who is a loser), and her son Kulchoo (who, unfortunately, is turning out to be a loser too just like his father). Janoo does not like party-sharty while Butterfly thrives on it.
Moni Mohsin introduced Butterfly to the readers of The Friday Times and later she compiled some of these articles into The Diary of The Butterfly.
The Return of the Butterfly continues with Butterly's trysts with trying to lead a normal life with GT (oho get-togethers baba) and parties despite the Taliban banning things like Basant. Her only problem is that Kulchoo is becoming exactly like Janoo.  He even puts up a poster of Occupy Wall Street in his room. Initially Butterfly thinks that this is a good thing and that her darling son is thinking of making lots of money but Janoo soon shatters this illusion when he explains to her what Occupy Wall Street really is all about.  It is enough to break her heart. But Butterfly is resilient and she is soon back preoccupied with things that matter to her the most.
I love the Butterfly.  She is silly and yet, there are times when she makes the most devastating statement about the political situation in Pakistan.

Darwin awards and men

Okay, originally I was going to title this post as "Men are Idiots" but prudence prevailed.
Darwin awards are given to those human beings who improve our species by removing themselves from the gene pool (The Supreme Sacrifice, if you will).
The Christmas edition of British Medical Journal this year carries a study about sex difference in idiotic risk behaviour. The results are unsurprising . It is just as we have always suspected. Males are significantly more likely to receive the Darwin awards than females. As the report in Science says: "We now have scientific evidence that men are idiots."
Post Script:
I was going to write about the latest Rajnikanth movie. No, I have not seen it and I will never see it. Is it only me who is nauseated with the idea of a 60+ man romancing a girl about his daughter's age? All the newspapers are carrying reviews but no one seems to be bothered by this romance. 

Section 309 of Indian Penal Code deleted

The new government has not inspired much hope in me. The less said about Sadhavi Niranjan Jyoti and the VHP and the RSS the better. The HRD minister has been taking decisions which at best can be said to be arbitrary. In this gloom the only good news came in today when the Government decided to delete the section 309 of the Indian Penal Code. With this suicide is no longer a criminal offense. It never made any sense to me that a person who has been driven to commit suicide is clapped up with a criminal charge instead of provided psychiatric help to deal with their desperation and depression.
Now if the Government would only see sense and decriminalize homosexuality.

Crocheted Table Cloth

Last year I embarked on my fourth crocheted table cloth. The first one I made when I was in grad school. It was largely completed in the plane while traveling (It was those days when one could carry crochet needles safely on the plane). The second one was completed partly in Colarado and partly in Bangalore. It was after that I took a vow never again. Till I made one for my student when she got married. This is the fourth one- the easiest as I only had to make fifteen motifs and stitch them together. It was fun to do and looks very pretty on my table. 

I now get back to cross-stitch. I purchased few patterns this year and I need to complete them before I embark on any more crochet.

Arugula Chickpea salad with sweet potato soup

On Sunday we harvested the arugula as well as spinach.  This was the third crop of the spinach. The previous two had bee enjoyed by the peacocks and the nilgais. The peacocks also took one crop of arugula leaves at which point I put a green netting to prevent them from entering.

Today's menu, therefore, featured arugula leaves. I made a salad using chickpeas, potatoes, red radish and cucumbers.  I heated one tablespoon of olive oil and added cumin seeds. When they crackled, I added the chickpeas and potatoes and sauteed them for a bit. Seasoning was with salt, black pepper and lime juice. In the end I chopped arugula leaves and mixed it in.

I also made soup with one sweet potato, carrot, and onions. Today I used green chillies as spice. It was a nice meal to have with rotis.
Meantime, the spinach bed has been cleared and we have planted strawberries. I did not know that one can grow strawberries in Delhi. My gardening bible- A Sahib's manual for the Mali by Alick Percy-Lancaster- merely said that the strawberry plants should be planted 1 1/2"apart.  I saw some plants last year and tentatively broached the subject with Nanku Ram ( In many ways he is like Angus McAllister of Blandings Castle and one needs to be cautious will approaching him). He was most receptive- only telling me to get it from Rajdhani Nursery as they have the plants that would bear fruit.  So let us see whether we get strawberries this year or not.

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.