Fudge Brownies - My way

This is a recipe I tweaked from the original recipe here to make it healthier and fudgier. The end result doesn't have a brownie like texture, really, but is mostly like fudge. Gooey, sticky fudge.

I took about 9 oz (that would be about 250 g, give or take) pitted prunes and pureed them in a food processor. You can also put them in a small saucepan first, add maybe half a cup of water and simmer for about 15 minutes. Then puree. The second method gives it a smoother texture and makes it easier to puree them. But I have done it both ways and both work. Dates would also probably work in this recipe, but I have not tried that.

Add to the prune puree 1 1/4 cups of cocoa powder (A cup in America is 8 fl oz or about 237 ml) and 1/2 cup of flour. I always use whole wheat flour. People tend to use refined flour in baking but whole wheat is so much healthier and in a recipe with this much cocoa, you will not taste the difference. Throw in a cup of sugar. The original recipe has a total of 2 cups of sugar but I like more of a dark chocolate flavor and the prunes do add some sweetness so I find that one cup is enough. If you are a milk chocolate person, you may want to use more sugar.

You may or may not want to add 2 teaspoons of vanilla and a pinch of salt. I sometimes add those, sometimes not. I can't really taste the difference.

That's it. No butter, no eggs, no baking soda. Just prunes, flour, cocoa and sugar. Bake in an 8 x 8 square pan at 300 degrees F for about 45 minutes. They will look a little under baked when they come out, that's okay. Cool completely and refrigerate overnight. If you try to eat them soon after they come out of the oven, they will taste very prune-ish and not too chocolaty. But after being tucked away overnight in the fridge, you will taste only the chocolate and the fudgey texture. They are best eaten at room temperature, but also take good straight out of the fridge.

A Thought

So I was reading this book called Food Rules by Michael Pollan, which, by the way, is an interesting book that you can read cover to cover in under an hour and should definitely read, especially if you eat at all in the States.

This guy talks about highly processed and preservative added foods like breakfast cereal and snack bars, which are alarmingly popular in this part of the world. These foods never go bad, even after their suggested "Best Before" date. They can sit on shelves for years and years and not rot. Pollan suggests that you should only eat food that will eventually go bad.

In a different context, he talks about why food goes bad. He puts it differently from what I've usually read or heard. He says that we are in competition with the fungi and bacteria and what not around us for nutrition. When these creatures get to the food before we do, we say that the food has gone bad.

When you put these two things together, which he doesn't do in his book, you see that single celled bacteria know that processed food items do not deliver real nutrition, but we, the ones with the more highly developed brains, eat that "food" anyway. Something to think about.

More Experiments in the Kitchen

I have been learning to make my favorite dishes healthier without sacrificing their taste and texture. There's a lot of information on doing that if you look for it on the Internet or in specialized cookbooks. I am learning to use that information to my advantage.

One very popular trick among the health conscious folks out here is to bake food that you would normally fry. They use it for chicken wings, French fries, crispy fish and so on. I tried it with samosas and pakoras. You have to be familiar with your oven to know the best height for your baking racks for something you are experimenting with, but it's a great way to save a whole lot of fat and calories. The samosas turned out pretty well, and the pakoras turned out really well. Maybe because I knew my oven better when I did the pakoras, or maybe because of the nature of the dish.

But the stuff I am most excited about is the almost fat free chocolate cake and the almost fat free dal makhani I made. These are both things I really, really like. I made both of these without any butter, oil or cream. Well, except for the tablespoon of olive oil (for about four servings) that went into the dal to help keep the liquid from rushing out from under the pressure cooker's whistle. I don't really know if you can do without that little bit of oil, and I don't really think you should try to do without it. A little oil, especially the good kind, should always be part of your diet.

Here's what I did with the cake. I replaced the butter in the recipe with pureed prunes in the same quantity by volume. When I first read about this suggestion on the Food Network website, I was more than a little scared, because I have always hated prunes. My grandmother would sing their praises and try to get us to eat them everyday, but I couldn't really swallow them without feeling a desire to throw up.

But after having tried a bunch of food network recipes and cooking ideas, I put a little more trust in these people and decided to try it. Of course, prunes are good for you because they have a boatload of antioxidants. Plus, they are on the sweeter side, especially if compared to the butter they replace, so you can cut down significantly on the sugar in the recipe. You know what? Once you mix up the prune puree with cocoa powder, everything tastes like cocoa. It's all good. Mix it up with some flour and eggs, bake it up, eat it up. You can see some prune bits, depending on how finely you puree it, but you can't really taste them.

And for the dal, I replaced cream with unsweetened fat free condensed milk (or evaporated milk, whatever you like to call it). The milk, though unsweetened, is a little on the sweeter side because its sugars caramelize at the high temperatures that it is subjected to, so you would want to either balance it out with some yogurt, or spice it up a little more than usual. The dal tasted just like my mom used to make it. To me, that's really terrific taste.

Of Food, Travel and TV

There is this thing called a lunchtime poll on the CNN news website which is a poll about people's eating habits and preferences. They'll ask you questions on things like how often you like to experiment by ordering something new and different at a restaurant.

So the other day, they had this poll on where you would like to travel to try out the local cuisine. They had a long list of options that covered almost every country whose cuisine I've ever heard anything interesting about. Except, perhaps Peru. So the leading choice of the users was, quite predictably, Italy, which I voted for. Next in line was France, and not too far behind, the second runner-up, was India.

Indian is actually a rather popular cuisine in a number of countries throughout the world, as I can tell by the number of non-Indian patrons at the good Indian restaurants here, and by the growing number of Indian cookery shows on the Food Network and the Cooking Channel. Now I've never actually seen these shows, because they air during time slots that are usually not convenient to me, but I have seen their recipes on the channels' websites and there are lots of good ideas there. They have this reality show where they hold a competition to choose "The Next Food Network Star" - someone who will have their own show on the Food Network - and this time, the winner was an Indian who is going to start another Indian cooking show soon.

Strange, then, that Indian television doesn't have an exclusive channel for food and cooking. There are so many different cuisines within the country, specific to various geographic regions, and people are increasingly open to trying out recipes from all across the country or even across the world that they haven't tried before. I've gathered a bunch of ideas from the Food Network shows and tried new ways of cooking pasta and doing new things with strawberries. If they had something like that in India, it would be something I would willingly watch. And I am someone who never really watched Indian television shows out of my own free will, I watched the Indian channels for the movies and the music videos, but I was mostly confined to Friends and The Big Bang Theory and Mr Bean as far as shows went.

It's Been So Long Since...

...I danced at a wedding. Getting all dressed up for a wedding, dancing, feasting... it's all been so long. I have actually not worn Indian clothes in a really long while either. It just occurred to me that I wore a salwar-kameez exactly twice in the last fifteen months that I've been in the States - once on Karva Chauth and once on Diwali.

...I ate chikoos. We don't get them here at all. They have frozen ones at the Indian grocery store, but I'm not a big fan of frozen fruit. Frozen veggies are okay (actually they're good in some ways because they're already cut and peeled and have a longer shelf life) because you cook them and then they no longer feel like they were frozen to begin with.

...I ate burfi. We do get all kinds of sweets here, but they're not fresh like you would get from a local halwaai or a Haldiram's. They're often exported from Canada and they just don't taste like what burfi would taste like on the day you bought it fresh. We get good halwa and gulabjamuns and rasmalai and kheer at Indian restaurants, but not burfi or cham-cham or milk cake. It just occurs to me sometimes, usually I'm quite happy with my Boston Creme Pies and Chocolate crumb cakes and brownies.

The Great Thing About Window Shopping...

...is that it's one of the few things that I know of that can help me relax and that do not involve spending any money or adding on any calories to the day's tally. Sometimes, exercise does all that too, but it's not something I would really want to do towards the end of a tiring day, which is when you really need to relax. I've discovered that, if I'm at home, listening to music or reading, and there's food that's readily accessible, I'll want to stop what I'm doing and eat. I know, I think about food a lot. But that's just who I am. But if I am in the middle of a huge store browsing through clothes or shoes or books, I feel a certain amount of laziness when I think about going to the mall's food court or the bookstore's cafe. That is the good kind of laziness. And that's why I love window shopping.

Words to Eat By

I've learnt a lot about myself, food, and healthy eating in the last few years while trying to lose weight. Some of them were things that I kind of always knew at the back of mind, but let them stay at the back of my mind. Some are things that I learnt from other people who have gone through the same kind of thing, through online communities, and literature.

I was just thinking, a couple of days back, about how my friends and I used to eat at McDonald's all the time and not think about it. Now I've been reading up about the ingredients they use, the kind of oil they fry in, and the nutritional stats of their food. I still eat there occasionally, but only occasionally, and only because they are sometimes the only choice at freeway rest stops. I do like their barbecue chicken wraps a lot, though.

I've learnt that it always helps to know what you're eating and what goes into it in what quantity. If you're buying packaged food in India or another country where they don't always print the nutrition information on the package, they probably do still have a list of ingredients in there. Ingredients are generally listed in a logical order - the one listed first is the one that is used in the largest amount. That list does generally give you a pretty good idea about things.

I've learnt that the first bite of dessert tastes the same as the last bite. Unless it's a layer cake. What that means to me is that I don't need to eat a whole brownie, a whole bar of chocolate, or a whole cup of ice-cream to satisfy a craving. I can eat whatever I want, as long as I can practise portion control.

I've learnt that the pleasure derived from eating comfort food is a momentary and fleeting pleasure, while the pleasure of being able to fit into a size 8 (sometimes even 6!) top after years of wearing unmentionably large sizes is a pleasure that is a lot more permanent.

I've been too large for too long. When I go out shopping, I will sometimes still pick up a size "L" shirt to take into the fitting room, realize that it is too big, try on the medium, and finally settle for the small. It's a little more time consuming if they have the numbered sizes, because that means that I work my way from 12 all the way to 6 or 8. But I'm getting used to it. And it's a great feeling.

Of Food and Wisdom

How often do we come across customs and traditions that seem silly, or useless, or even counterproductive to us? Well, I, for one, certainly feel that way about a lot of Indian customs. But I'm not going to talk about those here. I'm going to talk about some that do make sense to me. Food and fasting.

We have this concept to Navratri where we eat only specific kinds of foods for nine days. It's supposed to prepare our bodies for eating differently with the onset of the changing season. Think about it. We all eat differently in the summer, in comparison to the winter. We could all use a few days of detoxification in the spring and in the, well, autumn. (Digression: It's not really autumn if the trees don't shed their leaves, is it? But let's just use the term to refer to the transition from summer to winter.)

One of my colleagues in India used to religiously observe a fast every Thursday when she would only eat fruit and vegetables from sunrise to sunset. Well, I am not sure of the technicalities, but you get the idea. Me, I always knew about the health benefits of this kind of thing, (If done right, not if used as an excuse to eat mounds of halwa and puris before sunrise and after sunset.) but I never really tried it myself. Sure, I always ate a light lunch, but I tried to include at least a little bit of protein - legumes - and a little bit of grain - rice or wheat - in my lunch. And I would allow myself to eat dessert whenever they made fruit custard in the cafeteria. It worked for me most of the time.

A few months ago, I had a couple of days of digestive distress and I got around it by eating only strawberries and carrots for lunch for two days. It works better than any medicine. It also tastes much better.

Ever since, I got into this habit of observing a detoxification day approximately once a week. Some weeks, I don't do it. Those are the weeks that I didn't go out to eat and didn't eat anything particularly fattening at home either. Some weeks, I do it twice a week. I don't have a fixed day of the week, but I do often end up doing it on Thursdays. Just like I would so often end up showing up at work in a yellow outfit on Thursdays (Apparently, that's what you're supposed to wear when you are observing the aforementioned Thursday fast.) when I was in India. Sometimes it's Tuesday. Sometimes Friday. It doesn't matter, because I don't do it to please a supernatural being. I do it to keep my digestive tract from turning into an overpowering being. It works really well for me. My rule for those days is, no processed food from 8 AM to 8 PM. That means no bread, chapatis, oil, or milk. No cookies or cake or ice-cream. Milk is pasteurised, so it is a processed food. Plain rice with vegetables without oil is allowed, but generally not eaten. I don't fret if I happen to break the rule. Because even if I did it for the last four hours, or will do it for the next four hours, some good is going to come out of it.

I like the way I follow the ancient wisdom without the rigid rules. Because that's the only way that it's a good thing for me.

Thoughts For Today

So now we've moved to our new apartment and things are beginning to settle down. We spent our first week in an apartment with no cable TV and no Internet and a lot of our stuff waiting to be unpacked. After the weekend, things are beginning to shape up.

In the midst of all this I achieved a personal milestone which most of my good friends will know the significance of. For the first time since I was a little kid, I'm now in the healthy weight range for my height.

I was grossly overweight through most of my senior school years and college. I've been trying to make amends for about three years now. In these three years, I've been through weight loss phases, plateaus (that's when the weight refuses to decrease any further), and also put some of it back on around the time I got married. But early in 2010, I found a renewed resolve to take the weight off and keep it off. I still want to tone up a little and drop another ten pounds or so, but what I have now is a big achievement for me.

Trying to lose weight in the States is not the same as trying to do it in India. It's a lot easier here. You can actually eat all your favorite foods, because they have reduced fat or fat free versions of everything, from chocolate brownies to ice cream. The government requires manufacturers to have nutrition information printed on all packaged food items. A lot of restaurants post their nutrition information online. It's also easier to find whole grain pasta, brown rice, and other whole grain food products. Whole grains are a big help if you're trying to lose weight or just eat healthier. They have more vitamins and minerals, they have more fiber, which means you feel more full, and whole grain pasta actually has a lot of protein too.

This is not where I'm going to stop. I'm going to drop another few pounds and then keep it all off. But, of course, once things settle down at home, I'm going to go shopping for new clothes first.

Eat Healthy, Think Better

I don't understand the eating habits of Americans. I mean, they'll eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch (which is not entirely unhealthy but not the healthiest of lunches either), with a side of pretzels or chips, and a cup of yogurt. And they'll pick the fat free yogurt. I mean, hey, there's a bag of pretzels that you're eating, there's all this other stuff loaded with fat and carbs, and how many calories can there really be in that tiny 6 oz cup of yogurt?

I was just thinking, today, that it's so much easier to pack a healthy lunch than one that is unhealthy, if you're preparing either from scratch. Chop a few veggies, boil some chicken in water, mix it all up into a soup or salad (save the chicken broth for later). But there are all these processed foods and takeout lunches loaded with stuff that's not good for you which make people choose convenience over health.

I heard something about how McDonald's switched over to using peanut oil for frying and then switched back to using animal fat and how people who were vegetarians or those who were worried about their health made a ruckus about it. Hello, if you're concerned about your health, why are you eating at McDonald's in the first place and why are you picking the one thing that contributes a drop in the ocean?

Do You Know How Much You Eat?

I recently began tracking my food intake throughout the day in an attempt to analyze my diet. I've only been doing it for about a week, and there are some surprising things I came across. Even with my diet consciousness and efforts towards healthy eating, my total calorie intake in a day was just above the recommended daily allowance of 2000 for the average adult female. How come? It's pretty simple, actually. Unless you actually write down everything you eat, you're more than likely to miss out adding up the calories in some of it. I generally worry about the calories in things I eat for pleasure, like chocolate. I don't count the calories in the milk I drink every morning. They are still there, of course.

Then there are the little snacks at various points of time in the day. There are hundreds of options for healthy (and otherwise) snacks which come packaged in 100 calorie snack bags. Even the healthiest of these will add calories. Normally, the average person would overlook counting those. But they do add up.

Have you ever tried to see if you're getting enough of every kind of nutrient in your diet? Enough protein, enough fat, enough carbohydrates? Or, for that matter, enough water? Most of us don't get enough water during the day. I realised that I eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, but I don't eat enough protein on most days, except the days when I eat chicken or fish, which is only about twice a week.

I think everyone should do this for at least a week. Write down everything you eat. Absolutely everything. And then see how much of what you're eating. You may be surprised at the result. You may see something very evident that you need to change about your eating habits.

Random Questions

What, exactly, is the whole point of decaf? I mean, people drink coffee to stay awake. They drink it for the caffeine. Why would someone want to drink decaf?

What happened to the days when I could eat all kinds of stuff without worrying about how I look or what I'm doing to my health? Those good old days of childhood and early adulthood.

Great Things About Salads

Traditionally, at home back in India, salad was about sliced cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, cabbage and carrots drizzled with lemon juice. I never liked the lemon juice, actually. And I never liked eating the onions or tomatoes raw. I would eat the cabbage by itself. And sometimes the cucumbers and the carrots.

In recent times, I've discovered how versatile and fun salads can be. I always liked the cabbage, but it often had a rather sharp flavour. Lettuce, on the other hand, has a much better flavour and comparable, if not better, health benefits.

A lot of people here make a salad into a lunch, by throwing in some grilled chicken or tuna or bacon. I've discovered that it's a great lunch. It's easy to make (just throw everything together in a bowl), it's light so it doesn't make you feel drowsy right after you eat it, but it's still quite filling. So you're not hungry or drowsy in the afternoon or evening. Something like grilled chicken would need to be heated up, but tuna can be eaten straight out of the refrigerator. You can make your own variations by adding cooked chickpeas, sweet corn, olives, jalapenos, tortilla chips or what have you, and mixing and matching the dressing. I keep bottles of low fat salad dressing in my refrigerator at all times. I think it's one of the greatest things you can buy in a bottle, after bottled water.

Italian Cuisine

The Italians sure know what they are doing when they're in the kitchen. I think theirs is some of the greatest food in the world. Even though I've become slightly partial to Mexican food lately, nothing beats Italian. Pizzas, pastas, and oh, their cakes and pastries are just out of this world.

I've discovered that it's really easy and economical to make your own pasta. You get great marinara sauce (and in a variety of flavors) in a bottle, and all you need to do is boil the pasta and mix it with the sauce. And maybe cook some vegetables to add to it. It's quick and easy, and if you buy the whole grain pasta and the all-natural sauce, it's pretty healthy too.

The Domino's guys have this unique dish on their menu. They give you pasta in a bread bowl. That's a bowl made out of bread. So you eat the pasta, and then you can eat the bowl too. Saves space in the dishwasher.

All these Italian places have some sort of molten chocolate cake on their dessert menu. It's a soft cake with a liquid centre. I tried it in only one place, but it was just amazing. Normally, they serve you huge platters of pasta and don't leave you any room for dessert. And then they come along with their dessert trays and try to tempt you into eating it anyway. That's right, they don't bring you a menu, they bring a tray with a sample of each kind of dessert so that it's all the more difficult to resist the temptation. I've learnt to resist anyway. But sometimes I do give in and, I must say, it's worth it.

Food, Family, Fun

This is an approximate transcript of a conversation I had with my family in India recently.

Me: So what are you up to these days?
My brother: I give mom food ideas. I find new and interesting recipes online and make her try them out.
...
Mom: I tried out this recipe for egg paranthas. They turned out really well. You should try it out too. Oh, wait, but you'll have to knead atta for that.
Me: But, mom, I do that all the time. I make decent chapatis. Every day.
(Stunned silence, arising from the fact that I never did anything of the sort while I was in India and she never expected me to try to learn.)

A couple of months earlier, my husband told my mother that I had made aloo paranthas for him. She knew that he was only kidding. But since then, she gets a bit of a shock each time I tell her I tried out something and it turned out well. She finds it all a little difficult to believe. Truth be told, so do I. But I love surprising my husband with all the dishes that he likes. Or with something new and experimental, to which I sometimes add my own touches.

But you know what I miss? I miss the element of surprise in finding out what is on the table for dinner or for lunch. My rajma tastes a lot like my mom's, but it's not the same thing when you know that it's sitting in a bag in one of the cabinets and you can cook it whenever you want. It's entirely different if you come home from work and smell the aroma coming from the kitchen. Some of my friends from the office lunch group would recall how much I enjoyed the fruit custard in the cafeteria. My eyes would light up at the sight of it. It was the only dessert I would always eat. I would hardly eat anything else on the fruit custard days. It's not the same thing when I have custard powder in my kitchen and make it myself every other week.

Planning your meals yourself is good in that you make the things you like, and you make them the way you like them. But it's not the same kind of fun, is it?

Being a Foodie!

Of late, there have been some variations in my eating habits. Ever since I found myself in a country where manufacturers are required to print nutritional information on all packaged foods, I've begun to study that information carefully before buying anything new. Anything different from the regular bread and peanut butter. The low fat peanut butter, that is to say.

But some things don't come with that information. Food served in restaurants or fresh produce falls into that category. And there are times I forget about nutritional content, although my husband tries his best not to let me do that.

I've discovered a taste for cinnamon. Apparently that is quite popular here. Cinnamon rolls, cinnamon flavoured breakfast cereal (the first thing I ate in the States that I had never had in India - and liked), cinnamon swirl bread, cinnamon and apple flavoured oatmeal or rice cakes, cinnamon melts (that's the newest thing on McDonald's menu), the works. It's sweet, but not too sweet. It's just heavenly.

I've developed a strong liking for Mexican food. When we go out to eat, I used to vouch for Italian, but after a while I realised that most Italian dishes are heavy, and even the pasta that isn't, comes in such huge servings that it appears heavy. Now, of course, any restaurant here will willingly wrap up your leftovers for you, but it's hard to stop eating when you are eating something that delicious. So it seemed to me that Mexican food made more sense. I have come to love chips and salsa, burritos, and beans and rice. That's Mexican rajma-chawal. Deliciously different from, and yet very similar to, its Indian cousin.

And then there is Chicken Tikka Masala. This is something I hardly ever ate in India. Out here, almost every Indian restaurant has a buffet lunch and more often than not, they do feature this dish, and more often than not, I do manage to at least taste it. And it is good. Almost all Indian restaurants I've been to over here mess up some dish or the other, but they all make great Chicken Tikka Masala and great Chana Masala. Oh, and kheer. And the gajar ka halwa. What is different about these two dishes here is that I have yet to come across a restaurant where they garnish it with dry fruit. That's why I like it. In India, everybody puts dry fruit into these and it simply spoils the flavour and the texture for me. Plus, the gajar ka halwa is made with a lot less ghee and khoya, and it's exactly as sweet as I want it to be. None of them make really good rajma or dal makhani, though. Oh well, I settle for my own rajma and, of course, the Mexican rajma.

And yes, of course, the lettuce and grilled chicken sandwiches and salads. This is again something I used to eat almost equally often at Subway in India, and I like it more than ever now. Especially the variants in which they add sweet corn, or beans, or Tortilla chips. You don't necessarily have to go to a Mexican place for that.

And there is Strawberry Shortcake. It is the most wonderful cake I've ever tasted. It beats chocolate truffle for its wonderfully light, melt-in-your-mouth feel and it's flavour, which, by the way, was the reason why I was very reluctant to try it. But I am glad I did. It is at the opposite end of the spectrum when compared to chocolate flavoured cheesecake at The Cheesecake Factory, which is extremely heavy and not much to write home about.

This is a place where you can find cuisines from all over the world. I've seen Afghan restaurants and African restaurants. Chinese, Japanese (still cannot muster the courage to try sushi), Indian, Italian, Mexican, Thai, and of course, burger joints every two hundred feet or so. Okay, maybe that is an exaggeration. But it's not too much of an exaggeration. You can find just about anything you want to eat, and if you can't, well, you can definitely find the ingredients and cook it yourself, if you are willing to do that. I have easy access to MDH rajma masala and imli ki chutney. But I miss litchis and chikoos. Those are just about the only things I have not seen in any of those sprawling grocery stores. But other than that, I am in foodie heaven.

My First Birthday After My Wedding

My husband planned an extended birthday celebration for me over the weekend immediately preceding my actual birthday. We started out on Saturday afternoon with lunch at an Indian restaurant called Bombay Club in Cambridge where we had golgappas, papri chaat, and suji ka halwa, interspersed with some regular lunchtime dishes. Cambridge is basically a really lovely place, but I hadn't seen it come alive the way it did on that Saturday afternoon. It is full of places to shop, eat, or just hang out. Live music in parks, people basking in the sun, everybody relaxing - it was a good feeling.

We picked up a Strawberry Shortcake at a bakery in downtown Boston, which, Jatin told me, is supposed to be a rather popular and delicious cake. (He'd originally planned for the cake to be a surprise but he's not too good at surprises.) Now I tend to stick to chocolate and coffee flavours when it comes to dessert like cakes, mousse and cookies. So I was a tad doubtful about the cake. But this cake was quite something. Delicious, melt-in-my-mouth, and not at all heavy.

We spent Saturday evening exploring the more commercial areas of Boston. Jatin showed me the office building where he did his internship. We explored marketplaces, harbours, and the streets all evening.

Sunday morning started off with the ceremonious cutting of the birthday cake. Jatin brought in a random stranger from the apartment building to click some pictures for us and share the cake. In this country, it is quite safe to invite random people into your apartment and random people are really nice to you. I mean, she was supposed to be travelling, she said she hadn't had time to have breakfast that morning, and yet she came in and clicked our pictures and sat down with us for some cake.

Then Jatin had to go out for a little while. Now I have never cooked completely independently in my life before this. I surprised him by doing just that while he was gone. People have issues estimating how much salt and spices to put. I had trouble estimating how many potatoes to put. I cut up a few potatoes more than I would have liked to. So my mixed vegetables had no room left for the carrots, they had to make do with potatoes, beans and peas. Other than that, they were just fine. Both of us liked them. And my husband made some daal too.

I was pleasantly surprised with the wishes from some people, that started coming in a day early and more so, after midnight in India. Akash told me that he and the rest of the gang wanted to send me litchis like last year. Friends and family started calling me exactly when it was midnight in India. After midnight in our time zone, the calls just started pouring in from India and I was pleasantly surprised to the point of being a little overwhelmed by the volume of the calls, since I know people are a tad reluctant to make international calls from India, as I was too, unless I was calling one of my really good friends. (Out here, calls to India hardly cost anything if you use a calling card. So I am no longer reluctant, just lazy sometimes.) It felt really good to have so many people calling in from India, the calls spread out over about a day and a half because of the time difference. I felt really special, receiving so many international calls in one day. And then there was this surprise from Aman, my friend from my erstwhile workplace, who's been like an elder brother to me. He sent me a bouquet, a teddy bear, and chocolates. Now this is the first time somebody has sent me flowers in the States, and these are the most beautiful, sweetest-smelling flowers I've ever received. Even as I write this, the fragrance wafts towards me. The chocolates I've yet to taste.

In the evening, Jatin took me out for dinner at an Italian restaurant. I hadn't had Italian food here in the States so far, so I really enjoyed it. We had a chocolate volcano cake for dessert, which was absolutely amazing and just melted in my mouth. But of course, it was loaded with calories and I will make my way to the gym in about an hour from now, once my breakfast digests. Today is a day for the gym, not the outdoors. It is raining cats and dogs outside. Thankfully, we had bright, sunny skies over the weekend and on Monday, so going out was fun.

This was a really wonderful birthday for me, full of love and warmth, and being made to feel special. Thanks everyone for making it so.

Random Things I Learnt About Myself

Since I am spending a lot of time by myself these days, there are some things that I have discovered (or re-discovered) about myself in recent times.

• I should always have easy access to a variety of fruit, so that I can take good care of my random binges throughout the day, instead of giving in to the temptation for chocolate and all things chocolaty. We keep very limited amounts of such things around the house, but we make sure we have lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, and beans.
• I am so much happier when I am well rested. Since I am getting enough sleep these days, I am feeling so much less irritable and cranky. I'm sure it also has to do with the fact that I am not working and hence am under a lot less stress, but this is a major factor.
• There is such a thing as too much shopping, even for a girl like me. These days, my husband feels like taking me out to shop, but I simply don't feel like it. After all the wedding shopping, I am a little tired of walking in and out of trial rooms or figuring out which earrings will look good on me.
• Though I don't mind chicken and fish and stuff, I am generally happier eating vegetarian food. I can't seem to be able to enjoy meat for more than two or three consecutive meals. I'd rather live on just watermelons and lettuce, and maybe a sprouts salad thrown in for good measure.
• I like being by myself. A lot.
• I love sleeping.
• I love long, warm showers in cool weather and cool ones in warm weather.

Eating Healthy

I remember, as a kid, I used to lick the cream off Bourbon biscuits and leave the actual biscuit in the box. I used to eat bowls of Kellogg's Chocos without adding milk, just for the flavour and the crunchiness. I never worried about what fried or spicy food would do for my skin or hair.

Fast forward twenty years. Suddenly I find myself measuring the consequences of everything I eat. Consequences for my skin, hair, and weight. There is a big, flashing signboard on top of every brownie and every chocolate chip muffin. I come home and I eat a bunch of grapes, a cucumber, a couple of kakdis (not sure what they're called in English), and a home-cooked dinner. Once in a while, I do give in to my temporary lapses of restraint and indulge in a portion of Chocolate Excess at Barista. But that's just once in a while. It actually helps keep up the restraint the rest of the time. It keeps the feel good factor alive.

Somewhere along the line, as some of my good friends know, I discovered that I can sometimes extract the same feel good factor from watermelons instead of cocoa. From rajma instead of pizza. And of course, from non-edible, non-tangible things. From knowing and believing that life is good.

Stuff I Love

• People complimenting me on all the weight I've lost
• People complimenting me on the stuff I write here
• Writing random stuff that nobody else cares about and making people read it
• The way my brother's face lights up when I shop for him and he likes the stuff I get for him (which he usually does, by the way :) )
• Meeting up with old friends
• Going shopping all by myself
• Having someone do something thoughtful for me unexpectedly
• My mom's Rajma Chawal
• Watermelons
• Anything sinfully chocolaty
• Seeing something sinfully chocolaty right in front of my eyes and restricting myself from eating it
• Seeing something sinfully chocolaty right in front of my eyes and not restricting myself from eating it
• A R Rahman's music
• Sukhwinder Singh's voice
• Ajay Devgan's expressive eyes
• Aamir Khan's acting
• A song that's going about in my head being played on the radio
• The Shrek movies and the songs featured in the soundtracks
• Strolling about in the drizzle and singing to myself when it's raining a little and there's a breeze
• Driving with the windows rolled down when it's raining a little and there's a breeze
• Nice, cool baths in the summer
• Nice, warm baths in the winter
• And, sleeping to my heart's content!!!