Thinking about tiffins

From: Tina

Sent: Friday, August 22, 2008 5:04 PM

Subject: Thinking about tiffins

My latest past time is to read blogs (as you must have come to know by the mails I sent)… and notable among them being Food blogs :)

It generally helps to whip up an appetite for the cafeteria lunch..:)

Of course the downside is that it makes me feel the dishes shown there are easy to whip up.
So in order to surprise V, plan some different stuff to cook so that at least it is different from my usual routine khana.

Unfortunately, V ends up being shocked.

So after a few days of disasters, I mentioned that maybe over the weekend , I lost my special cooking skills.
As a result we were having disasters for the past week.

I knew the level of my skills, when V replied “Oh is it, were they not disasters before last weekend” :)

Just today when one of my colleagues was miffed about his mom not packing his lunch right, we all ended up discussing about Moms/Dads packing out tiffins.
I was thinking our moms(could be parents too ) were generally a class apart.

Dunno when they found time to whip up all the good stuff.
Not just breakfast but include a lunch and snack also for the evening apart from morning milk/tea.

Generally all I have time to whip up a safe breakfast of bread and omelets in the mornings.

But when we were in school, our mums used to send us to school with a tiffin bag. Tiffin bag containing a water bottle, short break tiffin , lunch break tiffin and Napkin.

And we people had enough nakharas like…

Short break tiffin will have something different from long break tiffin.
Short break tiffin will have something exceptional so that friends in the group share and say “WoW”.
Lunch break tiffin should have roti’s, Rice in rare scenarios permissible.
If Rice present then spoon also should be present.
If Rice present , curry should not drip out.
If Papad there then that should be in separate polythene.

Dunno how my mom found the time to give us such tiffin bags for all siblings, with rules directly proportional to number of siblings.

But I guess it is true that you start appreciating all this when you are trying to achieve one-tenth of what they used to do..:)

So long see ya.
Tina :)

Weekend Thrills :)

From: Tina

Sent: Friday, August 22, 2008 4:31 PM

Subject: Weekend Thrills :)

It has been quite a few days since I rambled :) or weeks rather…

After a well deserved though unexpected break home, it is back to the old grind..
Last weekend(Independence weekend) we were at home .
Though it was a long weekend it was not exactly planned with V struggling to book us tickets to get back and finally getting something via Tatkal.
Remembered one of my friends comments saying that before even before we embark on a journey, we worry about the tickets to get back.

:) Yup with no extended holidays ..I guess that’s how it is …
Regrets though in not being able to meet any of you.

Gud to see amche P after quite a while …With the temperatures dipped and rains around the corner.

It is nice to romanticize the weather when you are visiting only for the weekend, as compared to living it out there.
Especially since rains had disrupted the general routine in P just the weekend prior to this one.

For us it was a different ball game as both our Sasar(in-laws place) and Maher(parents place) is the same.
So whatever time we had seemed real short.

I miss P mornings with the slight chill and dip in temperature irrespective of the season it is…

I guess for both of us it was gud to eat food not cooked by me :).. Some authentic variants cooked up in the traditional style.
Attended a couple of functions including an impromptu birthday celebrations. For once V and I managed to be home for at least someone’s birthday…
Generally we used to end up wishing via phone.

And before we knew it , it was time to come back.
The train reached early morning and going back to office was seriously a pain …especially with me feeling extra sleep deprived.

Why is it when you want to leave office early especially after a journey, that you end up staying in office for long?
Neways it took a couple of days for us to orient back to Hyd tehzeeb.

And for V it was back to my short cut cooking after a few days of authentic stuff..

It seemed like over the weekend I lost touch of how to cook. So it was getting myself reacquainted with the vessels. :)

Ciao,
Tina :)