Sabudana vada in paniyaram pan: low-fat yummy snack!

Sabudana vada or khichdi are popular during the navratris. DH and I both love both the dishes! During this navratri once I made the traditional fried sabudana vada – it was so good! Heavenly :)! The next time I thought of trying sabudana vada in paniyaram pan as I’d seen on youtube. I was interested in reducing the amount of oil consumed as well as trying a new dish.

1. Create the mix for the sabudana vada as you normally and then shaped them into balls. Balls should be a little smaller than the size of the holes in the pan because the vadas are going to puff up.
2. Heat the pan on medium flame.
3. Drop 1/4 tsp oil in each hole.
4. Put one vada in each hole.
5. Every minute or so keep turning the vadas, so that they cook on all sides. They will puff up and get a crisp brownish exterior.

They are crispy only as long as you eat them fresh. While they may not be crispy later, they are still very tasty! So try them out and I’m sure you’ll like this new low-fat snack!

Creating the mix for the sabudana vada:

You need:

• Potato – 1
• Sabudana – ~1/2 cup or less
• Chili powder – 1/4 tsp or to taste
• Green chillies (optional)
• Roasted and skinned peanuts (optional)
• Salt – 1/2 tsp or to taste

1. Prepare potatoes: Boil one potato and mash it.
2. Prepare sabudana: Take around 1/2 cup sabudana and soak it in water. I typically add as much water as required to be around 1” above the surface of sabudana. Soak for around 3-4 hours. Once you see it is puffy, drain the water and put it in a colander to remove all water.
3. Mix all the ingredients together.

Little Fires Everywhere

Author: Celeste Ng

Mia and her daughter, Pearl, had been leading a very nomadic life so far. Moving from one place to another in a year or two. Eventually they came upon Shaker Heights in Cleveland and thought that they should settle here. They rented an apartment from the Richardsons. Mia was an artist and so that she could pay for her supplies she did some odd jobs here and there. She earned barely enough to keep both of them fed and sheltered.

Life of the Richardsons was on the other end of the spectrum. They had always lived in Shaker Heights, had well to-do jobs and led a very cookie-cutter life. They had 4 children – Lexie, Trip, Moody and Izzy. One day Moody meets Pearl, they became friends and this is where th story starts. Life of Mia, Pearl and the Richardsons slowly starts to inter-twine. While Mia and Mrs Richardson lead a very different life and are very different personalities, they have some very similar motherhood patterns. They let their children be. Except that Mia is not as judgemental as Mrs Richardson. When their presence in each other’s life started increasing, that is when it started to get complicated. And that is when Mrs Richardson investigated Mia’s past to find anything that would be damaging.

It’s a very intriguing story and if life did not get in the way, I would’ve liked to spend a full day to read this book cover to cover. It was always hard to keep it down. Highly recommend reading it!

This is how it always is

Author: Laurie Frankel

Loved reading this book! Would have liked to spend a day just reading this book! I actually took it on our vacation which is where an accident happened to the book and I had to pay a fine to the library. I was not very happy with myself for the accident not so much because of the fine – I read a lot of books from the library so I’m gotten much more benefit from it – but that this why I always worried about taking library books with me on vacation. Regarding what happened – I put the book and the water bottle in the same bag. Somehow the bottle’s cap was loose and it leaked water. Worst part was that the bag’s bottom was water proof so the water accumulated rather than leaking out of the bag! Anyways, you learn from your mistakes.

Coming back to the book. It’s about a family – a father and a mother with a six kids. Everybody around them was surprised that they were having another one when they had their sixth kid. Sometimes they were surprised too. They liked to think that they were having yet another in the hope of having a girl. All their other kids were boys. So was the sixth one, Claude. However once he was no longer a baby, he was not so sure that he’s a boy. He liked to dress up like girls, play with dolls and so on. His parents believed in letting their children be what they are. They were opposed to him doing either. Initially he would wear dresses at home but change to boy clothes for school. One year he took a purse like lunch-box to school which perturbed his teacher a lot. Gradually it dawned on the parents that maybe their kid is a transgender. What follows is the story of a family who go through much trials and tribulations to work with that reality. Of course, it is the hardest for Claude.

What made me love this story is the way the author handled all the situations. Sometimes so real and sometimes just ideal – you wish every one would handle things this way. Rosie the mother is a doctor and very pragmatic. Even though she wants Claude to be his/her own self, somewhere down deep she just wishes that go back to what he is physically. Penn, the father, is a author/story-teller and just like he makes his stories take any turns, he is ready to do whatever necessary for Claude to be what he/she wants to be. Some conversations between husband and wife are so philosophical and fodder for the brain! In the initial stages when they’re discussing which way should they go, they both agree that letting Claude be her would be the right way if that is what he wants. Rosie says that that’s not going to be easy to which Penn replies that we never thought parenting would be easy. That easy is not what we’re looking for. Easy and the right way never go hand in hand. It’s not just the character of the parents, it’s the kids too. They’re always asking the right questions about their brother/sister. How they handle the situations. It teaches you that when life will have it’s twists and turns, they will be unexpected and hard to maneuver. Expect them to be hard. Once you know it will be hard, you will do the right thing. 

Highly recommend reading this book!

White Girl Problems

Author: Babe Walker

It has been a long time since I read a book full of humor. So one day I started searching on Amazon for highly rated books in the humor section. I believe I came across “White Girl Problems” then.

To be honest, I’ve never found a book as painful to read as this. It was as if I was reading chapter after chapter of nothing. Maybe the humor was not what I’m used to because I hardly laughed on anything in this book. I think the last chapter was probably the best. I could see how the situations could be so hilarious but the way they were expressed they didn’t seem funny to me. There were times when I felt sorry for the protagonist. Clearly that was not what I was expecting from this book.

I think FWP (First World Problems) or in this case White Girl Problems, would either irate you because there are bigger problems in the world to worry about or bore you because there are bigger problems in the world that interest you more. However if expressed rightly they do appear funny a lot of times! For example the meme below (courtesy: me.me) is funny to me:

Well if you have reached till here to still see what I say about this book then my recommendation is do not waste your time on it . The only good thing was that it didn’t take me too long to read this book.