Friday, February 20, 2009

I don't feel like working today

Don't know why... and hey I don't blame my work at all. I work for Aftek, a great company with a superb environment that makes me wanna come to office everyday.

But somehow, once in a blue moon, I don't want to just get out of my house at all. Today was such a day. Today all of a sudden I am feeling very home sick (even though I was there just 6 hours back). Even now at work, I am thinking of the comfort of my home.

Why have humans complicated their lives so much? Why do we force ourselves to go some place out of home for a better part of the day? Why do we have to earn for our loved ones, but get to spend so little time with them.

Sometimes I think of the old rushi-munis (hermits) who stayed in the Himalayas, ate fruits, and had no materialistic ambitions. They were so content with whatever they had. Why can't all humans be like that? I know I can't. Maybe it is 'cause we are not brought up that way.

In prehistoric days they didn't have to pay mobile bills, petrol bills :). All men did was to hunt for food and women just cooked; they also made sure that the species didn't go extinct. But mankind has made so many discoveries and inventions that a single person cannot do everything in a single lifetime. Hence we ended up trading and hence 'working somewhere'. Why did we have to do this to ourselves!!! We should have happily stayed in the himalayas or hunted for food forever! Why create wheels? Why invent electricity? Why form software companies :D ???

Ok... getting back to work now.


Friday, February 13, 2009

Healthy food - try creating a diet chart

Our discussion began when me and my hubby Yogesh were driving to my mom's place. He was telling me that we should eat 1 cup of Matki (a sprouted lentil) everyday in the morning, and that too uncooked (yucks).

Frankly speaking I am overwhelmed with the dosages of health tips from the Internet already. All these health gurus or doctors keep telling us to ... Eat 1 serving of spinach per week... OR Eat Omega 3 rich Salmon and Tuna every week!... Go eat blackberries.. Eat multi colored (dark) foods for more antioxidants, Eat almonds, Eat dates, Eat this and Eat that. If any of these doctors combine all these health advices over all the sites, and try to create a food chart for a week, I'm sure they wouldnt be able to cram even 10% of these into a single week. Moreover there are other overwhelming lists like.. what not to eat, how too cook and how not to cook to best preserve the nutrients, how many days to store the food before it is useless!!!!

I must give due credit to Yogesh though, for pursuading me to eat salads. Now I can atleast say that I've started incorporating something healthy in my diet. I'm sure he will have more tips!

A simple person like me would want to eat healthy food, but wouldn't know when and what. And the Internet is doing a great job of creating confusion and guilt conscience in my mind. Cause now although I am aware that I should be eating XYZ, I either do not know when, Or how much.
I think thats why there are nutritionists. But let's not get into this .... it'll require a separate blog for that ;)

For now i'll go with whatever is in my tiffin.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

I don't detest cooking... but it is not like breathing!

I love cooking. Right from my tenth grade, I could cook basic meals (and some frilly stuff too once in a blue moon). Initially I took it as a challenge... sort of like a chemistry experiment we used to do in our twelth grade chemistry lab. No, seriously, like any dedicated group, we entered the chemistry lab with the sole objective of entertainment, trying to mix some liquids and powders to create jazzy results (mostly acheiving heavy fumes with the stuff hardening in the test tube and rendering it useless for future experiments!) Sometimes we did get beautiful results like for example, a cyan colored precipitate floating in a reddish liquid of some sort. Whatever. My point is, I took cooking to be like that.

Cooking is nothing but adding interesting stuff to your preparation and presenting it in such a way that the person in front of you can eat it without frowning (and still survive hehehe). I think I am downgrading myself a lot here. In reality my husband, mom, dad and friendz love to eat what I make. I like being surrounded with various masalas and spices, choosing what to add to make this dish lil bit different than what I had cooked earlier. I don't kill my time though with this stuff.. as I have office to go to, but this is damn interesting.

I love the fact that I am an Indian. By virtue of that, I can get tonnes of spices and masalas on my shelf, and I love to taste them too. From one of my friend, I have heard that most cooked food abroad looks whitish, creamish, or greyish ...and very little spicy. People there are generally intolerant towards spices (ofcourse they wouldn't be able to afford them, even if they were - another plus for being in India.)

I did enjoy cooking once in a blue moon. But life has changed ... I got married last month and now have the full fledged responsibility of cooking alteast 2 meals a day without a break! I can manage the time no issues, but it is no longer as enjoyable as it was before since I consider it as a mere task these days to be done with. To get it over witha and reach office within a reasonable time (we have flexi timings). And again to get back home and get it done with to go to sleep in time. I am wondering if life ever gives us a chance to enjoy something so much that we don't start hating it. Why do we start getting bored of things that we love to do... if we do it everyday? Time is a factor, but I think energy and dedication is another...

Will think about that...